Page 6 of Freed By Wrath

My chest doesn’t crack. It calcifies.

I stop breathing and let the feeling brewing inside me have a name.

It’s not grief. It’s not heartbreak. Not the gutted, hollow thing I might have expected after eight years.

It’s fury.

Cold and absolute and clarifying, spreading through my chest like ink dropped in still water, bleeding to every edge, filling every space I’d spent years emptying to make room for him.

My horns are still in my hair. My hands are trembling. All I see is red.

2

Slash

Okay, so… I wasn’t supposed to be here.

Serena and I have been over for almost three years.

three years too late, if you ask Fabien.

Actually, don’t. He’ll tell you anyway. Every time my love life comes up, he reminds me that breaking up with her should’ve happened long before it did.

He’s not wrong.

But Serena isn’t why I came tonight.

Maybe she was once, back when saying yes to her invitations meant I had a reason to show up. But not anymore.

Now there’s only one reason I’d willingly walk into this circus.

Her cousin and her fucking laugh.

Jesus Christ.

The sound of it has been lingering in the back of my mind for years. First, it started showing up in dreams. Eventually, I caught myself looking for flashes of copper hair in crowds that had nothing to do with her. And now… consider me obsessed?

It’s pathetic.

I know.

I barely know the woman.

I’ve spoken to her enough times to count on both hands, and yet somehow my brain has turned her into a full-blown fixation.

Sometimes I convince myself I’ve finally gotten over it, then I hear someone laugh that sounds almost like hers, or I catch the scent of cinnamon and smoke, or October rolls around, and suddenly she’s everywhere again.

She got under my skin the night I officially met her, and never left. Not on purpose, which, of course, makes it worse, but without meaning to. Just by … being herself.

I never thought I would find myself craving more of that random Halloween night, mostly because Serena’s parties were never my cup of tea, but guess what?

I am.

I did.

And I fought it.

Trust me. I fought it hard. But I could never forget it. Forget her.