I slammed to a stop. My knees locked against the roll and buck.
She had her back to me. Her arms spread wide, her head thrown back, and chocolate hair plastered to her naked white body.
In the dark, she lit up in a fork of lightning. Her spine still stark, her bruises still colourful enough to cast mottled shadows over her flesh.
She didn’t jolt as another fork split the sky like an angry god. She didn’t huddle when thunder answered back with ear-cracking drums.
She merely wedged her feet against the railing and lived.
EXHILARATION.
Life.
Death.
Chances. Choices. Catastrophe.
The storm got worse. I became steadily petrified; huddled in a ball on my bed, clinging to the mattress as I slid this way and that. I thought it couldn’t get any worse. That each soar into the sky and every plummet down, a wave couldn’t possibly get stronger.
I was wrong.
The wind churned the seas, but the thunder churned the skies, and when the first bolt of lightning arched against the monstrous wet clouds, I had to make a decision.
Scream with terror and think I was going to die or…give in.
I couldn’t be afraid anymore.
I’d been afraid for far too long.
I didn’t have the energy to be afraid anymore.
I’m done.
I’d been willing to die at my own hand. I’d been living in hell where my senses had been dulled, my freedom at touching rain and feeling sunshine stolen. All I was allowed to endure was coldness, nakedness, and pain.
But not tonight.
Tonight, the world was alive. The brutality of existing whispered in my ear to let go of everything and breathe with it. To howl with it. To die with it if that was my fate.
Climbing from my bed naked, I relished the bite of chill because I chose it not Alrik. I embraced the fearful scatter of my heartbeat because I was the architect of my panic not Alrik. And when I unlooped the belt from the robe Elder made me wear after he forced me to face his cello, a weight somehow unbuckled from my shoulders and fell like a cape around my feet.
I was reckless and stupid and moronically brave as I unlocked the French doors and let them snap back as if alive. I fought the wind, head down, arms up against the rain as I braced myself against the sting of droplets and the caress of tropical gales.
I clung to the balustrade, battling the storm. Unable to hold on against its might, I lashed the terrycloth belt to the balcony, tied it around my hips, and knotted it tight.
I gave my life, not to a piece of towelling and the smite of nature but to fate.
No one—not a person or animal—was in charge of me in that moment. Not even myself.
Facing that was my ultimate fear and my biggest freedom.
I was alone.
I was tiny.
I was no one.
Live or die, the world wouldn’t know or care.
Each crack of thunder sent my nipples pebbling and my tummy liquefying with panic. Every deep dark roll of the ocean as it vanished from beneath the boat only to surge upward with more power than any calamity stopped my heart then defibrillated it.
If I could survive this—bare as I was born and open in every way I could possibly be, I could survive anything.
I had survived everything.
And this was me claiming that life back by acknowledging that yes, I was small, yes, I was inconsequential, but I still breathed. The world still nurtured me even while its elements did their best to exterminate me.
I was worth living. I was worth surviving. And I would never again let nature or man take that away from me.
My arms spread into wings, wishing the wind would pluck me from gravity and haul me into its angry embrace.
I wanted to fly.
Give me your worst!
“Pim.”
The storm knew my name. My fake name. My slave name.
I’m here. I’m yours.
My head fell back in rapture.
“Pim!”
The wind snapped my name to pieces.
Take me. Heal me. Use my true name.
“Pimlico!” Something heavy and cross landed on my rain-soaked shoulder.
My eyes wrenched open.
Elder stood dripping wet, his black eyes wild as the wind. His lips moved, but the gale stole his words.
I frowned, watching his mouth, but he didn’t try to speak again. He dropped his gaze down my body, lingering on my breasts and stomach as the rain touched every part of me. His eyes heated every droplet until they sizzled against my skin.
I’d never had someone look at me that way before. A way full of violence but nurturing. Of want but protection. No teenage boy could’ve looked at me that way and no monster had the capacity to blend such right and wrong and make it undeniably acceptable.
Before I could stop myself, my arm fell, my hand groped for his, and I smiled.
Our fingers linked tight and unrelenting.