Page 82 of Devour
Your brooding is incessant.
I sigh.“You would brood too if you were in my shoes.”
Mavros huffs.Thank the gods I needn’t wear those horrid things.
I sit up and rub my sore shoulder.
You need your strength if you intend to keep her.
I close my eyes. I need my darkness too.
She is not what I expected.
I roll my eyes. Of course she’s not. This world was made to suffocate everything bright and good. She’s scared and lost. But that light is still there.
I pull a tiny black flower from my pocket and twist it around in my fingers. I imagine the velvety soft petal is her skin. Just one touch would be heaven.
She told me not to touch her.
She doesn’t know?—
I shake my head. It wouldn’t matter. I am exactly what she thinks I am. My motives will not change anything.
I place the flower back in my pocket to be squished even more. Will she survive this place? Probably not. But I’ll give her every second I’m able. One day, we will fall together, and I will pray on every god that ever has existed that when we are reborn, it’s in a world that could facilitate such a love.
Hopeless romantics are not long for this world.
And yet, here I am.
Sleep. I will keep you safe.
My aching heart is warmed at his words.I curl up against his too hard hide and close my eyes, imagining the world in which she could be mine.
Astella
This world is rotten.
I wrinkle my nose at every turn, at the scent of decay. Plants, animals, humans, hope. All of it dead and gone.
Anyone can see the rotting in the forest and the desert, but they believe if they run fast enough, they’ll be free of death’s curse.
No one else sees the darkness that swirls in the air. It hisses at me. It chases us, sending new and worsening plagues to ensure no life remains.
Lina did not see the curse. She saw life in between the death. She made me believe it sometimes too. She saw life in me when I had given up.
She is the reason I haven’t given up again.
I did see it, that hope of our future life. Freedom. I meant it when I told her that. It was real. But what it will take to reach it?—
She won’t give up, though. So, neither will I.
I hold my chin high, knowing every moment I stand here is in defiance of that darkness. It wants to root out every ounce of humanity left in the world. Every drop of magic.
And I won’t let it.
Once, I’d been hopeless too. When I shook the lifeless corpses of my parents, I sobbed over their bodies for hours. That was the death of my old life, and I couldn’t see a new one.
I was in the pitch black. Dropped into an abyss that was impossible to escape.
