Page 82 of A Match Made in Hell
There has to besomethinghere I can use to get him off her.
A flash of silver catches my eye. Lying in the dirt is a dagger I swear wasn’t there before. I rush towards it, grabbing it like it’s my salvation. It’s a good, solid weight in my hand.
Aric smiles.
I smile back.
He drops Harper to the floor, where she gasps before passing out. I don’t glance her way. I can’t. Saving her shouldn’t be my priority, but it’s all I can think about.
All I ever wanted was to be proud of you.
My palm clenches and unclenches around the knife.
Sometimes bad things just happen.
Letting Aric hurt Harper would be bad. Breaking my promise to Mum would be bad.
Indecision takes root.
‘Should I kill you now,’ Aric muses, ‘or let you watch what I do to her? Maybe I’ll pin you up and let you see the gates get unleashed.’
‘Those gates are not opening.’
‘Oh, but they will.’ Aric’s tail scratches a deep cut down Harper’s leg. ‘There are things in motion you couldn’t begin to understand. The gates open tonight.’
No.
I have to warn Sath. Whatever the demons are planning, Aric seems confident it’ll work, his shoulders stretched back and his head cocked to one side. The thought of what’ll happen toeveryone here has that anger simmering inside me bubbling into something more, something that has me baring my teeth at him. My skin is slick with sweat, which only makes me grip the dagger tighter.
Why do the demons get to decide our future, just because it’s whattheywant? Why should anyone get to dictate someone else’s life? It’s not fair.
Cracks splinter across the metal cuffing my wrist. Aric growls.
But isn’t that exactly what she did to me? Mum. She tried to pour me into a mould that didn’t fit and blamed me when she got burned by the spill. And I let her. For so long, I let her.
I’m not sure that was fair either.
Perfection is impossible. I saw that during sloth. I could have done everything she asked and I still would have ended up here. Going back won’t change that.
So, what am I going back for?
Aric bares his teeth while my bracelet squeezes and squeezes, as if to sayyou’re being ridiculous, Willow.
It’s not ridiculous to say I’ve been happier in Asphodel than I ever was on Earth. It’s the truth. And I’ve been too afraid to admit it out of fear for what could happen, fear I’ll screw everything up here the way I screwed up there.
The bracelet pinches tighter, but the warning doesn’t work. One of the reasons I’ve been happier here is because I’ve beenmehere. Maybe my constant screw-ups were because I wasn’t being true to myself; because I was never going to fit in to the life Mum wanted, the same way this damn bracelet is always going to be the wrong size. Because it’s notright.
‘Are you thinking about how beautiful it will be?’ Aric says. ‘A sea of blood. I will drink for days, while the humans watch from cages made of their brethren’s bones.’ He runs a tongue over his canines. ‘And then I will taste them too.’
I won’t let him do this. I refuse. I don’t want to go home andpunch numbers into a computer because of a promise I made in the depths of despair. I want to save Harper and the humans. People who’ve accepted me, welcomed me, who put a smile I barely recognised on my face because it had been so long since I’d seen it. They’re worth saving, and I want to be the kind of person who saves them.
And I want to kill Aric.
Not because I’m snapping, or throwing a tantrum, choosing to throw anything away. I could walk out right now. I know I could. I just don’t want to. The only thing I’m discarding is the pressure to be something I’m not – and if Mum can’t be proud of me for that, maybe Sath had a point. That’s onher. I quit that course to make myself happy. Sometimes bad decisions lead to good things, and we have a lifetime to balance them out.
My bracelet digs in more than ever, like it wants to burrow into my skin and hold me hostage in its grasp, tightening and tightening until I can’t see where the metal ends and my skin begins – I grit my teeth, hissing through the pain, trying to claw it off, to thrust my fingers beneath the cuff and prise it from my flesh, but it doesn’t stop, won’t stop; tears leak from my eyes and a cry escapes my throat as I finally push my index finger beneath the band, wrenching it upwards, pulling itoff, I want it gone along with everything it represents –
And then it snaps in two.
