Page 1 of Blood

CHAPTER 1

VIOLET

To kill or not to kill?

That is the question—one that all the great scholars have pondered at some point in their lives.

The answer? Kill.

Always. Kill.

Mason is dead.

That thought tumbles around in my head like a tennis shoe in the washing machine, rattling and clanking and ricocheting off the sides of my skull.

Mason. Is. Dead.

Mason is dead.

I thought those words would gain new meaning after the one-hundredth time thinking them, but they remain as obsolete as every dead language.

Dead language.

Dead.

Mason.

Mason is dead.

The pain in my chest is like nothing I’ve ever experienced. I’m sure it would be significantly less painful to saw off my own arm and then whack myself in the face with it than dealing with this gnawing, all-consuming, indescribable grief.

Mason, a facet of my soul, my charming gorgon, my sunshine mate...is dead.

Murdered.

Yes, “murdered” is a better word.

“Dead” implies that he merely drifted off into an endless slumber. That he didn’t feel any pain or fear before he left this world for the next.

But “murdered” has much more sinister connotations.

Because Mason did feel pain when his own mother—well, the monster he believed to be his mother but was revealed to actually be my sort-of sister—stabbed him in the chest with a god-blessed dagger. He felt fear when he stared into the eyes of the one person who was supposed to love him unconditionally...and watched her face change and distort until she was entirely unrecognizable.

Dead.

Dead.

Dead.

I keep thinking that word’s definition will change, but it doesn’t. It’s like I’m trying to understand a foreign language I only studied once before. I know how to say “hello,” “goodbye,” and “fuck,” but that’s the extent of my knowledge. If anyone were to ask me my favorite color, I would have to answer with “fuck hello.”

Dead.

Dead.

Dead.

I don’t understand what that one elusive word means now. What it implies.

---