Page 102 of Bound By Fury

Good. It’s better this way.

Later, after I’ve showered and scrubbed until little red dots have surfaced under my skin like burst vessels and my flesh is aching and raw, I crawl back to my room in a daze.

I sleep for twelve hours, waking in the middle of the night to ten missed calls from Malachi and Lucas and a slew of frantic texts from Daisy and Sam.

For a moment I wonder if Missy is okay.

I roll over and ignore them all.

THIRTY-THREE

IT’S BEEN NEARLY TWO WEEKS since an unnamed student found Fiona Beaumont’s remains tucked into the northern edge of campus, bones half submerged in murky, silt-thick creek water.

Days and days of silent commutes from one class to the next. Of oscillating between the vivid memory of being attacked and the harrowing knowledge that it could have been so much worse.

The bruises along my ribs have yet to fully fade, but I’ve gotten accustomed to the pain. Sometimes I stretch a little too hard, just to make sure it’s all real, that I really did face an endless abyss. That I’m really still here, somehow, after everything. But I don’t need bruises for my friends to know something is wrong. Maybe it’s my yellowing skin or the deep purple circles beneath my eyes, or the scabs covering my fingers where I pick away the skin until it bleeds.

I don’t deserve Lucas, who forgave me without a second thought. Who, in a time of grief, has become more protective of me than ever. He follows me from class to class, he eats when I eat, goes to the library when I do, and because I know what is right for me, I force myself to staunch the memory of pin-striped sheets against my bare legs and a heartbeat matching the rhythm of my own.

For as easy as it would be to fall into Lucas’s arms and let his orbit snatch me up, to lean in to this budding… something between us, I think neither of us knows quite how to take it there. There’s too much that’s still being left unsaid, too much history, too much healing yet to be done.

But still, I can see it. In a way I never thought I would. How we could maybe slot together like puzzle pieces. Evident in the ease of us, the simplicity of the love we could have under a different sky, in a different world.

Somewhere deep deep deep inside me, I am hopeful for that sky. That world.

Because even though I should have known that night with Malachi meant nothing, it’s hard to reconcile that with the near-constant buzzing over my skin, the feeling of his eyes boring into me from the shadows. Lucas’s touch is the only thing strong enough to calm the static that builds and builds and builds until I’m on the verge of combustion.

One to ruin me, one to save me.

Neither quite enough to tip the scales toward damnation or salvation.

No history, no love enough to rescue me from the liminal hell of Black Mountain Academy and the secrets that devour girls and spit them out as ghosts.

The questions that Daisy and Sam hurl my way are easy enough to dodge, although I often find myself wondering if that too is a mistake. Denying myself the comfort of being comforted. Of admitting that I’ve been hurt.

At night I lie awake counting the tiles on my ceiling, afraid to close my eyes and revisit the terror that nearly broke me, the only thing my brain can conjure once the sun goes down. One hundred sixty-five. One hundred and sixty-five tiles keep me anchored to the ground, keep my mind from turning in on itself, separating who I was before from who I am now.

When I’m lonely, the whispers keep me company. A constant susurration to drown out the chaos in my brain.

One thing my mind keeps circling is how it all felt.

Like drowning.

The true pain point isn’t the wounds on my body. It isn’t the gravelly “little witch” that’s kept with me. It’s the blind fury that barreled through my chest, the true, genuine desire to obliterate that monster off the face of the earth, and yet, I could do nothing.

If I think about it too much, nausea begins to roil up my throat.

I know, I know, it’s wrong. I know I don’t get to decide who lives and dies. I really do wish I felt remorse for the rage that coursed through me. I wish that I could say I’m not a killer. That I could never.

Maybe that used to be true.

But I’m not so sure anymore.

Because I am certain that the only things that saved me from becoming a monster of my own accord that night were the stars and the dead witches. And I hate them for it.

Today my fingers are coated in a multicolor landscape of fall leaves and bitter, rotten fruit; my pastels piled beside me. On my lap is a dying forest split down the middle with a rushing stream, the water stained red, shadows drifting in the background.

Daisy’s black buckled boots slam against the bleachers as she paces back and forth, pinky nail perpetually between her teeth.