Page 63 of The Sacrifice

Surrounded by nothing but darkness, I hug my arms to shield my chest as tremors reverberate through my body. Goosebumps erupt all over my body, but with every crawling motion, they fade. I whimper, but no tears fall. They can’t anymore. Too far from the Kings, too deep underground, I’m losing myself again. And becoming my past...

I curl up in the fetal position, hold my arms around my knees, and rock my little form back and forth. My body shakes. Not from the cold but from my failure. No matter how hard I pushed myself, no matter how much Pater forced me to cut myself to unleash my vym, it could not heal Rylinne. I lower my head to my chest as my lungs burn and blood roars in my eardrums with the force of thunder. What hurts more than these lines scrawled into my skin is knowing I can’t even give her my tears. I can’t cry for my oldest sister who has done her best to show me kindness, however detached from emotion. Nothing like Darya.

Too dark in this root cellar to see anything, and since I feel nothing but these cuts, I wonder if rats will nibble at the soles of my feet like they did last time. Or maybe the shadows will finally devour me, and I’ll be buried inside a dark womb forever. Tremors rupture inside me from the prison of my fear of becoming nothing and no one just as he tells me every day.

You are nothing. Gray girl. Gray bitch. Gray whore. Nothing but gray.

I slam my hands over my ears and try to block out the memory of my past. Violently shake my head because I am not the gray girl anymore. But the black endless hollow taunts me and licks my spine to pulse icy fear into my nerves. Aware of how my hands tremble, I stretch them to the sides but only get the vaguest sense of pressure. The walls are too close. Pain splinters my lungs like broken glass shards have lodged there, bleeding them and restricting my air. I can’t swallow past the tightening of my throat.

All of me is fading. Becoming gray and hollow as an echo. An echo of a ghost. Not even a scrap of a half ghost. I clutch my throat, clawing and knowing I’m breaking skin when my fingers come back bloody. Worse than the icy grip of death or the flaming claws of torture, I’m returning to limbo, wondering if I’ll be stuck forever.

"Gray..."

I jerk my head to the side in the direction of the whispering voice. And shake my head, squeezing my eyes shut, trying to deny it.

"Gray," repeats the voice, louder this time, rich and smoky and hypnotic. Now, I understand. This is the entrance to the Hag’s lair. Her dark magic, her curse is woven into the very air smothering me. Like the labyrinth of thorns, but these are emotional, spiritual.

I choke on a sob as the voice creeps into the fabric of my being and makes a bed in my heart. It doesn’t cut. It doesn’t bleed me. It doesn’t need to. With every word and every image storming my mind, her power rips away at the organ one delicate string at a time.

The Hag’s power forms a silhouette to drift before me. “A crying mother holds a newborn corpse. Blood stains the roots of the Wailing trees around her. The other babe breathes but does not cry.”

“Stop!” I cry out and lash at the figure, but she has all the substance of a figment of my imagination.

“You were a failure while you still slumbered in your mother’s womb...”

On my hands and knees, I crawl and close my eyes, but the images invade my vision all the same. My body shudders from the shame.

Twenty years ago, on Hollow Night, I see my mother cradling her swollen womb, fleeing to the Wailing Woods. Blood drips down her legs, attracting more monsters. But Kronos is the monster who sends all others running. He helps her give birth...for a price. He pulls the twin souls from the womb, turns them over, examines them as if they are mere objects. Pleased with Qora’s, he devours her soul, savoring, breathing her essence.

Within minutes, my mother’s tears mix with the blood as she gives birth to a dead babe. And holds my twin’s lifeless body. Ache after ache tortures my throat when Kronos smiles, claiming half my soul to store it in a gray bottle, pocketing it like a bauble.

“Your soul was too weak to satisfy the god-eater,” another sultry whisper invades my ears, but it becomes shackles to imprison me. A grave to bury me.

“You could not heal your sister. Your blood and scars were never enough. You were not strong enough to help your dragon.”

The words bruise me so deeply, they form scars beyond my bones. A rush of desperate adrenaline drives my body into a panic, and I seize, throwing my body against the dirt and stones of the walls around me. Careless if I break or batter something.

“Never enough, isn’t that right, Quintessa? Not for your mother when you could never heal her grief, so she blamed you. Not for your father who could never hope to love a child who was neither living nor dead. Not for your sister whose scars you could never heal. You could never be enough for them."

One by one, the roots of all that I am snap. Every word she speaks numbs me. I breathe in the force of her power, this nothingness that cripples me until I’m curled into the fetal position. My hands wander across my body, but this hollow is all consuming. No pain to distract me. No pleasure to warm me. No scars I can feel. No ink I can see. No searing muscles, flawless beauty, serene and fallen blue eyes, or dark and depraved touches to my wrist to steady me. I can’t anchor myself with what I can see, smell, taste, hear, or feel.

No Shadow to taunt me.

“Gray bitch. Gray whore. Gray slut. Gray girl. Gray, gray, gray.”

The words echo like thunder in my ears until my very breath repeats them, memorizes them. Fear is not the cruelest weapon. It’s not pain or horror or loss. It’s time and space forgetting your existence. It’s this dereliction. This abandonment and silence, this gray nothing that eclipses all of me. The hole that fills the other half of my soul.

I become gray.

My scream is swallowed by the gray.

“You could never be enough. Not when you were unmade from birth. Not when you never should have existed. Suck the Shadow. Break the girl...” she repeats words she once spoke the first time we met in those woods.

Those last words. They trigger another memory. The same gray feeling but diminished exponentially. Powerful enough to send a jolt through my nerve endings. That’s when I begin to uncurl myself. Silence. Cold and eerie. Utterly alone with not one ghost to offer me company. How long have I been down here? Hours? Days? My thoughts herd together. My blood pulses. All I can hear are my delicate breaths. And the silent scream in my head.

“Gray. Gray. Gray!” she repeats, voice edging on desperation which pulses more strength through my limbs. I’m not unraveling. I’m not broken. I exist. While I still draw breath, I live and love and feel. Because I may be gray, but there are a million of gray within my spirit. Because I hold this truth closer than a scar. It’s a brand upon my heart. And it ignites with enough heat to light a fire within me. With every forward motion, I piece myself back together with flames, dragon scales, ash, and embers.

So, I plant my hands upon the dirt, nails digging in. I lift my head. Whisper their names aloud to give me courage. “Dragomir, Mayce, Kyan, Merikh.”

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