Three Days Later

“What is this place?” I asked, looking around the sparse room.

A boxing bag hung solitary in the corner, almost menacing in the way it lingered above the ground without moving. The floor was slightly springy beneath my bare feet. A small fridge was on the other side of the room, a stack of towels beside it.

There were no windows.

Obviously, since we were underground.

It was after breakfast. Lukyan had told me our plan for the day had changed. Not that we really had plans for our days. He’d sit with me in the library while I worked, either working himself, reading, or fucking me.

There was no routine. There were no conversations about the elephant in the room: my inability to leave his rooms. There weren’t many conversations at all, actually. We didn’t need them.

But right then, in a basement room that was sparse and chilly, I needed some form of explanation.

Lukyan stepped forward. “This is where we’re going to start to train you,” he said, his fingers pressing into my hipbones.

“Train me for what?” I asked, ignoring the pleasure in my pain. “I’m not exactly competing in the Olympics anytime soon.”

His eyebrow rose at my dry tone. He enjoyed it, even if he didn’t betray it. Such things like humor couldn’t be enjoyed by big bad hit men. It was bad for their street cred.

“Violence,” he said.

“Violence?” I repeated. “The violence of what?”

“The violence of life. In the face of death,” he answered. “I’m going to train you so you can match it. So you can best it.”

His hand flew through the air before I rightly knew what was going on, my back slamming into the floor. It had felt soft, slightly springy to stand on. It was concrete to get body-slammed onto.

I tried to suck in air as the impact robbed me of it, panic running through my body like an electric shock.

I knew Lukyan hadn’t even put his full strength—heck, half his strength—into it. I knew this because I was only slightly winded, my back protesting. I wasn’t dead, or at the very least paralyzed.

“That. Wasn’t. Cool,” I croaked, his hand still at my throat, though it was loose enough to let my frantic gasps of air in and out of it.

His eyes were ice chips, no sympathy to be found in them. “I know you think you’ve got nothing left in you to fight.” He searched my eyes. “That you don’t want to. But I’m going to prove you wrong. Because I’m not having you more vulnerable than you need to be. Not going to let you continue to be the victim.”

“I’m not out in the world, in case you hadn’t noticed,” I said dryly. “So unless you plan on deciding to kill me once more, I don’t need to learn how to fight.”

Lukyan’s eyes shuttered as he wrenched both of us upward. “You’re not going to be trapped in your own cage forever, Elizabeth. That’s letting him win. Letting them all win. It’s being weak when I know you’re not.” He regarded me. “Just because you stay in here, shutting out the world, doesn’t mean the world is going to shut you out. It’s not going to respect the boundaries you’ve enforced. Not this world. Especially not my own. Danger knows no bounds, Elizabeth. Neither does death. It’ll come for you no matter where you hide. And you’re hiding.”

I knew what he was doing. He was taunting my anger, trying to tease it out.

“I’m not going to force you to take those first steps out into the world you’re so sure you can’t survive, but I’m going to make sure they happen,” he declared with certainty. “And so are you. So fucking fight. And don’t do it for me. Do it for yourself. You’re better than letting yourself rot in here.”

I squared my feet and narrowed my eyes at him. “I’ve got no other choice but to rot in here!” I yelled.

He circled me and I moved with him, not letting him move around me like I was helpless prey. “You know you have a choice. There’s always a choice,” he argued.

I let out a sound of frustration that sounded remarkably like a growl.

He darted forward, his fist flying with him. Again, I didn’t move away in time, so his knuckles smashed into my cheekbone.

White pain exploded in my vision, my teeth clashing together and sinking into my tongue. I tasted coppery blood.

My hand instinctively went to my cheek, my accusing gaze to Lukyan.

He didn’t blanche, didn’t even blink at my pain. “I’m not going to handle you like you’re going to break, Elizabeth,” he said. “You’re already broken. Whatever’s left in you isn’t going to break any more.” He continued to circle me. “So don’t think this is going to be easy because of what we have.”

His fist darted out and this time, despite my throbbing cheek and bruised emotions, I dodged it. His eyes flared with something resembling approval.

“I’m going to make this as hard as possible precisely because of what we have,” he said. “I’m not losing you.”

And then he punched me again, this time in my stomach.

I doubled over, my breakfast threatening to repeat itself. Again I realized, in some dim and detached part of me, that Lukyan was holding back. He was checking himself right before he made impact. It wasn’t even the pain that hurt me, that angered me. It was the impact itself. His lack of reluctance to strike me.

