Page 79 of Raven's Dawn

Those eyes had once been so kind, so full of life, and now, I saw nothing behind them.

He didn’t speak. He only squeezed my throat with the force of a thousand suns, burning across my muscles, deep into my bones, aching and throbbing.

He didn’t need to speak. His eyes spoke what his mouth never could.

Those lips would whisper love, but those eyes screamed hate.

You couldn’t do this to someone you loved.

That’s what I thought as it’d happened all those years ago, too. When he showed at my door, apologizing, begging me to take him back, even as he’d done it, all I’d thought was, You couldn’t do this to someone you love.

He didn’t love me. I loved him, I loved him like a flower loved the sun, with such need, such yearn, that I knew I couldn’t live without him.

He made sure I knew that. That I was a flower, and he was my sun.

Yet, here I was. Pressed against a wall, his body flush with mine, dying beneath his fingers. Gasping for breath, swinging and flailing at the pain as everything darkened around the edges, pleading internally for a storm. Pleading for the darkness, because at least it wouldn’t hurt.

Nothing could hurt the way that hand around my throat did. The way those cold, dead eyes did.

Not because it was the worst pain I’d ever felt. Not because I wouldn’t recover from the bruise he’d left. Not even because I couldn’t breathe.

Because those eyes that once harbored such safety, such warmth, the hand that had once held mine so softly, so lovingly, was now strangling the life out of me.

There was no pain comparable to what I felt in that moment. Fearing and desiring the darkness at once. Wishing it for it, because the shame of living once it was over, when I had to look at myself in the mirror and acknowledge that I had let it come to this would be unbearable. Living with the fact, the truth, that I had let this man I loved so dearly get close enough to take it all from me, would be unbearable. Humiliating.

I let him do it. I let him drive me insane. I let myself wind up here, with his hand around my throat, gradually siphoning the life from me.

He almost had. He almost took my life. I’d loved him, and he almost took my life.

When the darkness came, though, it hurt just as badly as the light.

Because now that it was over, long in my past, I had to do just that.

I had to live with what I’d once called love.

I jolted forward.

A canopied bed. Fluffy pillows. The smell of flowers and honey. Graham’s obnoxious snoring beside me.

I was on the Fae Realm, sleeping in the palace of Queen Caeda. Graham was beside me. Ezra and Warren were a few doors down. They were my boyfriends, not him.

That was a memory. It wasn’t real. It had been, at one point, but it wasn’t anymore.

Andrew. That was his name. I met him at eighteen. I fell for him hard, and I fell for him fast.

I didn’t remember much of the relationship now. Maybe I’d blocked it out as a defense mechanism.

But I remembered that moment. The fight that led to it, not so much. It had something to do with him cheating on me. With whom, I didn’t remember.

I’d never forget that moment, however. When his hand was around my throat, when his eyes were so dead, when his teeth were gritted with such hate, and I couldn’t breathe.

More than anything, I wished I could forget it.

I never would, but I wished I could.

That man hadn’t crossed my mind in years. I hoped many more would pass before he did again.

But for tonight, I just had to remind myself. It was a memory. It wasn’t real, not anymore.

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