"This pain is mine and mine alone! I don't give a damn about your pain, about you and your mate! Liam was my mate, and you have no idea how I feel! Don't compare me to you, don't compare my mate to yours! Liam and I had something no one else could understand!"
I light my flames, grown much larger by my fury. I spread them over my entire body, just like the havoc I feel inside.
"You know nothing!" I cry out. "You think I feel like you? There's no fucking way, Luna! My pain is mine alone! There's no fucking comparing it!"
I keep scorching my surroundings. My fire is burning bright, large, and unafraid to have everything go down in flames around us. I feel those flames all over my body, like a human torch, and I won't stop until I burn down every damn thing and have her come out. She wanted some darkness, she's going to be fed some fucking ashes!
"I felt the same anger when I understood."
She suddenly appears in front of me, and I calm down the flames that were pouring out my hands, bringing them back, close to my body. My eyes hurt from crying so much, tears still rolling down my face. The heat of my body carves long streams along my face, where those tears dry as far as they manage to roll down.
"It's not the same," I scoff, suddenly laughing nervously. "The same? For it to be the same, you would have to have known who Liam was, how much he mattered to me. He was my mate, not yours. You know nothing of Liam. The few but amazing memories we had together. The way he... smiled when he looked at me. You should have known the touch of his hands on my body, how he made every inch of my skin feel. There are no two Liams, and there aren't two Maras, either. There's only us. And I swear, you're not going to take any of that and claim it as yours."
A strange calm suddenly dominates me. Perhaps because I've let out all of my emotions, my mind is crystal clear at this very moment. I look down and quickly prepare a magic circle under our feet. She frowns, looking down, but takes another step closer to me.
"Mara, this darkness... You should know how it feels now. You and I went through the same experience... I can show you how to become more powerful than before."
"I only care about power if I can fucking blow you up," I hiss. "You were right, Luna. The darkness is alluring. It's powerful, and it's easy to give in. But you know what? It's no fucking answer."
I trigger my magic circle, and just as she realizes what's going on, I lock it, closing my fists and turning them as if I'm turning an invisible key underneath us. She gasps and stops moving. No, she can't move. She tries to fight it, grimacing, but I'm holding onto her. Now that she stole Ravena's physical envelope, she's much easier to catch and trap. And now that I am also using that Dark Magic, I don't fucking care about hurting a body that's already dead.
"Let me go!" she screams.
"Oh, I won't," I state, taking deep breaths. "You killed my mate. I don't feel the slightest bit like letting you go."
I tighten it. Like a gigantic claw around her, she makes a grimace, and I don't care. I just make it tighter and tighter, until I'm really sure she can't move, she can't escape. She probably can't breathe, either. I light the fire in my hand, leaving the other to lock that magic circle, keeping her where I want her.
Slowly, I finally step closer to her. I carry my pain and my anger with me, like huge weights I'm consciously taking in with me, swallowing it. With each breath I take, there's still this darkness, hammering me with the painful, bottomless realization that Liam is gone. It hurts, it hurts and it won't go away. Still, I keep going. I want her to see this.
As she sees me approaching, she smiles.
"You want to kill me, don't you? You want me to suffer, like I made your mate suffer and bleed."
I burn her. I didn't hesitate a moment before sending that fireball to hit her shoulder, and I don't regret it as she screams in pain, falling down on her knees and violently shaking. A bitter smile appears on my lips. I let the darkness come in, pouring its strength in me like a painless poison. That's right, I'm a Dark Witch. I won't think twice about giving back the pain she gave me... but, strangely, it doesn’t give me any kind of satisfaction. Stranger is the fact that I already knew all that. Perhaps because I've already experienced so many negative emotions, I know there is nothing that will relieve the pain in my heart. Crying, screaming, hurting to the point where I'm physically in pain won't help. So, how could hurting her instead even do me any good?
I take a deep breath instead, aware of my heart feeling like a bottomless, dark hole, and get down on one knee to her height.
"If you're still here, why would I think any of what you did relieved your pain in any way, Luna?"
Her eyes open wide in shock this time. That's right; there's nothing she can teach me about the darkness. Little Mara may have taught me the higher levels of magic, but Clarissa was the one who gifted me with the understanding of what darkness, true darkness of the heart, is really like. It has the same color as fear, the same taste as despair.
"There's something you don't understand," I say. "No matter what I do to you, it won't alleviate the pain from the loss of my mate. I can swallow all of that darkness around us, to the very last bit of it, become the Darkest Witch the world has ever known, and it won't change the truth that makes me bleed inside. And you know who taught me that in the first place? ...You did."
She makes a sour grimace, but... I don't react to it at all. Instead, I close my eyes, and take a deep breath.
I open myself up and slowly, I use my sadness, this despair that overtakes everything else in my mind, and I take all of that darkness in. Everything. I absorb the whole hurricane, as if I was drinking it, letting it pour into that bottomless pit I feel, right where my bond to Liam was before. I take in as much as I can. All that sadness, that anger, that pain... It's so raw and painful, but I am in that strange state where... none of it matters. Nothing else can hurt me anymore.
"You don't understand..." she mutters painfully. "You... you're all the same. You can't understand my pain. You've never gone through the same..."
I ignore her and, while I keep that darkness coming to me, I know what it is I truly need right now. I focus as much as I can until I can reach out to them. Like a thin, shining thread through the fog. I find their inner voices, their inner selves, and I hold on to them, like someone would ring the alarm for help.
“Mara!”
They jump in at the same time, both crossing that fog like lights in the darkness. I open my eyes and see them. Selena, growling between me and Luna, and Nora, running toward us.
I finally let go and, just as she comes to me, I hug Nora's white fur. I feel her quiet, cold strength coming over me.
“I'm sorry…” she sobs. “Mara, I am so sorry... I really tried…”
