Page 88 of The Devil and His Goddess

Silence.

Silence was all I could cry out.

Just as it was all I was left with now.

My lip began to quiver, and the tears I’d thought I’d run out of began to fall all over again. The floodgates were open, and there was nothing I could do to stop the heavy cries. I curled in on myself and stuffed my face into the pillow to keep my sobs muffled. I didn’t want to alert Perseus. I didn’t want to make him more worried than he already was.

What Iwantedto do was toss around, scream, and throw things to release this building ball of rage and helplessness that wouldn’t seem to leave me.

My worn body and mind had other plans, lulling me to sleep, where the pain of being awake was momentarily forgotten. For a time.

All was dark and quiet until I found myself in my home ballet studio. A smile stretched across my face as I carried myself with quick, light taps across the floor in my pointe shoes. That was when I spotted a figure in black standing in the shadows. My grin widened as I rushed toward him, expecting Perseus. But the tall and built figure with long hair morphed upon stepping out of the dark corner. The shadow was not the man I longed for but the one who now haunted me at every turn.

Drake smiled wickedly. I screamed and abandoned my pursuit to run for the door, only to find it and the window had disappeared. Drake laughed behind me as I banged on the empty wall, the sick laugh twisting around my mind like barbed wire.

A sudden invisible force yanked on me, and I landed hard on my back. My clothes had vanished, and my limbs made no sign of cooperating as Drake descended. He held my legs open, his laugh continuing to bounce around my skull, and in one hard shove, he was back where I never wanted him.

Pain erupted in the place he stretched, and it engulfed my body in its torturous flames. The agony that scoured my body, my mind, and my very soul was forced into silence. I couldn’t move or scream as he leered above me and continued to force my body to accept him.

“You love me,” Drake panted, spit flying from his mouth to land on my cheek. “You love me. You’re mine. You’ll never be his.”

He pointed to the side of the room. The force keeping me immobile tossed my head to the side, letting me catch sight of a black-cladded figure. His back was to us, but I’d know that broad frame and golden waves of hair anywhere.

My fingers twitched and weakly reached toward Perseus. I opened my mouth and yelled his name, but no sound came out. Tears lined my eyes as the burning of my body continued with no sign of stopping. I waved my outstretched hand at Perseus’s back and continued to silently call out his name.

But he never turned around. Instead, he took a step away and disappeared in a swirl of shadows. Those dark wisps trailed to my wildly waving hand and stitched together until a pink leotard was all I had to cling to.

Drake’s laughter grew louder, covering me like lashes of a whip.

My outstretched arm collapsed to the ground with the pink fabric wrapped around my curled fist. Tears dripped down my face. My voice finally rushed up from the deepest pit inside of me to unfurl in a blood-curdling scream. I tossed my head side-to-side and screamed until my throat turned raw. The ferocity of the wail shook my entire body, and the sound only built and built like a volcano erupting.

“Harper!”

I gasped and shot up in bed. Air rushed in and out of my lungs as I tried to catch my breath. Sweat lined my skin, and tremors shook my frame. Only the small glow of the bedside lamp gave me enough light to see Perseus hovering beside the bed. He stared at me with his black-and-red eyes wide in alarm and clawed hands wrapped around my shoulders.

Only after seeing him and feeling his palms on my shoulders did I realize it had all been a nightmare.

“It wasn’t real,” I panted, wiping the tears that had managed to manifest outside of the dream. “Just a nightmare.”

Being awake was hell, yet even in my dreams, I couldn’t escape this nightmare I now lived in. The monster was there to invade my waking thoughts, and he tore at my sanity in my nightmares, too.

Perseus let out a ragged breath and collapsed to his knees beside the bed next to me. His hands slipped from my shoulders as his head dropped to press into the mattress, nearly hitting my thigh with his horns. His strained voice came out muffled as he said, “You scared the fuck out of me. I heard you screaming, and I-I—”

He only wore a pair of gray sweatpants, and his long hair was up in a bun. I wasn’t sure if he actually slept in his demonic form or if it had come out as a reaction to hearing me scream. Either way, he’d clearly been in a rush to get here, and that only made the guilt funneling around my insides sink deeper. He sat up but didn’t meet my gaze. He stared blankly at the comforter, a perfect mask on his face.

Perseus was the brightest sun—always smiling, always radiant, always warm.

I was the majestic butterfly—always fluttering about, always basking in the sun’s rays, always soaring.

But not now.

The sun had been blocked by thundering storm clouds, which pelted the butterfly with its torrential downpour. The butterfly fell to the muddy ground, her wings wet and broken, unable to fly back up toward the sun. The sun couldn’t get past the dark, thick clouds to dry her wings and help her heal. The sun and the butterfly were each stuck in their new worlds, incapable of reaching the other.

I didn’t know how to dissipate those stormy skies from his mind, just as I didn’t know how to shake the endless pelting from my own. I didn’t know how to stop from spiraling or how to make the nightmare end.

Looking down at Perseus—my demon, my blocked sunshine—I knew one thing. Unlike that dream world, Perseus’s back wasn’t to me. He was right here within arms reach, and even if the storm clouds blocked us, I needed a glimpse of his rays again.

“Can you stay?” I croaked. “I don’t want to go back to sleep, yet.”

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