But this wasn’t like Christopher, who hit me to make me weaker. Lukyan was doing it to make me stronger. I knew that. It didn’t mean it still didn’t hurt. It almost hurt more.

I spat thick saliva tinged with blood at my feet and then straightened.

“Okay,” I croaked. “Let’s do this, then.”

His lips twitched into something resembling a grimace. Lukyan’s version of a smile.

So I let him hurt me.

I let myself fight back.

And it felt good.

* * *

Two Weeks Later

From then on, our days did turn into some warped, sick, brilliant routine. One that kept me excited for the next day, somehow anxious for the new discoveries I’d make, even when I’d been sure, after a year of being stuck inside a house, that there were no new discoveries to be made. Only old, decomposed, rotting memories to be trudged over.

But I was learning. About Lukyan.

About myself.

That I wasn’t as weak as I thought I was.

I was still covered in bruises. Over half of them were from the times I didn’t dodge Lukyan’s strikes. He was beginning to hold back less. Hurt me more.

But only because I was getting better.

Only because I could handle it.

It was a good feeling, the pain I knew I’d recover from.

A great feeling, in fact.

I was rolling up my yoga mat when I sensed it. Sensed the warmth and ice battling together on the nape of my neck with the force of his stare. It did something to me still, the sensation of his entire intense focus, even when I was merely feeling it. I wondered if it would fade away, like a photograph exposed to the sun. That thought brought about unease of whether this was going to last long enough to fade. Or whether it was going to burst into a supernova, burn away in the stark, intense reality of it all.

I put my mat away in the corner, deciding not to taunt myself with such things. At that moment at least. I had to steel myself before turning, inhale roughly, prepare myself for the absolute fullness that came with Lukyan’s gaze. The one I’d been so sure was removed from emotion, from humanity.

He was leaning against the doorjamb when I turned, unperturbed by the length of time it took me to give him my attention. He gave the impression he would’ve leaned there all day, waiting for the object of his attention to turn him into the object of hers. And that impression was right. He would have. Many times I’d been in this very room, stretching, so deep in my zone that I didn’t notice he was watching until the end.

“I like watching you,” he said by explanation. “Watching you start to live instead of just exist. Watching you stop decomposing and start… evolving.”

But this time wasn’t that. There was something inscrutable about his face, something that caused unease to bloom in my stomach and crawl up my throat. I didn’t ask him what it was; that wasn’t how he worked. He spoke when he decided to. So I waited. I waited in the silence and the distance, despite the fact that I hadn’t seen him, hadn’t heard from him in three days, and my body itched to feel his once more.

Normally it didn’t bother me. The fact that we spent more time in silent contemplation of each other than we did conversing. Because we said more—discovered more—in those silences than we ever could have with words.

I also liked to look at him. There was no suit today, another strange thing. He wasn’t a man to lounge around the house in sweats and an old college tee. He was almost always in a sharply and expertly tailored suit. The only time he wasn’t was when he worked out, wearing sleek black sweats, or when he was in bed with me, when he wore nothing at all.

Today, he was wearing a smart and incredibly expensive-looking cable-knit black sweater, rolled up to the elbows. The veins of his forearms protruded through his skin, like they did right after he’d worked out.

His dark gray pants were closer to chinos than slacks, still tailored expertly, still matching his black leather shoes impeccably. Lukyan’s version of leisurewear, perhaps. But I doubted it. Lukyan did nothing for leisure.

But the length of time for him to speak was beginning to bother me, since I hadn’t seen him for days. We weren’t people for passionate reunions, but still.

“I got you something,” he said, eyes leaving mine only for a second to survey my black yoga pants and matching tank. I adopted his color scheme and was easing myself into exposing more skin, not being scared of my scars, starting to wear them instead of letting them wear me.

I tried to smirk. I was getting a little better at that too. “A present?”

He did not smirk. Or smile. I doubted he was physically able. But that didn’t bother me, that I didn’t make him happy. Lukyan didn’t want to be happy in his life. Neither did I.

“We can call it that,” he replied.

I tilted my head. “You got me a puppy?” I asked with a saccharine-sweet tone.

He tilted his own head in a rare demonstration of confusion. “A puppy?” he repeated. “No. I wasn’t aware you liked animals, that you wanted a pet.”

Despite my lack of ability to, I somehow smiled. It had a lot to do with the slight panic in his tone that he hadn’t gotten me what I wanted. “No, I don’t want a pet,” I said, stepping forward. “That was my lame and failing attempt at a joke.”

