Page 74 of What Sleeps Within the Cove

There’d been a time when all I wanted was my freedom. When I didn’t care what happened to Byron so long as he no longer had the ability to torment me, but in the changes that had come over the last weeks since I’d escaped, I found I no longer had the maturity to be above watching him suffer.

His pain brought me peace. His suffering filled a karmic void that I hadn’t known existed within me. Maybe it was Aella that I had embraced, maybe it was her bloodthirstiness that I hadn’t wanted to acknowledge before, constantly trying to convince myself that I was above the brutality I’d seen in others.

But I wasn’t. I was willing to sink to the depths of Hel if it meant I would get to bear witness to the suffering of those who had harmed me. My self-righteousness had been a lie, a deception to make me feel better about the monster hiding within me.

“What will you choose, daughter?” Medusa asked, staying behind when I took my first steps to close the gap between Byron andme. I paused at his side, waiting for his eyes to open. He’d squeezed them closed in pain, his fingers clenched into a fist at his side as if he wanted nothing more than to put pressure on his own wound.

I gave him what he sought, lifting myself onto the stone beside him and being careful not to touch him. His mouth stumbled as he gaped for air, mumbling beneath his breath.

“Please,” he said, his throat dry in spite of the water that surrounded him. This close to the lake, the brine of salt assaulted my senses. Water that could not be drunk. Water that would make the sting of pain worse with every torrent the sea serpent poured onto Medusa’s victims.

His eyes flung open when my hands went to the cloth covering his waist, the scraps of what had once been pants all that kept his manhood from the open air. I knew the moment he recognized me staring down at him, that flare of recognition in his gaze.

“Estrella,” he wheezed, his mouth curving into the faintest of smiles. Believing the kindness and love he’d seen in me as a child would translate to all who were in need of help, when I wanted nothing more than to make sure he suffered for all he’d done. For all he’d hurt.

I reached into the fabric and grasped his length in my hand, ignoring Caldris’s growl at my side. He may not have liked the situation, but his thoughts in my mind were a reassurance that he was willing to allow me this moment. To allow me to bring this pain, even though touching him made nausea swirl in my gut.

Byron’s eyes widened as I dug my nails into him, making sure to cup him fully. “Is this how you imagined it? All those nights you pictured your future with me in your bed?” I asked, leaning forward to press my free hand into the wound in his abdomen. His guts were soft and pliant as I forced my hand to navigate through the gaps between them, digging deeper and deeper still and reveling in his gasps of pain. I angled my arm up, searching for the hollow where I felt certain his heart should have been. There was no possible way that the man capable of such evil even possessed one, no way that he could have a beating heart and not care for the suffering he caused.

But it beat within his chest, thrumming against my fingers in a fast rhythm as I angled up behind his ribs.

“I’ll be honest, this is far better than anything I have ever dared to dream of for you,” I said, sliding my hand back through his torso. I removed it just before I let my vision fill with thoughts of stone, with thoughts of rock so hard it would break into a million pieces andnever recover. My hand pulsed with the cool, damp feeling of rock, reminding me of caves and darkness. Byron’s scream was one of pure agony as the limp flesh in my hand hardened, turning to stone. He watched it, peering down over the tattered mess of his body to find the stone that had once been his cock. “The pain you feel now is nothing compared to what you did to me. To the agony I felt every time you touched me and promised to do more. I was a child,” I hissed, wishing more than anything that I could reach inside of him and bring him the internal turmoil, the internal agony that came with such a violation.

That I could make his physical pain transcend into the pain of the soul that never went away. There was no healing.

“I intended to make you my wife!” he argued, grunting through the pain.

“And that would have been a fate worse than death. Just like this,” I snapped, standing from his altar. I stood beside his stone, drawing one of my swords from the scabbard strapped across my back. It felt heavy in my hand as he writhed on the table, desperately attempting to escape the iron that I grasped in my palm. I adjusted my grip slowly, pulling the curved sword back before I sliced it through the air and tore through the skin at the base of his shaft. The stone fell heavy to the rock where he would linger forever, and I grasped it with my free hand. Guiding it to his face, I sheathed my sword once more and gripped his aging face between my thumb and forefinger, pressing into his cheeks and wedging my fingers between his teeth until he opened his mouth.

I shoved the stone into his open mouth, pushing it deeper and deeper until he gagged. Only then did I close his lips around it, pressing my palm to his mouth and holding it closed as I thought of stone once more.

The rock spread out from under my hand, closing his mouth permanently as it turned to stone. Never again would he hurl violent words. Never again would he give commands that resulted in the end of someone’s life.

Never again would he be graced with the outlet of screaming to numb his pain, forced to suffer in silence the way all his victims had.

I turned away from him suddenly as the sea serpent broke through the surface of the water once more. Climbing onto the foot of the rock, I brought myself to stare back at him. “Estrella, get back!” Caldris snapped, the order making me wonder if I should feel fear as I stared at the brutally beautiful creature.

But I didn’t as I met its turquoise stare. The sea serpent came closer, bringing its face only a breath from mine. That tongue snaked out, dragging over my cheek and the tears I hadn’t realized I’d shed in my moments of violence before the serpent snuggled into my neck. I moved to pull my short sword free once again, moving cautiously so I wouldn’t make the serpent fear me. It held perfectly still as I dug the tip into my forefinger, resulting in a single bead of blood that welled.

Touching that to the serpent’s forehead, I held that touch as the serpent’s eyes drifted closed. They flashed with gold when they opened, the color fading slowly as I held its stare.

“Make sure he suffers,” I whispered, watching as the creature nodded its head once. It retreated into the depths as I climbed down off the rock.

The sound of splashing water reached my ears as I strode away, leaving my past behind.

I no longer had any use for it.

FORTY-SEVEN

CALDRIS

Estrella was quiet as we made our way toward the river Lethe, but her thoughts moved so quickly in a torrent of violence that I couldn’t even hope to follow. It came as a comfort, seeing so deeply into the chaos of her mind in those moments when she was quiet. When she retreated into herself, I no longer had to struggle with the distance that it created between the two of us. I no longer had to wonder if she was angry with me or what might be going through her mind. Because even if I couldn’t understand the deluge of thoughts that flitted from one subject to another more quickly than I thought humanly possible, I could feel the intentions in them and the emotions that motivated them.

My star was not angry or upset with me, and she squeezed my hand back as I slid my palm against hers and intertwined our fingers together. The emotion that surged through her was one of warmth to contradict the confusion of her thoughts. The jumbled mess thatshe’d become as she tried to reconcile the person she thought herself to be with the person she had shown at that lake hours before.

Her violence should have shocked her. It should have reminded her that she too was capable of terrible things, but instead all it did was remind her that eventually, those who deserved it finally received their justice.

Even if it meant that one day, such a fate may await all of us. Power was fleeting, drifting through the air like snow on the wind. Who was to say there would not one day come a time when she was not in control of Byron’s suffering in Tartarus? Perhaps there would come a day when Mab ruled this place, too, and found a way to torture us even after our deaths.

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