The thought flickered through my mind, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember where I’d heard it.
Brad deserved it and you know it, hissed my inner voice. He raped you. He would have done it again, too. Maybe to you, maybe to someone else.
“No one deserves to die,” I whispered to the darkness. Outside the window, a raven fluttered past.
But in your eyes, in that moment, he did. Munin’s voice rang in my head like a judge’s gavel. I couldn’t tell if he was mocking or praising me for it.
I squeezed my eyes shut to block out the bird, but the darkness behind my eyelids was home to a far worse scene. Munin was the bastard bird of memory; his magic was far more cruel than mine. He wouldn’t let me forget. Ever. And as the darkness behind my eyes closed in, the memory of the night I’d lost myself filtered back.
I was curled on the tiles of the bathroom, orange light filtering through the window. Steam clung to my naked, raw skin, made my lungs rasp. I’d spent a good thirty minutes under the scalding water, trying to get clean, trying to burn away Brad’s fingertips and kisses, the scent and taste and stick of him.
It hadn’t worked.
So I rocked there against the cool, slick tiles, trying to find numbness. Trying to find a place outside of myself, a place Brad couldn’t violate. A place I was safe.
But I knew—I would never be safe. I would never be whole or clean again. Brad was just another reminder that I was unloved and unworthy. My friends didn’t give a shit. My real parents had given me up when I was born. Even though I had a new family, they couldn’t put me back together; I was broken from the start. No one could love something that was broken.
The reality was a bell that pushed the shadows away: Nothing in my life would change. I would always be Kaira the outcast, the girl who never fit in and never felt safe. Nothing I did would change it. I was damned, marked from the very start.
The only thing I could do was end it.
As I grabbed the hair shears from the vanity, I cursed Brad under my breath.
“Who’s weak now?”
He told me I’d never be strong enough to get rid of him, that I’d always come crawling back, that this was all my fault. So I would make sure I never got the chance to screw up again. I would never crawl back. And I would never let someone else hurt me.
I cut long and deep. I barely felt the blade pierce my wrist; steel slid through flesh, gentle almost, a stark contrast to how Brad had entered me. The only similarity was the tears. I couldn’t stop crying. By the third slice my face was as wet as my forearms. But I didn’t want to risk recovery. I didn’t want to show that weakness, the hope that maybe someone would rescue me. No one would rescue me. I wasn’t worth rescuing. Not after what he’d done.
My hands shook. I forced myself to stay standing. The room swam around the edges, shadows shifting, sinking, sucking me under.
“This is for you,” I hissed. I stared into my eyes in the mirror as I said it, unsure if I was talking to Brad or myself. I had been weak. I’d let him do this to me. And now I’d never be weak again.
The scissors dropped from my useless fingers after the sixth cut. I braced myself against the sink, let the blood swirl down the drain. I didn’t want Mom and Dad to have to clean up too much.
I kept staring at myself as the room inked out. Watched my eyes as they shuddered, as my whole body trembled. And when I couldn’t stand any longer, when I felt my knees collapse and the floor rush up to hold me, I kept watching the mirror. Because the mirror wasn’t showing my eyes anymore. A girl reflected back. A girl with purple eyes and raven’s hair, her pale flesh glowing like a moon.
The room churned with darkness and feathers, shadows seeping into everything.
“Are you Death?” I asked. The girl was no longer in the mirror, but beside me. A large raven with white eyes perched on her shoulder. Who was larger, the raven or the girl?
“Yes,” the girl replied. “But not yours.”
I laughed then, because I was dying. Or I was dead. And this was ridiculous because death was supposed to be scary, not a naked teenage girl with a bird on her shoulder.
“Why?” she asked.
She didn’t need to say more. I knew everything she meant in that word.
“Because he hurt me,” I said. I still couldn’t move. My blood pooled around me and my limbs were numb. Finally. Numbness felt like heaven. And still we talked there, on the tiles of the bathroom, as the world floated orange and red and black.
“This is your revenge?” she asked. “To give in?”
“What else could I do?”
She smiled.
“What would you do? If you could do anything? Be anything?”
“I’d kill him.” The words fell from my lips like bullets. I knew, the moment I said it, that the deed was as good as done.
“As you will, so shall it be,” she said. “His death will be in your honor.”