4. The Stranger
Chapter Four
The Stranger
H ate is easier than grief. Anger is easier.
Anything is easier. Grief is the inescapable tide on a storm-torn beach.
It consumes everything in its path with no survivors.
She’s wrapped that maelstrom around herself so tightly she’s suffocating any other emotion she might feel.
Hate. Anger. Denial. That never-ending tide has eclipsed all of them.
Even as I watch Morningstar House, her new residence, I know with unwavering certainty that a single truth echoes through her head.
It should have been me.
She’s no doubt spent the last three months imagining every way the outcome of that night was her death and not her angel’s.
But nothing can change her reality, and so she forces herself to relive his death every night.
When I walk in her dreams, I can sense they are driven by her own power and follow her own plan.
She creates the nightmares herself. She wants this pain.
She wants to die.
Never.
My teeth grit at the thought. She will not die.
I will do whatever is required to force her to live.
Even if it means grabbing the heart from her chest and stoking the fury that lies there.
I don’t care if she then directs that fury at me.
She can paint me as the target for all her rage and hatred so long as she lives.
I can feel her eyes boring into my back from where she is watching me from inside the house.
Purposely, I glance back at her and crook my finger, coaxing her outside.
I infuse that single gesture with every ounce of insufferable arrogance I can manage, and I can manage quite a lot.
It’s time to incite that rage she needs so desperately.
She locks her eyes with mine and snaps the curtains shut.
There she is.
Beneath the layers of grief and devastation, the hopelessness and agony, she is still in there.
I know exactly what it is like to lose everything. To scream for revenge and relief until your throat is raw, only for no one to answer. To struggle against your reality until your soul is nothing but an open wound, scrubbed raw by all you have lost.
Unknown
How long are you going to avoid me?
The sound of her phone smashing against the wall echoes from the house, and I smirk. It doesn’t matter. The phone is runed against damage and will instantly repair itself.
Unknown
That was petulant.
This time, I feel more than hear the blast of power from inside.
I am poking at her, intentionally riling her up, but she still hasn’t come outside.
Time for my backup plan. Lazily strolling across the lawn, I take the steps up to the porch and knock resoundingly on the front door.
Everything is silent, and I can almost sense her anger building, boiling inside her.
I knock again. She needs this. She needs to feel something else. Anything else.
I press my palm against the door as if I can summon her rage, her power. As if I can summon her.
This has been a long summer, compounded by the distance I kept between us for those three months. I was just trying to give her the space to breathe through the worst of it. Or so I thought that was what she was doing until she returned and I dreamwalked through her nightmare.
The distance is gone now, and I have no intention of allowing her to keep running from me .
The door whips open and she glares at me with hatred. “Leave me alone.”
“No.”
She slams the door in my face.
I smirk at the show of defiance, the proof of life. If anyone can provoke her into living, I have the distinct honor of being that person, and we are just getting started.
Pushing the door open, I narrow my eyes as I close the distance between us. “How long will you wallow in your self-hatred?” She snarls, sending a bolt of power at me. I swat it aside easily, letting it mark the wall with a flash of purple light. “Weak.”
She’s lost weight, and I know she must not be eating, yet her eyes burn with barely contained fury. I can work with that.
“Why are you here?” she demands. “Why now?”
“Because I will not allow you to get your wish.” You will not die. “So fight.”
“Get the fuck out of my house!” she demands, and whirls away from me, heading for the stairs.
Not so fast, little fae. You forget who your opponent is .
I wave my hand, my power wrapping around her and lifting her. She struggles and hisses, her toes dragging against the floor as I pull her to me.
When her face is inches from mine, I remind her.
“You don’t order me.” I grab her jaw, forcing her eyes to mine.
“You want to fight me? Get strong enough to make it a challenge. You want to torture yourself in dreams? You’ll have to work to keep me out of them.
” Live to spite me. She shoves weakly at my chest. “You want to be pathetic and weak?” I growl, my fingers digging in, bruising her.
“Fine. But you’ll be pathetic and weak within my control. ”
Her fingers wrap around my wrist, and she pulls at my hand, but there’s barely any strength left in her. She’s used the summer to wallow in every single self-destructive fantasy. No longer.
I yank her against me, her body hitting against my avatar, finding little softness. “Is this what you want? For me to control your dreams and your waking world?”
Tears form in her eyes, and she doesn’t even try to keep them from falling down her cheeks. Tears of hatred or sorrow? I brush them away, my touch soft. “You want to fight me? Hate me? Kill me? You want your revenge?”
Live! I demand it. I will not go back to what I was before. I need you. So you will live .
She bats my hand away, snarling, “Don’t touch me.”
I move my hand back to a punishing grip on her jaw. “Make me.”
Even as she groans in pain, her eyes spark with defiance. I’ll fucking take it. No matter how minuscule.
“Make. Me,” I repeat.
But the anger leaves her in a rush, her eyes turning lifeless again, and without words, I know what she’s thinking.
I deserve this.
How many times had I believed the same?
I release her, feeling burned and frustrated?.
.?. agonized. It destroys me to see her this way, but she needs to live, to breathe.
The one thing that has kept me going for so long, through the losses, the betrayals, the blood, the death, is spite.
Spite is a significant motivator that made me who I am. Revenge is second, and power, third.
“You won’t get your pathetic little life. You’re going to fight and live , even if I have to drag you.”
She looks at the floor, and I can feel her wrapping that despondency around herself again. Now my own anger rises at her surrender.
“You must have hated him,” I hurl at her.
Her eyes lock on mine, anger intertwined with despair. “Get out.”
“You hated him,” I hiss, towering over her. “You’d have to in order to justify ?spitting in his face like this. Like he was nothing to you.”
If there was one thing I knew about Connor Azrael Morningstar, it’s that he would not have hesitated to sacrifice himself for her if it came down to it. The crux of the difference between Connor and me is that he’d easily burn himself to save her. I’d burn everything to save her.
“You are nothing,” she spits out, her words dripping with venom.
I’d built up immunity to poison a long time ago. Her words do nothing to me.
“I’m not the one hoping to die.”
Footsteps echo from the second floor. I narrow my eyes at her and slowly release the avatar. “This is not over.”