He watched me approach. I could almost see the logical gears turning in his head, examining my words and the sentiment behind them as he examined everything in life.

“Aha,” he said as I got to him, the word coming out like he’d just discovered his keys after searching for them for hours. “Humor,” he said, snatching my hips to stop me from approaching any farther. “I like it.”

I frowned at the distance between us, but Lukyan’s fingers stroked up and down the skin between my pants and the edge of my top, not letting go.

“This is not a puppy. This is… something else,” he hedged. His tone was still strong, confident, but his eyes betrayed something else. Something I couldn’t put my finger on but that filled me with dread.

Something beyond the simple and so very human trait of disappointment that my… whatever he was didn’t snatch me into his arms and kiss me silly after a long—or seemingly long, at least—absence.

But then again, that was the textbook, cliché, romance novel fantasy. Lukyan was no fantasy. In fact, he was closer to a nightmare. But he was mine. My reality. And I wanted to live a nightmare with him rather than dream of a fantasy alone.

“What is it?” I asked.

His fingers tightened at my hips. “It’s easier if you come with me.” Then he let me go and turned on his heel.

I followed him, because that’s what I did. I’d follow him to hell if we weren’t already there.

When we reached our destination, it turned out that there was some places worse than hell. And once there, you’ll face things worse than the Devil.

* * *

Lukyan

He was nervous.

He didn’t like that.

At all.

Lukyan didn’t get nervous. Nerves were for uncertain people who made risky decisions. He didn’t make decisions unless he was completely certain of the outcome, of his victory. That’s how he got to where he was.

He wasn’t nervous of the fact that he’d kidnapped and planned on killing one of the most powerful players in the underbelly of society. No, that didn’t bother him at all. Retribution might be looked for, with some kind of dramatic theatrics, but then vultures would gather over the power vacuum he’d created and battle to the death in order to get to the top.

That was the thing with those in the underbelly. No one was pretending to be human, and therefore life was just another currency. Death was the payoff.

No, he wasn’t worried about the consequences of his actions in regard to that. He was worried about Elizabeth’s reaction to his decision. Because now that he had her heart to think about, every decision he made was a risky one. There was never certainty of victory when Elizabeth was concerned.

“What is this, Lukyan?” she whispered after a silence as long as a lifetime. Her eyes were glued to the middle of the room, her jaw quivering only slightly. The rest of her was frozen.

He fought to keep his face impassive. Waited a beat until he knew he could match his voice to his expressions. “This is your husband.” He glanced to the man’s hands, missing three fingers from each. “Well, most of him, at least.”

She focused on the burned nubs. Lukyan had cauterized them because he didn’t want the fuck to do something as cowardly and easy as bleed out from superficial wounds.

Elizabeth inspected those wounds for a long time, even by Lukyan’s standards. She showed nothing on her face. That should’ve made him proud. He was training her for a world where expressions and the emotions they communicated could be the difference between life and death.

But he wasn’t.

She was turning into him, and he didn’t like to see absence of humanity on her face. He’d thought that was what he’d hated most about her, when he found it was actually what he loved the most.

“I thought you said you weren’t into torture,” she said conversationally. Her eyes had moved to focus on Lukyan. She was yet to make her gaze meet the widened and panicked look of her husband’s. He couldn’t talk, of course. He was gagged.

And Lukyan had cut his tongue off.

Words could be powerful. Sharper than any weapon. He wasn’t taking any chances of them puncturing Elizabeth’s skin.

“I’m not,” he said by answer.

She jerked her head to the spot occupied by her husband. “Christopher might disagree with you on that score.”

“I don’t give a fuck if he agrees with me or not,” he said sharply, unable to get a handle on his irritation, his desperation for something more than the cold reaction he was so sure he’d craved from her.

“This is my present, I’m assuming?” she asked, instead of addressing his tone.

He nodded once.

“Right,” she said.

Then she turned on her heel and walked calmly from the room.

Lukyan’s eyes followed her. As did her husband’s.

Lukyan didn’t like that gaze. He hated the fact Christopher had his eyes on her. That he had his marks on her. That no matter how many limbs Lukyan cut off, he couldn’t take that away.

But then again, of course he didn’t want to take that away. Because that would take Elizabeth away. She could only be his if she was scarred, damaged, broken.

Of course he couldn’t put her back together. He didn’t want to.

So why did his hands jerk with the urge to try?

* * *

Elizabeth

He didn’t find me immediately.

Didn’t chase me.

