I was chained.Whoever had imprisoned me here really didn’t want me to get free.
If my brother were alive, I would have escaped in great part just to prove I could.Not only would I escape, I would hunt down my captor, stare the fucker in the eyes, sing,Last time you’ll underestimate me, huh?and then murder them for their daring criminality.
But my brother was forever gone, and the glowing flame in my chest was smothered ashes.
I closed my unseeing eyes and whimpered into the water, “Claim me, Heartbreak.You’ve done your worst.My heart is fully broken.End me now.”
When interminable minutes passed and Heartbreak did not kill me, I channeled the entirety of my loss and my rage and my considerable power into my words.No longer a warble, it was a fucking sonic boom:
“Come get me, you miserable, cruel, sadistic cunt!”
I waited.The demigods were notorious for taking offense at any little slight, and then for self-righteously smiting their offenders.
“Unless you think I’m too powerful for you!Unless you’re a fuckingcoward!”
I waited and waited.
My only response was more emptiness.
More darkness.
More cold.
I was well and truly alone.
Chapter2
Underestimate Me at Your Mortal Peril
On the whole, sänglures were strong.In a wide world teeming with magical creatures of all sorts, sänglures were some of the strongest.Definitely some of the deadliest.
But … just like everything else, we had our weaknesses.The most dangerous—for our prey, not us—was the bloodlust.
I’d never succumbed to it.But Teo had, once.He’d drained nearly a dozen people before I managed to reach through the haze that controlled him.By then the feeders were dead—reallydead—and Teo lived with the guilt of what he’d done every day.
Until now…
Teo was dead.
Dead.
I was so alone.
More than anything, I didn’t want to believe him dead.Didn’t change one single bit that I still felt his absence.Couldn’t help but.Couldn’t escape the feeling.The loss.
My surroundings blurred into a haze I scarcely registered.Much as when in the throes of bloodlust, my awareness flitted in and out.Only some of my thoughts were distinguishable.Though I was thoroughly crushed, Heartbreak kept right on tormenting me, squeezing my pulp of a heart until it couldn’t possibly beat another time.
Yet my heart did.
Every one of its beats was an utter and inescapable betrayal.Heartbreak was the worst of all the demigods.She had to be.If demigods were capable of dying, I hoped she ended up in the Igneuslands, where she could burn for a fucking eternity.I’d find her there and do whatever it took to be the one to stoke the flames of her personal pyre.
But I wouldn’thopeto get her there.I’d leave Hope out of it.
I’d always been more murderous than pious.Since Teo and I had been small, a time or two I’d been lauded as daring and courageous, but mostly I’d been insulted, called foolish and reckless.A menace—to certain individuals, or to society, or to the Opalese World at large.In truth, it had never been bravery for bravery’s sake, it had been doing what needed to be done, nothing more.
But even with my current death wish, calling out a demigod as a cunt had been borderline stupid.A demigod’s tentacles had major reach.Just ’cause Heartbreak hadn’t deigned to answer me didn’t mean she hadn’t heard.
Though if Teo was dead, nothing else really mattered, did it?
