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“With violence?” he questions.

“When necessary,” I exclaim.

“With kissing?” he bargains.

“When earned.”

His smile returns, smaller this time. Almost real.

“Fair.”

Though none of this is fair. Not what happened to Olive. Not what happened to Edward and Alcott. Not what grief did to me and the fact that I have fallen in love with a woman made of ashes, a man made of guilt, and another made of fractured brilliance, and the darkness that crawled out of him to survive it. Tomorrow, when the sun rises over a house full of wounded people trying to remember how to live, we will choose to continue to love and live.

45. The Right to Be Furious – Olive

The Hell I Overcame

For two days, Darkness lets me hit him. Sometimes my fist barely lands before I recoil as if I have struck flames. At times I swing, miss, and stumble back with humiliation burning hotter than rage, or I cannot lift my hand at all. He never mocks that part; that is what surprises me most. Darkness usually mocks everything, from Edward’s brooding, Lazarus’s theatrics, Alcott’s lists, and my silences. The wallpaper, once, because he said it looked like something chosen by a woman who hated joy. But when I fail to strike him, he only waits. Infuriating creature. When I slap him across the face and immediately apologize. He looks offended, not because I hit him, but because I apologized.

“No,” he says.

My hand trembles at my side. “No, what?”

“No apology.”

“I hurt you.”

He smiles with Alcott’s mouth. “Barely.”

I hate him for that, so I hit him again. Harder. His head turns with the force of it and when he looks back, blood shines at the corner of his lip.

“There,” he says, “better.”

Alcott apologizes each time he returns to himself. Darkness does not, he stands before me in the old practice room beneath Lazarus’s manor, arms at his sides, face open to whatever fury I can manage.

“Again,” he says.

“I am tired.”

“Good. Hit me tired.”

“I hate you.”

“Excellent. Hit me hateful.”

“I am not your project.”

“No.” His eyes sharpen. “You are your own.”

That is when I strike him hardest, not because he deserves it. Though perhaps he does. That night, I sleep three hours without waking. The next day, I ask for a knife and Edward goes very still. I believe Lazarus stopped breathing, as Alcott closed his eyes while Darkness smiled.

“Small one first,” he says.

I hate that he understands and I hate that I am grateful. He places a plain knife on the table between us. Nothing ornate. Nothing hidden in a cane. No elegant Widow’s toy. A knife. A simple tool, I stare at it until my vision blurs. My hands do not move, as the room waits and no one speaks. Finally, I reach for it. My fingers close around the handle and the world does not end. My lungs continue, hand trembling, but the blade remains mine. Mine.

That word is enough to make me cry later, alone in my room, with Morrigan’s head resting heavily against my knee.

Mine.