Page 120 of Ocean of Sin and Starlight

Alright, I say and close my eyes. Abe keeps his hand on my shoulder to steady me, and while I’m grateful for it, I also feel quite silly, standing here in the middle of the ship like this while everyone else is running around.

Are you listening? I ask the beast, searching for the dark spaces deep inside, the places I’ve been too afraid to go, where I know my demons live.

No answer.

And then a faint reply, so faint I barely hear it.

I am always listening.

I try to gather my courage. What do you want from me?

It wasn’t the question I wanted to ask. I wasn’t even supposed to ask a question; I was supposed to tell it the terms of our bargain.

I want you to make peace with your dark side, the beast says. I want you to make peace with me.

You are my dark side?

Armand Cruz, he says, my old name making me shiver. I am you.

But you came when Kaleid…you came from Kaleid, when he killed me, turned me. He gave you to me.

He did not. I came to your rescue. You would have died had I not appeared. Your dark side kept you alive. I kept you alive.

He turned me into an immortal.

But that’s not how immortals are made. Had I not stepped in and made you go to the dark place, you would have never survived in the world.

You made me kill my family! I yell inside my head, fists clenching at my sides. Abe’s grip on my shoulder grows strong.

We all do things we do not mean, it eventually says. But sometimes we do things we do, things we could never entertain, that we would never admit to ourselves.

I never wanted to kill my family. I seethe.

Never? Oh, there were times you thought about it. When the kids were loud and your wife showed no interest in you. When you resented having to work all day, every day except the Lord’s day.

You are wrong.

I am right because I am you. Within each human is a great capacity for evil. There is a shadow that forms within us since birth. You—we—were well versed in these shadows. We used them in our witchcraft. You called into the darkness so often, Armand, is it any wonder that it called back? They called you Armand the dark, do you remember? Do you remember all the magic and the spells you did that brought harm to others?

I never harmed…

But I remember now.

I remember being a child and killing a snake with a sword, chopping it up into pieces while it was alive, not because I was curious but because I was so angry that my father had died so young, and I wanted to take it out on something. The rage that came over me, it was like I was possessed by the Devil itself, back when I thought I was young and innocent. I sliced and sliced and sliced until I became someone else entirely, and I lived with that guilt every waking day because how could I, a child, do such a horrible thing?

I remember the seething jealousy I had over my neighbor, the way his wife looked at me in the way that my own wife never did, enough so that I stole her away one night for a mutual tryst. When she became pregnant not long after, she came to me, and I had to pretend I had no idea what she was talking about, had to pretend that I’d never talked to her a day in her life.

I remember sabotaging the blacksmith in the neighboring town, putting a spell on him that caused him to lose all feeling in his hands so that I could take over his clients. I did so, reaping the benefits, and I never gave him his feeling back.

I remember feeling the white-hot rage seeping through when my children disobeyed me and reminded me they were another mouth to feed.

I never wanted to kill them, I whisper inside.

You didn’t, the beast says. But your dark side did. The one that lives deep within, the one you never wanted to face because if you did, you’d be looking at your own face. You’d be looking at me.

I shake my head. No.

Yes, it hisses. And the sooner you make peace with it, the better off you will be. There is a difference between having these thoughts and desires and acting on them. The more you push them away, the stronger the pull is. The harder you try to be good, the more I’ll try and rein you in. We are victims to our broken souls and unnourished hearts. We want so much, we covet, and we deny it. We live our lives pretending to be better than that, but we aren’t. The rage that made me lives in every single being, monster and human alike. And every now and then, if you’re too afraid to face what you truly are, it will be unleashed.

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