Which I considered a good thing, since I wasn’t likely to be responsible for my actions if he’d done so. It took a lot for me to turn my back and walk away like I did. Walk away and not unleash the violence a large part of me so urged to. Not against the man responsible for shattering me, for stripping apart the pieces integral to be a human. No, against the man who shared my bed. The man who might love me despite being only half human. The one who might only love me because I was half a human.

He found me in the dead room.

It was the only place I could go to escape. Not once before had the outside world seemed so tempting. Even with its possibilities of crushing me, it was almost preferable to the alternative.

Dealing with what sat in the middle of the basement.

What Lukyan had forced into this house.

I came here to be amongst the peace that only the dead could give in order to grasp some semblance of sense.

I watched him enter, and he stayed on the other side of the room. I didn’t move. Or speak. Neither did he.

We stared at each other. More accurately, I glared at him and he gazed at me with unflappable features. For once, I wasn’t the one waiting for the other to form the words.

Nor was I the one plagued with unease.

“Elizabeth,” he said.

I waited, because he likely expected me to interrupt. Maybe to explode. I expected that too, but my mouth stayed glued shut.

He let out a rough exhale that one could almost call a sigh. “You need to speak to me.”

I rose my brow, folding my arms. “Do I, Lukyan?” I asked blandly. “And why do I need to do that?”

He didn’t reply. I didn’t know if it was because, for once, he was at a loss for words, or if he wrongly considered my question to be rhetorical.

Lukyan was never wrong.

So I surmised he didn’t know what to say.

“What was your carefully organized out and logical plan for this?” I asked, not moving, not blinking. “I’m sure you didn’t leave or come back without an expectation for the events that would follow. You don’t take a breath without knowing the precise number of seconds your exhale will last for.”

Lukyan’s jaw ticked.

“So you expected what?” I demanded. “Me to thank you? Me to suddenly be cured of everything to see the man who took everything from me missing a couple of fingers and suddenly at my mercy?” I hissed. Then I laughed. “If only it was that easy. If only my brain was as uncomplicated and logical as yours was. If only my scars and my ugliness were responsive to wills and commands and the sight of death. Then it would all be so much easier, wouldn’t it? Less complicated,” I spat at him. “So, Lukyan, what do you want me to do? What happens next?”

He observed me, his eyes no longer blank; they sparkled with something resembling unease. Maybe even guilt. But demons weren’t capable of guilt. And I was under no illusion that Lukyan was anything but a demon. I couldn’t love anything else.

It didn’t mean he wouldn’t eventually ruin me. Even if it was just by making me a little more like him. Even if it was out of a desire to help me survive his brutal and ugly world.

“What happens next is death. You know that,” he said.

“You want me to watch you kill him?”

He shook his head. “I want you to do it yourself.”

I froze, gaping at him. “That’s what you think is going to happen here? That by turning me into a murderer I’m going to… what? Become stronger?”

“Yes,” he said simply. “Death is the one inevitable, certain thing in human life. Love. Happiness. Power. None of these things are guaranteed. Death is the one thing that has control over life. That defines it. I’m not going to let it define you.”

“Not letting death define me?” I repeated. “And killing is how I’m going to achieve that? I’m not doing that, Lukyan. Turning me into a monster isn’t going to change anything. I’ll still be the same broken thing. But I’ll just have a soul that’s a little bit darker.”

Lukyan stepped forward. “You’re either going to be a slave to your suffering or a servant of your revenge. Two choices. That’s all we’ve got. That hasn’t changed.”

I blinked at him. “Everything’s changed.”

He took another step forward, and even in the midst of my fury, my hatred for him, I couldn’t step back from the man I loved. Because you didn’t truly love someone until you hated them too.

“You’re going to stop suffering like the victim and start fighting like the monster,” he murmured. His hand brushed my jaw. “I’m not trying to turn you into a monster, zvezda moya. Not trying to damn your soul.” He paused. “Because it’s already damned. You know that. There’s no going back. So you need to go forward.”

“And killing is the only way forward?”

He regarded me. “For people like us, you know it is.”

“I don’t know anything,” I argued.

“You know me,” he challenged, surprising me with the opinion he was something that could be known.

“I know you least of all,” I said, my voice little more than a whisper.

“You know yourself least of all if you think you can’t do this,” he countered. Then he laid his lips on mine for half a second. And then he was gone. Leaving me to contemplate death amongst the beautiful corpses that no longer offered peace.

