I’d expected a war. I’d expected pain.
I hadn’t expected the circle to use my worst memories against me, to make me face the fingerprint-shaped bruises on the thighs of my childhood self.
I sobbed, gasping for air as shadowy tendrils grabbed me by the arms, flipping me over and pinning me to the dirt. My legs thrashed, a fight I remembered all too well, moving my muscles as the girl came to stand before me. She was perfectly calm as she looked down at me, an empty shell of a child where joy should have been. “You let him touch me,” she said, swiping her hand through the air.
A shadow followed her motion, slicing through my thigh so sharply I screamed in pain. I stared down at it, the deep gash to the muscle of my leg where her bruises had been. It disappeared from her body as others emerged, covering her form by the markers of years of abuse.
“No, I didn’t. I swear,” I said, pleading with her to see reason. I hadn’t let him do anything, hadn’t wanted him to come to my room at night.
She vanished from my sight as the shadows surrounded me, cutting into my skin in every place I’d ever hurt. Marking me with each bruise, bleeding me and reopening those wounds allover again. I whimpered through the pain, but it wasn’t the sharp pain of open wounds I felt. It was the dull throb of bruising hands, of fists and violence that had made me hate myself.
“I’m sorry!” I screamed, my fingers breaking beneath the force of a boot. “I’m so sorry.”
“You became everything we hate. You became a monster just like him,” the child’s voice said, soft and smooth and unmarred by the emotion threatening to consume me. I couldn’t breathe through the weight of the shadows, so like the weight that had covered me, making me feel like I might be better off buried alive.
“I’m not like him,” I protested, shaking my head as those shadowed hands clawed at my skin, tearing my bicep open and letting my blood soak the ground beneath me.
“You can’t control it forever, and then what will you be? Another rapist, taking what isn’t yours from those who wouldn’t give it if not for your magic?”
I couldn’t deny the warning, couldn’t shove away the knowledge that it would happen one day. They’d all warned me what the consequences of withholding would be, and I’d be ready to end it before that time could come.
The girl knew that resignation, knew the choice I’d made when I was barely older than her. I would never allow myself to be like him, never let it get that far.
The shadows circled back, retreating as the girl stepped closer. I fought my way to my feet, wheezing through the pain as fresh blood pumped onto the floor. Something glimmered in her hand, sparking in the light from the mirror behind her. I stood before her, towering over her small frame as she raised her hand and opened her palm, revealing the jagged shard of glass she held within.
I shook my head, already knowing where this path led. “It’s time,” she said, her voice softening as I took a step back. “This is how you make it right. This is how you fix what you’ve become. You save all the people you’ll hurt if you end it.”
I reached out with trembling fingers, taking the piece of glass from her hand. It cut into the wound on my palm, reminding me of the archdemon who’d said he would be with me.
But he wasn’t. He’d left me alone, left me to face this demon on my own.
I raised the glass to my throat, pressing it against the carotid artery that would offer me a quick death. A mercy I didn’t deserve for what I was, and I stared at that little girl who had lost everything.
The one Itan had taken everything from. Her mahogany eyes were warm and familiar as she watched me, filled with sympathy and understanding.
I remembered her vividly in my mind, but I wasn’t her anymore. I didn’t hate myself with the same visceral violence she did, didn’t want to die.
He didn’t get to take that from me, too.
“No,” I said, taking back my power with the word that hadn’t been heard. It hadn’t stopped him, but I knew it would stopthis.I stumbled back a step as my lungs filled with a sudden shock of air, cooling my too-warm insides as I dropped the glass to the ground. It shattered on impact, the vision of the girl fading away as she lunged for me in horror.
And it all faded away in a sudden shock of light, cutting through the darkness and surrounding me with warmth.
38
BEELZEBUB
Margot slept.
Her face was blank, as expressionless as the girl’s was in the pit. But whereas the girl had been filled with the emptiness that came from trauma, Margot seemed to have finally found a little bit of peace. She didn’t so much as twitch when I leaned forward in my chair beside her bed, sitting vigil until she awoke from the aftermath of the visions.
I wanted her to wake. Wanted her to know without a doubt that the violence of the Seventh Circle had fully released her from its grasp.
I ran a hand over her smooth, unscarred arm, remembering the way her flesh had torn open beneath the weight of her own self-hatred. The mirror served as a reflection for the worst of our violence, pitting us against our worst enemies. Whatever it was that drove that violence was what we faced in attempting to overcome, and I’d long had the sinking suspicion that it would be herself that Margot had to face.
I hadn’t been able to bear to tell her the truth, to tell her that she would need to face her own demons in order to reach the Ninth Circle. She’d already been so combative about coming with me because of her fear of the Second Circle. Telling her there was a chance that she might need to find a way to forgive herself would have doomed the mission from the start.
She’d have sat in her anxiety and fixated on it, letting it stew within her in a way that would have been far more detrimental to her mental health than just facing the challenge when it came.
