Page 64 of My Lovely Tragedy
My molars clamp down, sending a shockwave through my jaw. Tongue pressed to the roof of my mouth, I arch my back and yank, utilizing every ounce of strength I can muster.
The chains pull taut, pinching my skin past the point of pain, shifting into bruising my flesh. I pull harder, panting against the tension in my sternum. The flex of my abs. Bulging in my thighs, calves. Even my toes.
My feet scrape against the brick, leaving cuts in their wake.
The strain builds pressure in my head, causing my ears to ring. I stop breathing, just so I can use that energy to yank a little harder. Sweat beads along my forehead. It stings as it drips into my eyes, obscuring my vision. But I don’t need to see.
I just need to pull. To fucking dosomething.
Heat blooms, tight and uncomfortable, as black swarms, thick and ominous—as fearful as it is welcoming. I resist its coercion, knowing if I give in, this is it. I can’t fucking do it.
Doubt trickles in, slowly at first as a link shifts, finding a home embedded in my skin. And then, it fucking pours when the tears start falling in rivulets of sweat-induced water, and then real, body-wracking, vision-clouding sobs.
Air whistles from between my dry, cracked lips in pathetic, inconsistent pants, but I keep yanking at my shackles, knowing it’s fruitless, yet unable to stop. The pain doesn’t even register anymore, long since lost in the disorienting fog ofeverything.
The vacancy from within the fireplace finds a home within me, cold and untouched, married with the char from flames long since extinguished.
I feel the sting of their loss like a knife to the chest, sharp and confounding. It’s cold, crystalizing my blood vessels. Slowing the flow.
And then, I’m warm. No longer vacant and alone. The frost melts. My blood keeps pumping. A solid structure presses against my back, secure and steady and so,so warm.
I fall against Tobias’s chest, knowing he, yet again, has brought me back from a place I’d fallen into. A place he took me to, but the semantics don’t really matter at all anymore.
All that does is this. Him. A tether between what lies ahead and what lies beneath. Both so close to touch, yet every careless graze sends me reeling in the opposite direction.
I’m stuck in the in-between.
“Shh, darling. Shh, it’s okay.” Tobias’s warm cadence washes over me, his breath hot and minty. Gooseflesh rakes outward, making me shiver and burrow deeper into him.
I claw at the arms wrapped around my waist, their constriction far too tight. Too much. He only holds me tighter, uncaring of the marks I leave behind. Blood wells in small beads as his ichor mixes with mine, crimson and glistening.
My own is weak in comparison. Pathetic in its attempt to shine as his does.
The sight of lifeblood and chains and touch makes my stomach churn and my chest concave. Each breath is few and far between. My head swims, eyes rolling back, getting stuck somewhere inside my skull where they belong.
Afterall, what’s left for me to see?
Tobias rocks me in his arms, and I fall back into him, because what else is there for me to do? My hair sticks to his chest, still wet and dripping, as my head falls back against his shoulder. He tucks his face into my neck, burying his nose into my pulse point.
Curls cling to the left side of my face, soaked and smelling of vanilla and black honey. Of home and agony. Loss and betrayal. Ease and comfort.
All things I find within him.
All things I can’t be without, it seems.
“My belovedcorvus,” Tobias hums in my ear, nuzzling into me. Gentle, grazing touches that burn along my skin, igniting more prickling goosebumps. I shiver, shoulders losing their tension and falling lax.
His arms squeeze tighter as his hands work to unwind the chains from my mutilated arms. I hiss at the sting of fresh air exposed to my newest blemishes. Then, my eyes roll, the sensation burning inside of me intimately familiar and nearly forgotten.
“Why do you hurt yourself so?” His words are nothing but a haunting echo. A soundless discord that pulsates like a metronome in my blood.
His hands graze over me, fingers splayed and gentle as he eases his physical hold over me until all that’s left is the familiar weight hanging from my wrists, the bone forever aching. He slips spindly fingers between the links, running the smooth, damp pads of his fingers along the bruised flesh, dragging upward and winding around both forearms. Scraping blunt nails over indentations and shallow cuts. Hair ripped from its follicles and left raw and stinging, his touch merely amplifying the sensation.
And I welcome it all with relief. With aching loss and searing loneliness.
Tobias continues to engulf me in the feeling of his touch after so long without. And in the back of my mind, in the form of a small, incandescent flicker, something tells me this is his plan. To manipulate and exploit to get what he wants. To usemeagainst me.
And I…
