Page 2 of A Heart Of Bitter Poison
Fucking idiot.
And now I am alone. And hurt. And exhausted, and sore, and sick, and starving, and a thousand other horrible things. Yet, I’m still longing for it.
Like a dumbass.
“I love you dearly, but your choice in men is fucking appalling,” Ediye says, stroking my hair away from my bruised skin. “He is truly the worst of the lot.”
I narrow my eyes to slits and try to hiss, but no sound comes out. Another swell of sadness threatens to drown me in the absence of my voice. Not even ahiss. My voice that once steered ships onto rocks, that brought the most powerful men and women to their knees. It gave me joy, even when I had to hide the sound of it just to stay alive. It became something precious and rare and exquisite. Now it just… doesn’t exist. It’s been erased, even though I still hear the faint echo of it in my mind. But, like ink corrupted by water on a page, the edges are blurred and warped. The memory is not the same as the real thing.
Tears crest the edges of my eyes and I look away to the iron bars of the door.
“Oh babe. I am sorry. I’m so sorry.” Ediye casts her worried gaze across my forlorn, bruised face.
Without regular blood to feed on, the injuries from my super fun daily sessions with Gallus, torturer extraordinaire of the Shadow Realm, are no longer healing. Not that they do heal much anyway on the rare occasions when the Shadow Realm sees fit to toss me a bag of blood that’s been sitting around somewhere when it should be in afucking fridge. If it wasn’t for Ediye’s limited spells, I’d be little more than a fragile human on the brink of death. And even then, the magic-laden necklace the Reapers have locked around her throat gives her only enough power to keep me alive so Gallus can mete out more of his daily punishments.
“You do still love that Reaper of yours, don’t you,” Ediye says, her voice soft with kindness.
The crevice in my heart cracks open. Fresh pain seeps to the surface. I look further away from Ediye, trying to swallow the fire that closes my throat. Between the damage from Semyon’s silver injection, the ever-present hunger, and the swell of emotion, my throat seems to always be sore here. A headache blossoms, scratching at my skull. I rub my fingers along my temple, careful to avoid putting pressure on a crooked ring finger that still hasn’t healed from yesterday’s visit to Gallus.
He’s not my Reaper, Ediye. Not anymore.
Ediye leans down and places a kiss to the sheen of sweat that coats my brow. She wraps my pounding head in her embrace and rocks me gently, whispering a spell to ease the pain that scorches my brain like lightning.
“You’re the absolute worst in a breakup, you know that, right?
I nod.
She sighs.
Finally, Ediye takes pity on me. She clears her throat the same way she always does before she’s about to sing.
“When I was young, I never needed anyone, and making love was just for fun. Those days are gone...”
I hear the feet of our guard shift in irritation from outside the fortified door of our cage. The corners of my lips turn up ever so slightly.
“Living alone, I think of all the friends I’ve known, but when I dial the telephone, nobody’s home...”
The guard heaves an exasperated sigh.
Belt it out, you bad bitch. Give it all you’ve got, I sign, my little smile growing wider. Ediye’s eyes dance above me and she takes in a gulp of air that fills to the bottom of her lungs.
“ALL BY MYSELFFFFFF, DON’T WANNA BE, ALL BY MYSELFFFF, ANYMOOOOORE.”
“Stop that infernal singing!” the guard shouts.
“Make me, motherfucker!” she yells back. She sucks in another lungful of air as I quake with laughter on her lap. “ALLLLLLL BYYYYYY MYSELFFFF, DON’T WANNA BE, ALLLLLLL BYYYY MYSELFFFF, ANYMOOOOORE!!!”
The guard smashes his sword against the bars of the door in an off-beat percussion. But Ediye doesn’t stop. Not as her voice warbles around her fit of giggles, not as she veers purposely off-key. We laugh like disobedient children until tears stream down our faces. Ediye finishes the song and still we laugh, and when it finally dies away, we sit with fading smiles lingering in our faces.
You know you’re my best friend and I love you more than anyone, right?I sign, watching as her eyes glow with warmth.
“I know,” she says. “I love you too.”
When our smiles finally die away, Ediye whispers a spell into my skin and presses a kiss to my forehead. If I had a third eye, that’s where her lips would land. But my intuition clearly died somewhere along the way. That eye is blind. Or maybe it sees just fine, and I chose instead to stare into the shadows and convince myself that no harm ever came from the dark.
I was wrong.
As my thoughts descend into the abyss of my bleak reality and all the wrong choices that led me here, Ediye moves on to other songs, dabbing my sweaty skin with her disgusting rag. She runs her finger across my eyebrows and her voice softens until it’s a lullaby. And before long, I fall asleep.
