And because of her, I am so very wicked.
Yet Curtis taught me perseverance, and strength. How to survive, to stay sane in the face of darkness. That the absence of light did not make the person, that only the long wait for a shadow to find you, to cross from the afterlife and attach itself with painful stitches to your soul, makes you whole again. This is the greatest lesson a mother can give to her children. How not to be completely broken by a situation.
Curtis taught me to accept myself, all my faults. To greet my darkness like an old friend rather than an enemy. She saw something in me I’d never known existed in my soul—power. The power to right wrongs, to change things.
My power scared her, made her trap me like an animal, keep me in a cage. She kept me in the darkness until it fed on my blood and gave me back the strength I’d lost.
Adrian was weak compared to me. All he could do was give in to his urges.
Curtis, in all her bizarre, unfathomable glory, taught me how to channel mine. She made me in her own image, yet she was so very wrong.
I am the light, and she is the darkness.
I am the good, and she is the evil.
By blood born, and by blood taken, we move through this life in a fog, briefly touching those around us, imparting wisdom or love, pain or sorrow, or even a mother’s gentle kiss.
We are born alone, and we die alone.
*
I stand in the darkness of Curtis’s chamber and watch her sleep. When I move toward her with the blade raised, my breath catches in my throat. I know that I am doing the only thing that is good and right in this world.
Vengeance is mine.
The blade falls.