“Don’t act out Rain or you’ll be punished.”
“No one will adopt you with that temper, Rain.”
“If you sass me one more time, Rain, you’re going back to the orphanage.”
“Nobody will ever love an angry little girl, Rain.”
Angry little girl.
Angry little girl.
The admonishment echoed through my brain. My anxiety disorder manifested out of a childhood spent hiding who I really was. Hiding my hatred and frustration at the unfairness that was my shitty life. I buried it deep, so deep that most of the time I could pretend it wasn’t there.
Not anymore.
I was finally the person I was always meant to be.
I was wrath and rage. I was violence personified.
Planting my hands on my father’s bare chest, I let him feel every bit of my fury. My flames burned hotter as he screamed, and I reveled in the sound.
He was the reason I grew up in poverty.
He was the reason I had been abused and scarred.
He was the reason my mother was dead.
My hands begin to sink into his chest as layers of skin and muscle melted beneath my touch.
“Why?!” I screamed. “Why did she run? What did she overhear?”
I let up on the pressure, allowing his magic to struggle in its attempt to repair the scorched muscles of his chest.
“Tell me,” I hissed, bending down close to his face.
“The truth,” he whispered through clenched teeth. “She learned the truth.”
I leaned even closer, allowing my flaming wings to curl around me so they snapped and popped in his face. “And what is thetruth?” I growled, not even recognizing my own voice. “What did my mother learn?”
“She learned… she learned that you won’t survive it,” he confessed, his voice a pathetic whimper as my flames continued to lick at his skin. “There was a part of the prophecy I kept hidden. It says that when you go to pull the ley lines apart, it will take all of your magic to restore them. It will drain you completely and… It will kill you, Raynella. That is why your mother took you and fled.”
I reeled back as if I had been slapped in the face.
I was robbed of a mother who cared about me enough to sacrifice her life for my own.
Because of my father, I had been denied a lifetime of warm hugs. A lifetime of bedtime stories. A lifetime of comforting words when I was sad and encouragement when I was nervous.
I had been denied a lifetime oflove.
I plunged my hands back into my father's chest, letting my fire devour his flesh. Deeper, I pushed my flames. I would hold his beating heart in my hands and watch it turn to ash.
He struggled against my grip, and it only made me press harder. I let his screams wash over me, delighting in his anguish. Finally, he would know what it felt like to suffer.
A wave of cold water crashed over my head, and I cried out as the deluge swept me across the rooftop and slammed me into the wall.
Sin stood with his back to the ocean, his hands upturned, and a massive wave suspended behind him.
“I can’t let you do this, Rain. I can’t let you kill him. There’s still so much that you don’t understand.”
