Page 11 of Monster's Obsessive Hunger
The accusation, so close to the truth and yet so utterly wrong, ignites a spark of anger in my chest. She thinks I am weak, that I am surrendering to my grief.
“I’m fine,” I bite out, the lie tasting like ash.
“No, you’re not!” Her voice rises, cracking with the force of her pent-up fear and frustration. “You are breaking, and you’re breaking my heart watching you do it! Whatever you thinkyou’re finding out there in the dark, it’s not Mother. It’s just your own sorrow, eating you alive!”
The spark of anger erupts into a wildfire. The years of her gentle pity, of the entire village’s suffocating sympathy, of being treated like a fragile, broken thing—it all comes pouring out. I slam my hands down on the table, the bowl rattling, stew sloshing over the side.
“At least something out there listens to me!” The words are a scream, torn from the deepest, most wounded part of my soul. They hang in the sudden, shocked silence of the room, a testament to the chasm that has opened between my sister and me. The look on Clara’s face—the stunned, deep hurt. But I cannot take the words back. They are the truest thing I have said in this house in years.
I don’t wait for her response. I flee. I run from the hurt in my sister’s eyes, from the stifling air of that kitchen, from the life that no longer fits me. I don’t grab my cloak, don’t stop for my boots. The splintery floorboards are cold beneath my bare feet as I throw open the door and run out into the night. The sharp stones of the path and the frozen mud of the street do nothing to slow me down. The physical pain is a welcome distraction, a sharp, clean feeling that cuts through the messy agony of my emotions.
I run with a reckless, desperate energy, my breath coming in ragged, sobbing gasps. I am not walking to the forest tonight; I am running to it. It is the only refuge I have left. The trees swallow me whole, their dark branches a familiar, comforting embrace. I crash through the underbrush, not caring about the branches that claw at my tunic and my skin. I am of the wild now, and this is my home.
I stumble into the clearing, my lungs burning, my feet numb and bleeding. And he is there. He is not a calm, waiting statue tonight. He is a predator, a caged storm. He paces, his bodya taut line of contained violence, his breath pluming in the frigid air in harsh, heavy bursts. His chest is a chaotic, unstable maelstrom of deep, angry red and a desperate, wanting purple. He is tormented.
He stops when he sees me, his skull-face snapping in my direction. His ashen vaults blaze with a wild, dangerous light. A low growl rumbles in his chest, not a greeting, but a warning.
“I shouldn’t let you be here,” he says.
He wants me to go. He wants to drive me away for my own safety. But I have just burned the last bridge to my old life. There is nowhere else for me to go. I am raw and hurting and so full of a defiant, reckless need that I feel I might shatter. I take a step toward him, into the circle of his torment, my bare feet sinking into the snow.
“Then make me leave,” I whisper, and the words are not a plea, but a challenge.
17
THORRIN
“Then make me leave.”
The challenge, whispered from her lips, is a spark thrown into the volatile atmosphere of my soul. It hangs in the frigid air between us, impossibly brave and catastrophically foolish. The air here, in my domain, has a taste. It is the taste of ancient stone, of pine resin, and the faint, metallic tang of blood spilled long ago. But now, it is overwhelmed by the scent of her. Not just the clean wool of her clothes, but the living, breathing reality of her—and the sharp, coppery note of blood from her torn feet. The scent is a physical thing, a hook that lodges deep in my gut, and it is pulling the beast to the surface.
The chaotic storm of red and purple churns, a violent vortex of hunger and a new, possessive desire that is rapidly eclipsing it. The light radiates a feverish, palpable heat, turning the snow at my feet to slush. Every instinct honed over a thousand years of solitude screams at me to act. The predator, a coiled thing of violence in my core, wants to lunge. It wants to close the distance, to throw her to the snow and stand over her, to show her the foolishness of challenging a creature whose rage cansplinter mountains. It is the instinct of a beast asserting its dominance.
But another part of me, the new, fragile thing that has begun to grow in her presence, wants to flee. It wants to turn and crash through the forest, to put miles of silent, lonely wilderness between us. It wants to protect her from the very beast she is so determined to confront. This new part of me understands that her bravery is a precious, fragile thing, and that the monster in me is the one thing most likely to shatter it. So I am trapped. Torn between the urge to claim her and the terror of destroying her.
I begin to pace the clearing, a caged thing wearing a trench in the snow. My claws are fully extended, scraping against the frozen earth with each agitated step. A growl builds in my chest, a low, continuous rumble of frustration aimed not at myself, but at the impossible, agonizing conflict she has awakened in me. I am a storm contained in a vessel of bone, and she is standing in the eye of it, daring the winds to tear her apart.
She does not retreat. While I am trapped in the violent currents of my own indecision, she makes a choice. She begins to walk toward me. My pacing ceases. I freeze, a statue of bone and disbelief, and watch her approach. Each step she takes is slow, deliberate. Her gaze is not fixed on my skull-face, not on the claws that could rip her to shreds, but on the chaotic, swirling light in my chest. She is not walking toward a monster to be slain or survived. She is walking toward a wound.
Her audacity is breathtaking. She closes the distance between us, her small, fragile form moving with a certainty that defies every law of nature. The predator does not allow the prey to approach. It is a violation of the ancient dance. Yet I cannot move. I am transfixed by her courage, by the sheer, suicidal bravery of her advance.
She stops directly in front of me. She is so close now that the air around her hums with the energy of her life, a stark contrast to the dead stillness that is my own. The storm intensifies, the light churning violently as her proximity overloads my senses. Then, she raises her hand. It trembles, but her purpose is clear. She is not reaching for the knife in her pocket. She is not raising a hand in defense. She is reaching forme.
Her palm comes to rest flat against my ribs, directly over the turbulent, glowing core of my being. The contact is an explosion. Not of pain, but of pure, unadulterated sensation. The chaotic, screaming static that is the constant background noise of my curse is suddenly, violently silenced. For a single, shocking instant, there is only peace. A profound, absolute quiet inside my own soul. My body convulses at the shock of it, a violent, involuntary shudder that rattles my very bones. A snarl rips from my throat torn from the depths of my being.
“Lyssa.”
I am on a razor’s edge. The touch is both a searing agony and a divine balm. Every instinct I possess is screaming. The predator screams to kill, to tear, to consume the source of this overwhelming feeling. The new, fragile thing she has awakened in me screams to cherish, to protect, to pull her close and never let her go. I am being ripped in two, and I can feel my control, my centuries of cold, hard restraint, splintering under the strain. I have to get away from her. I have to flee before one of the beasts inside me wins.
I am about to pull back, to stumble away into the darkness, when she speaks. Her voice is a soft whisper, but in the charged silence, it is as loud as a thunderclap.
“I trust you,” she says.
The words strike the final, fatal blow to my control.
“Even if I shouldn’t.”
Trust. She offers me trust. Now. When I am at my most monstrous, my most unstable, my most dangerous. When I am a hair's breadth away from tearing her apart. It is a gift so reckless, so profound, so utterly undeserved, that it breaks me. The war inside me ends. The predator and the protector, the hunger and the heart, they do not find balance. They merge into a single, overwhelming, all-consuming need.
