Status Updates From Feathers So Vicious (La cou...

The gulf between what I yearned to believe and what I had come to expect from him seemed impossibly vast, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was teetering on the edge of a cliff, one misstep away from a fall that would shatter me beyond repair.

“Fated only to end in emotional tragedy.” His fingers stalled in my hair, and I only now noticed the slight tremble they carried. “As it should. As it ought to. Anything other than that, Galantia, would be too great a betrayal to my family, no matter my personal… affliction.” His personal affliction.

“A bracelet. The chain of aerymel, a local artisan crafted for me, but the trinkets I chose and gathered myself.” He lifted the bracelet from my palm, letting wood and bone clank against metal. “Show me your wrist. No, the other one.”

“Yeh ash valtem skalde ya.” Something deep at my core reveled at his word. “What does it mean?” “I will forever treasure you,” he said.

“Do you want to know what is worse than being forced to endure the most depraved acts?” Brisden looked down at where I’d wet myself, grinning. “Liking them.” And I knew then that it wasn’t urine the man forced from me. He cut through my body, past my decaying mind, and straight into my soul. And I felt it crack. Sensed it shatter into a million pieces, filthy and corrupted, never to be whole again.