My soul is spiraling. Because…I thought I could show them the monsters inside me.
But people like me don’t get rescued. We don’t get claimed. We don’t get to be someone’s. We’re just the latest in a long line of broken things they’ll bury and replace.
It’s easier to believe they’ll forget me than to hope they won’t.
I’ll get over this. I’ll collect all the pretty, broken little pieces and make my heart swallow them. It can bleed more. It can take more cuts. And more scars.
Would anyone care if I disappeared?
I press the thought down like a wound I refuse to acknowledge. Of course they wouldn’t. Raphael was already moving on. He will just wait for the next lost girl who could become their true queen, a sharper, stronger one. Jude would scowl and call it a waste, Vincent would grunt a good riddance, Seth would crack some hollow joke, and Rory…well, he never wanted me there anyway.
It’s what they do, isn’t it? Break them down. Build them up. Make them belong, just long enough to matter.
Then watch them fall.
I’ve always been good at falling. And running.
But for once, I thought I might be able tostoprunning. To stop hiding. To let them see the parts Easthaven couldn’t burn out of me.
Instead, here I am, doing what I do best—breaking things and leaving, running, hiding.
Because I don’t believe I deserve any of it. Not strength. Not belonging. Not them.
If I surrender, what’s left of me?
A sick, shivering part of me still wants to crawl back, battered and bleeding, and ask to stay. But I can’t. Not when I still feel the cold metal of the restraints in Easthaven. Not when the memories flood back. A sharp crack of thunder shudders through me, dragging me back to another stormy night…
Oh, dear god in heaven who isn’t even listening!
The way they would come in the dead of night, wrench open my cell door, hold me down, strip me bare like I wasn’t a person at all. Every time I so much as whispered, the fire and ice joltwould come.My body would seize, my throat closing around a scream that couldn’t escape.
Don’t speak. Don’t breathe. Don’t exist.
And then the paralytic—locking me in, fully aware, unable to move, unable to scream, when the Prophet…I felt every inch of him.
I stagger against a tree, the memory slicing through me. I was nothing there. They made sure I knew I was nothing. Less than nothing. Butthey…they never took my soul, however shattered it was.
I told myself once: if I ever got out, no one would ever have that power again. And yet…
Raphael didn’t take my soul.
Jude didn’t take my broken heart.
Vincent didn’t take my fight.
Rory didn’t take my fire.
Seth didn’t take my shadows.
In that dungeon in the mine, they didn’t see a broken girl in chains. They wanted me to survive. And after…
Raphael gave me choices. He gave me his strength.
Jude caught me when I splintered and held me when my heart couldn’t stop shaking.
Vincent treated me like something worth protecting, something worth fighting for.
Seth wanted to join me in the shadows.
