Prologue
He pulls me close, gently against his chest, and I go, protest dead in me like the bodies that surround the two of us.
I should rain my fists against his chest, claw at his cheeks, at least scream at him for things he says he has done for me, but I can't find my voice.
With a finger beneath my chin, he tilts my head up and I look at him through a red haze.
He's beautiful.
This monster of mine… he's so beautiful that he makes me ache for things I didn't know I could yearn for.
"I am here, Elena," He whispers as his nose ghosts along my cheek, lips following the trail almost absentmindedly.
I should push him away before shouting that he hurts me more than they ever do, that his red hands on my skin burn worse that their words ever could, but I don't say it.
I would be lying if I said all that, wouldn't I? I am only appeasing what morality is left in me, but he knows; he knows I don't care for the dead beneath my feet. I can't blame him for the carnage he leaves in his wake when it's all my doing, when he does it all for me. Sullies his hands and lets himself be stained garnet.
He tells me when the sun is sinking beyond the limitless sea and we sit at a rooftop in a corner of the world where roofs dip and rise gracefully like swans that I was raised by a man who had very precise ideas about right and wrong, black and white and maybe, just maybe the fit I throw when he goes on a rampage is my subconscious trying to remember things I can no longer recall.
I don't know how hurt I had been, how desperate to seek out a demon to relieve my pain.
I don't remember anything.
I don't remember how we met.
He tells me I was the one who summoned him when he's working out the tangles in my hair and brushing it to put it in a braid before I go to sleep. He tells me he fell in love the first time he chanced a look at my face.
He whispers in the dead of night when he thinks I am sleeping and won't hear him that he's sorry he couldn't save me before they tore me apart.
And I wonder what that means…
So, traditions need to be adhered to. Happy birthday, Eva. Little shit that I am, I am once again fantastically late with your story…