* * *

“It’s not as simple as he hurt me so I kill him. That’s not how life works,” I said, my first words after hours of silence in the dead room.

Lukyan was standing in the sitting room, gazing out at the infamous french doors. They didn’t bother me as much as they used to. Their view. Their taunts. Maybe I was imagining it, but they seemed to bother me less and less each day. Same with the foyer. In the days I was with Lukyan. When I wandered past them wearing his bruises, wearing the ghost of his touch, his brand.

The man I realized I loved more than I hated didn’t turn immediately at my voice, just continued to stare out the window. I wondered, not for the first time, what he was thinking. If he was wondering whether the world would always be outside my grasp, that if I was a prisoner here forever, then so was he. I wondered if that meant forever was a prison I’d likely stay in alone.

Probably.

Acid burned at my throat with the thought I’d been too stupid or too cowardly to grasp onto.

My sickness, my brokenness meant I wasn’t just going to lose the feeling of the brisk summer breeze, the crunch of autumn leaves against my shoes, the biting beauty of winter’s chill, watch new life bloom in spring.

There was all of that, which I hadn’t really considered a loss because I didn’t care about the life and death of the outside world when I was decaying inside. Now it was changing. Lukyan was changing that.

He turned, examining me and my face. “That’s exactly how life works, Elizabeth,” he said, not betraying any knowledge he might’ve gleaned from my face. “He didn’t just hurt you. He did something worse than that. Hurt implies some sort of healing. You haven’t healed. You won’t ever heal. He killed you as a person. Now you’re like me. I chose this life. You didn’t. So you’re not his wife, the woman he hurt. You’re Elizabeth. You’re you. The woman he killed. Now it’s time to return the favor.”

I chewed at my lip. “You’re telling me that I have two choices here, like I’ve always had. But I don’t think it counts when you’ve made decisions that have forced me to only have two choices.” I stared at him. “One, really, since I have to consider the fact that if I don’t spill blood, if I don’t become a murderer, I stop being yours. That’s the ultimatum here, right? You need me to be a monster too, so you’ve got company?” I vocalized the fear that pulsated through my body.

He didn’t answer for the longest time. “Solitude is not a sentence for me. Until recently, it was as close to paradise as someone like me is afforded.” He stepped forward. “Until recently,” he repeated. “You’re right, what you said about me collecting dead things because they couldn’t hurt me. So I could possess them at the same time as I control them. And I was happy to control the dead. The living were nothing to me. I didn’t want to tarnish myself with humanity’s shortcoming.”

“Shortcoming?” I asked, expecting him to—no, wanting him to cross the space between us despite my anger.

“Love,” he said, settling in his spot five feet from me.

If it was a challenge, it was not one I was going to lose. So I stayed planted in my spot.

“’Hell sent us the evilest disease, and we humans called it ‘love,’” he said, eyes running over me in much the same fashion as he observed his birds. “An author called Conny Cernik wrote that. A poet, actually. I despise poetry in all forms. Find it a waste of time, focusing on weak emotions and giving them power. Romanticizing them.” He took one step. “But this line, it stuck with me. Because that’s what love is. A disease. It kills more people than any other epidemic or war humanity has seen. Takes over lives, personalities, making them nothing but a mashed version of what they were. Overall, it makes them weak.”

He stepped forward again.

“I abhor weakness over all else. It’s been my goal in my existence to make sure I eradicate all my weakness. Exterior and interior.”

Another step forward.

“I’ve been successful, until now.”

I could taste the menace in his words, the danger to his stride, but I didn’t move.

“I don’t believe that what we have between us is going to be good for us,” he said. “Going to make us better people.”

He was almost at me now, and the sense of relief at his closeness was physical.

“But I’ve never been interested in being a better person, so that doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is how weak I am because of you.” He circled his hands lightly around my neck. “Your fragility is my own. Any time you break, it cracks me too, Elizabeth. Anyone who has hurt you, is hurting you, and will hurt you is my enemy.” His hand flexed as he leaned forward to brush his lips against mine. “That includes me. Because I know this love, me, I hurt you. You’ve told me about the darkness in your life, and I’m not going to be the light in it. I’ll drag you further down into the pit. I’m not telling you this to warn you off me, to scare you away. Because I know you won’t leave. I won’t let you leave. I’m just making sure that we’re clear on this, solnyshko.”

