Page 59 of Devoured
His fingers closed over mine, burning the wound shut before I could choose to bleed.
Even that small agency was stolen from me. “Let me bleed,”I said. “Let me choose something. Anything.”
He released my hand and stepped back.
The wound was sealed, leaving only a thin white scar to mark where I’d tried to take control of my own suffering.
“I need to die.”I said steadily. Calmly.
Like I was asking for a glass of water instead of begging for oblivion.
“Kill me. Please.”
Theo’s words echoed in my head. All the cruel things he’d said about my body, my worth, my broken places. But he’d been wrong about so much. Wrong about me being worthless because I couldn’t give him children. Wrong about me being ugly because I wasn’t thin. Wrong about me being weak because I took his abuse.
This was different. This was true.
I was exactly as worthless as I felt.
“You were right,”I said to the empty air where Theo’s ghost sometimes appeared.
“About everything.
I am disgusting. I am broken. I am exactly the kind of woman who would spread her legs for a monster.”
The Executioner made a sound that might have been disagreement.
Or maybe just steam escaping from his metal helmet.
Marion had gotten hurt protecting me, believing I was worth something. What would she think if she could see me now? She’d sacrificed herself for a woman who wasn’t worth saving. Who wasn’t worth the pain she’d endured. Marion had seen something in me that didn’t exist. Hope where there was only emptiness. Strength where there was only weakness.
I crawled toward him on hands and knees across the stone floor. The rough surface scraped my palms raw, but the pain felt clean compared to everything else.
“Everyone thinks I’m worth saving,”I said, “but they don’t know what I am.”
He stood motionless as I approached, then stepped back when I reached for him from my place on the ground.
The rejection sent fresh shame spiraling through my chest. But I followed him anyway, still on my knees.
When I caught up, I grabbed onto his leg and pressed my face against the leather covering his calf.
“I came for you. You turn people into furniture, and I came on your fingers.”My words were muffled against him, but I knew he heard. Felt the way his body went still. His hand came down and touched my hair. Gently. Like I was something fragile.
But I grabbed his hand and pulled it down to my throat, wrapping his fingers around my neck.
They circled it completely, thumb and pinkie overlapping.
“Do it,”I whispered. “End it. I can’t live being this.”
His grip didn’t tighten. Just held.
The pressure was there but not painful.
“There’s a difference between surviving and choosing,”I said. “Between enduring and embracing. Varnar forced me to come, and I survived it. You touched me, and I chose it. That’s so much worse.”
I stood up on shaky legs from where I’d been at his feet. The Executioner remained standing, towering over me. The world tilted. I started to fall. He caught me before I hit the floor.
In one smooth motion, he lowered himself to sit on the ground and pulled me down with him. I ended up in his lap, facing him, straddling his thighs, my chest pressed against his.
