Raphael says nothing. Fucking nothing!
Curling up into a little ball with only one side of my face toward him, I spit my last shred of fight. “Finish it! Just finish me, damn you!”
“Do you want death, Briella?”
His words slice sharper than any blade ever could. The world narrows, shrinks down to that single question, hanging between us like a noose. And in this moment, I feel it—the bitter lie trying to claw up my throat. I want to scream yes. My body screams yes. But my soul is hanging on by a single thread. The single thread he’s left upon my head.
Whywhywhy?I need to know.
My head lowers. My hair falls in wet, tangled curtains around my face. “Rot in hell,” I whisper, broken. “All of you.”
It’s not defiance anymore. It’s the beginning of surrender.
The air shifts. Heavy. Strange. Like the earth just moved between us.
Raphael kneels beside me, his presence swallowing the cold. A gloved hand lifts my chin. I’m too tired to fight it, too far gone. His black eyes trap me, like they’re taking me to the precipice of the abyss inside him. He leaves me at the edge.
“Answer me.”
I shake my head, trembling. The world blurs and sharpens in turns, his face the only clear thing left.
“What do you want, my Queen?”
It shatters me. Unravels me. The question, the softness of it. The way it splits me open in places I’ve kept sealed for years.
You go back to your old scars, running from the monsters in your mind instead of surrendering to them. Find your home with them.
The home with the monsters standing above you.
“I want…” I almost sayyou.But that isn’t it.
“I want to be….”with you? But that’s not right either.
It’s more. It’s the thing that’s chased me since the first time I looked into his eyes.
“We are your skin, your flesh, your blood and bones. We are your soul matter.”
The memory from the dungeon slices through the storm like a shard of glass.
“We do not simply possess you. You are possessed by us.”
I tremble, lashes fluttering, my whole body aching, but I slowly lift my head.
“Here there be Gods. You have become divine.”
And when my lips finally move, the words slip like a secret as I fall over the precipice—and surrender to the all-eclipsing abyss.
“I want to be you.”
It’s barely a whisper, but I know he hears it. The grin fades into something quieter, almost reverent.
He drops his bow, lets it fall in the mud. His arms gather me up carefully despite the arrow still lodged in my leg, careful but unrelenting. A cry breaks loose from my throat at the pain, but he holds me steady and solid, like gravity.
I rise up, just like the goddess from that cave. But my scars, their scars,ourscars…they are my throne.
“Why?” I whimper into Raphael’s neck, burying my face in his hair, holding onto his warmth. The cap shifts slightly, nudging his jaw. “Why didn’t you take the hat?”
He pauses. Looks down. I look up, letting the splintering, throbbing pain fade to the resolution of my need.