I circled his thick wrist with my fragile fingers. “We’re clear, Lukyan,” I said. “I’ve never been under the impression that you’ll save me. That you’ll light up my life. I’m not looking to escape darkness, as long as it’s your darkness. I was already damned, and I’ll face damnation with you. Our love may be an evil disease, but I’d rather let it kill me slowly than endure solitude for however long I’ve got left on this earth.”

He stared at me, whatever effect this little heart-to-heart was having over him little more than invisible. But he was touching me. And he’d just said he loved me, in his cold and calculated way. I didn’t expect more. I didn’t want more. Anything more, anything beautiful, would be artifice.

“You’re wrong,” he said.

I tilted my head in question.

“I will not leave you, nor will my feelings be altered in any way if you don’t kill him,” he said, referring to Christopher.

That was the only sign of his fury. Everything else about the way he spoke about him was even, uncaring. Except for the fact he never gave him a name. Never labeled him a person.

Oh, and the fact that he’d cut off his fingers and currently had him tied in the basement.

“Despite what you may think,” he continued, “I did not bring him here as some sort of… treatment for you. Nor did I bring him in here to ignite a cold sort of bloodlust within you. Lastly, I do not crave to turn you into a monster.” His hands went to my lips. “Because you can ignite your own bloodlust. Unleash your own monster. I merely wanted to contribute—albeit selfishly—to your… evolution.”

“My evolution?” I asked. “Into someone worthy of you?” Unease sprinkled my words and I hated it.

His jaw hardened. “No, you were worthy of me when you were on that bed trapped in your own nightmares.” His thumb trailed my jaw. “You were worthy of me when you opened your eyes. When you got out of that bed. Crawled back up to life, the grave still stuck underneath your fingernails. You’d be worthy if you didn’t change an inch until the day you die.” The harshness of his tone and face didn’t suit the words, but it was the only way Lukyan could do this. “You’re changing into someone worthy of yourself. Who you know you are. Maybe it’s a monster. I hope it is.” His palm spanned my cheek. “In fact, I know it is. Whether or not you spill blood. And I think you want to. It’s your humanity that’s stopping you. You need to let that go. You don’t need that anymore.”

“You don’t think I need my humanity?” I scoffed.

He didn’t blanche. “The question is not whether I think you need it. Do you?”

* * *

“You know, there are many things worse than death,” I said, testing the weight of the object in my hands. The power. “People fear it so much it almost drives them crazy, trying to escape it. They think the absolute worst thing is to be taken from this world, leaving no mark but a rock sticking out of a pile of dirt.”

I walked forward, my steps measured, calm. Like my voice. I stopped in front of the chair.

“But that’s not the worst thing,” I said. “Being buried in the ground and becoming nothing more than a pile of bones amongst millions. Billions. More than that.”

I stared at the man who was once my husband. My tormentor. Then I looked over my shoulder. To the man standing in the corner, arms at his sides—not crossed because that betrayed weakness, unease—his face granite, eyes cold. The man I thought of as my murderer. The one I’d been so sure put the final nail in my coffin by yanking me out of it and forcing me to see the corpse I’d turned into.

The man I hated for killing me.

But you couldn’t kill something that was already dead.

I turned back to my husband. His eyes bulged with pain, with panic, with weakness. None of that cold, cruel sadism that had lurked in there. That arrogant kind of strength of a bully, of that boy torturing the butterfly, knowing they were harming something that would never hurt them back.

He was the man who killed me.

And I’d let him.

“You’re the butterfly now,” I said to him.

He didn’t have the presence of mind to look confused, of course.

But it didn’t matter.

I wasn’t saying any of this, doing any of this, for him. Or even for Lukyan. The man I hated. The monster I loved.

No, this was for me.

For the daughter I never named because it hurt too much to put a label on the last broken piece of myself I’d let be chiseled off.

“There are a lot of things worse than death,” I continued, my voice cold, unrecognizable.

But I liked it. I liked the weight of the gun in my hand, liked the sweat and blood and excrement covering the man who thought power and pain were his right. Lukyan was right, this was who I was. The monster I was afraid to be.

“I could educate you on them,” I said, pressing the barrel of the gun between his legs.

Christopher’s moans were muted by his gag, but that didn’t mean they weren’t music to my ears. I smiled, leaving the gun there for a few long satisfying moments.

Then I released it.

“But that would be giving you something you don’t deserve,” I said, lifting the gun. “Another second of my time.”

The roar of the gunshot echoed through the room, and the recoil painfully vibrated all the bones in my arm and shoulder. I watched the wound the bullet had created expel blood, the last of Christopher’s life and whatever had been left of my humanity.

If it had even been there at all.