Page 108 of A Song of Air
But she couldn’t bring herself to, so she hid it away. So much anger and so little to do with it.
Bryson slowly peeled herself away from Weylyn’s presence, but all he did was follow.
“Don’t back away from me now, little mate.” There was a malicious glee in his tone. He was enjoying this. The bright, golden hue of his eyes only brightened more as he crowded into her space. Even as she tripped back against the grass and lay there, he loomed over her and smiled that dangerous smile, his hair slipping over his shoulders to curtain them. “We were having so much fun, weren’t we?”
Her breathing grew labored. That anger wanted unleashed, but she kept a tight hold on it. “No,” she croaked.
“You think your family was so good, don’t you? You think they’d be ashamed that darkness lives inside you when only peace lived within them?”
“Weylyn,” she pleaded. She wanted him to stop. She needed him to stop. She was unable to face what he was saying. It felt like he was cleaving her apart from the inside out.
“Foolish little mate,” he scoffed down at her. “Darkness? Anger? Bitterness? Resentment? It lives in us all. It even lived in your precious family. You just don’t want to see it. You refuse to remember it. Because those are the only memories of them you have, and you don’t want them tainted.”
“Don’t talk about my family!”
He leaned up, his brows two slashing lines that curved with his disappointment. “Fine,” he conceded. “But there is no shame in darkness. There is no shame in wanting revenge on those who have wronged you.” He pushed away from her again, and this time when he spoke, his voice sounded far away as he started to leave. “Sometimes, it is the only thing any of us can hold on to.”
She didn’t move until she was sure he was gone. Until his footsteps had receded. Until she could no longer smell him in her nose, but he was cloying, crowded. He invaded her with his cruelty and that malicious smile and there was nothing to do to expel him from her system.
He was a menace, a cruel, terrible menace with no regard for anyone’s feelings but his own.
And yet he was right.
He wasright.
Tears burned the backs of her eyelids, and she pressed her fists against the scars, as if that could shove the emotion back down where it belonged. But it wouldn’t relent. She hated it. She hated him so much it ached. Her chest burned and she clawed at it like she could reach inside and grip the bond that tethered them only to tear it out from her being.
She didn’t want it; she didn’t want him. She didn’t want that truth haunting her because she’d tried so hard to keep it hidden. Now that it was out in the open, what did that make her?
What was Bryson if not loyal to her family and their memories?
What would she be if not what they told her what she had to be? Someone great. Someone who was meant to help. Someone who was meant to fight in the Seelie Court’s war? What was she if not everything they always told her she was supposed to be?
If she stripped herself down, she’d be left with nothing but fucking bones and rage. A hollow shell of a thing.
Because what would rage do for her? What had rage ever done for anybody in the world except leave it desolate and bare?
The rage was no good.
But... Weylyn was right, too.
Sometimes, it was the only thing anyone had within them. And for so long, all she’d done was tamp it down and live within the shadow of who her parents wanted her to be. So she held on. To it. To them. But now it felt like her grip was slipping and she was falling... falling...
She sighed and opened her eyes.
And she was met with the snarling face of a creature of bone and rage.
And Bryson opened her mouth to scream.
