You remember, a time that could have been days or months or years ago, a quote that someone rattled off in the midst of an argument in fifth-period literature, pretentious and emboldened by pretty words that sounded impactful - that we die not once but twice, our death defined not by our body returning to the dust from which it was made, but by the final time our name passes someone's lips.
You always thought it was melodramatic.
And then it happened to you - the sort of punishing spiritual death that could only befall someone as karmically cursed as you, a deep agony worse than what any physical pain could ever promise. Perhaps it is a third form of death - a special sort of demise reserved solely for those condemned to eternity in Cocytus, paying penance for betraying those held most sacred.
Your time in the ninth circle begins the morning that Sam arrives at your two-storey weatherboard house, shirtless and sweaty and trembling like a leaf. It happens when he squeezes out the terrible words through suddenly unfamiliar lips, when he tells you that he no longer loves you, as if the three years you spent in his arms were but a dream.
Your heart breaks, sure, but your torment holds nary a candle to the incandescent rage that burns within you when you see his arm wrapped around Emily Young, cradling your cousin the way he once cradled you.
And sure, you begin to lust for her downfall, praying that she will one day feel anguish equal to your hurt, wishing for the emerald ring that once hugged your finger to fall from hers. The anger powers you, gives you a purpose to continue fighting your way through the long days on the peninsula, until the phone call shatters your peace and your resolve and shakes your morality.
Emily has suffered grievous injuries, potentially incompatible with life.
Sam, having stumbled upon her mutilated and maimed frame, is inconsolable with guilt and grief.
You love your cousin, and though you outwardly profess forgiveness and sympathy in the wake of her tragic accident, even taking her a home-baked basket of apricot-almond muffins that her malformed mouth cannot take in, you know.
This is your doing.
You wished for her undoing, but it is you that is made undone; in living in La Push, in seeing Emily, there will be no escape from the knowledge that the universe reared its ugly head to receive her blood by your will. The sands of First Beach are stained with her ichor, and your conscience carries the indelible blemish of what you have done.
Your soul grows gnarled and thorny when you begin planning your own demise, postulating how best to dispose of your physical body. Melting into the waters of the Pacific, perishing in the towering firs of the Hoh - anything would be better than existence in a world that perpetually reminds you of what you have lost. Emily may have committed the original sin, but you bury the hatchet deeper every day, and such treachery cannot be so easily relieved.
Not even your own expiration is within your hands: the power is stolen from you on the day that you first phase, shedding your skin and slaughtering your father in one fell swoop.
That balmy Spring day is the day you truly die; Sam invades your brain, infests your soul, forcing you under his thumb from now until the end of your existence. Some irretrievable spark is lost on the day that your soul is exactingly laid bare, your secrets unfurled like a white flag of surrender. He trawls through flashes of joy and woe as if he were physically present in each moment, floating alongside as you are forced to relive the nights spent crying alone in the bathtub, half-drunk and self-flagellating with toxic liquor pulsing through your veins. He is inundated with the noxious vitriol you cast upon Emily's name, the perverse pleasure you felt for a single split-second when you heard of her maiming. And perhaps that is the truest punishment you will ever experience - being forced to revisit the abominable memories again and again until his curiosity is sated, until your spirit is inordinately subdued with the crushing weight of his judgement.
When your day comes, you will welcome the icy waters of Cocytus.
Until then, you make atonement to Emily with every breath.
Because you are Pack, and you are his.
And he does not want you.