That’s not what I want though.
Revenge, yes. I want to see all four of them hanging from their toes, begging for my forgiveness. I want them to feel how I did. That confusion and violation that I felt, Miles and Audrey are going to experience that on another level. All before I channel Love’s power to draw out their essence to feed my new god. It’s a win for me and a win for them.
It’s the scars I don’t want. My skin is stitched together with stretch marks that I have taken years to come to appreciate. I love my body, and I love taking care of it in all its glory.
The internal ones that are a phantom pain, a flinch when someone touches me, a hyper-vigilance I have never needed before. Those are the scars I don’t want. My life has been one of luxury, and with that came a sense of ease because I was always taught to be cruel to get what I want.
I should have been able to be cruel to those men, too. Every instinct I had was to strike. To not take those words lying down, yet I was frozen on the spot. There was no fight or flight, I froze like a weak bit of prey. I should have turned around and shoved that phone down one of their throats to send a message.
“A pleasing thought, sweet one, but those scars will keep you safe. Your instincts are evolving, just as you have.”Love’s soothing voices echo in my head, bringing tears to my eyes again.
It’s a terrifying and comforting thought. I am changed, irreparably.
Some things can’t be changed, though. I am still filled with anger. There is blood in the water; some of it may be mine, but it’s theirs as well. The people who thought they could get rid of me so easily. It is time I start taking these matters into my own hands.
Orthia is right. Tomorrow I will begin my own hunt, and I know the weakness I will target first. It’s time I seized control of my revenge. I told her our relationship wasn’t a distraction, and I will show her just what I can do. She will see what it is like when I hunt for the prey I have promised to feed our Love.
“Sleep in peace, myomphalos,” she whispers.
I don’t know what that means. She kisses my forehead, though, and the ghost of her lips on my skin is like a kiss from the sun. My Greek isn’t perfect, but it feels sacred when she calls me by that name.
When she slips from my room though, I am bombarded with thoughts about my life. How every single thing I have ever done for it was all pointless. Love said my fate had been split into paths when we first met. My life was always going to turn up this way.
There was nothing I could have done to change that night. No amount of performing or rebelling for my parents’ affection would have changed my ending. Something would have brought me here, according to Orthia, something would have happened, and I would have ended up in the water.
All that shit my parents used to spew about blood being thicker than water meant nothing to them. They saw a weakness in their blood, and rather than helping it, they had it drawn out. Since the incident, they have done nothing to find me or defend me.
When the restlessness in my head reaches my fingers, I dig through my suitcase and pull out my laptop. In only a few strokes, I set up a burner account and a VPN to fool my location settings. On muscle memory, I check my socials and my emails. Despite Orthia’s efforts to keep me in the dark, I’m a regular human who needs access to the internet.
I look up every single person. I need to know everything that I’ve missed. Lottie has sent me a few messages. In the days following the leak of those photos, she tried to check up on me, called Miles every name under the sun and told me that even Teddy Bushwhipper was doing everything in his power to get the source of those pictures found.
The tears nearly ruin my laptop; I can’t get them to stop. Whenever I type out a message to either of them, the right words won’t come to me. How do I explain my current situation to them without giving away everything I have learned about the world? Instead, I send a simple message from my burner accounts and hope it doesn’t end up in Lottie’s spam folder.
I’m okay. You’ll see.
Chapter seventeen
Orthia
2 Day
Mybodythreatenstocome apart at the seams. I am barely holding myself together. Every moment I spend with Delphini, I want to tear off her clothes and devour her. I want to consume every part of her and make her suffer so sweetly that she begs for me. She invades my every thought, but I must be patient before I push for more. I want to give her time to heal after what I saw at her old flat and after what happened on the metro.
She’ll come to me when she’s ready, right?
“Janet called,” Aoife states, rolling her neck. “This month’s donation is much appreciated. The Dallas office had an incident with the police, and they were scrambling for extra funds.”
I hum along, just barely listening as I pull at a loose thread on my long sleeve. Janet is the director of donations for our charity for women, and she calls about once a month to update us on how things are. I helped a previous crew member set up this charity at the start of the twentieth century to spread our message. The Saints for Love Women’s Charity is one of the oldest in the world and we have centres in almost every country.
The Princess’s Despairhas been their principal benefactor from the beginning. Most of that money comes from the wealth I have collected from centuries of pirating. It’s more than I would ever know what to do with, so spending it to further our cause makes good use of the capital. I am the head of the damn thing in name only because every other monster I have attempted to give the title to has refused. Apparently, I am a symbol of some kind.
“When is it too soon to ask someone if they are ready for more intimacy?” I ask, but I’m not really interested in a finance report.
“They normally tell me, Captain,” Aiofe says, lounging further back into the steaming bath until only her chin is above the water. “Or they come to the bath like any other crewmates.”
Tourist season is officially rolling. Our boat tours are booked for every trip, and the crew works around the clock to ensure The Despair is in tip-top condition. Even now, Nargol and the night shift are replacing some ropes along sails that snapped during our evening check. Everyone knows that staying open means money in our pockets to help tide us over when the season ends and we go back to the more challenging job of fishing.
It also means that when we aren’t on shift, a good portion of the crew has taken to lounging in the bath to soothe sore muscles. A few of the sirens have taken to sleeping beneath the ship again to rejuvenate in the salty waters overnight.
