"She's the only divine thing he's ever believed in. The only creature in this vast, cruel land who could kill him. And sometimes, in his loveliest dreams, he imagines she does."

Arabella Karve "Why are you following me?" I snap impatiently, my patience a dwindling resource nowadays. Eros effortlessly catches the bedroom door with one hand as I slam it shut behind me, stopping it inches from his face.

"You flinched." Is all he says, his deep voice carrying across the unnaturally silent room.

Fuck, he noticed.

"Look at you being observant." Brushing off his comment, I curl up cross-legged on my bed, setting my half-eaten cake down on my lap. I don't dare to take my eyes off of him as he simply leans against one of the wooden posts of my bed, the delicate white curtains of its canopy draped behind his dark figure. It's as if the darkness itself has been gathered together, threading shadow upon shadow into the shape of a man—an absence of light pressed against the untouched purity of white, a dark phantom carved from nothing, intruding itself where it does not belong.

"You always flinch." He says, completely disregarding my snarky remark, just like he always does. There isn't a trace of kindness or warmth behind his words, his voice drained of all life by some past I've never cared enough to ask about.

"Yeah, and?" I bite out, my good mood quickly going down hill. "It's a natural reflex."

It was the smallest reaction to him reaching out towards my face, and I can't quite put my finger on why he is pretending like he cares. Sure, I know why I respond like that to even the most gentle of touches before I can stop it. But it shouldn't matter to a man who despises me, to a man who looks at me like I am nothing. And yet, somehow, it does.

"It looked like you thought I was going to hit you, Bella." A muscle feathers in his jaw like it does whenever he is angry, the sharp line of his cheekbone becoming more prominent with the simple movement.

I furrow my eyebrows, not understanding why he is so worked up,

"Oh, I'm sorry, did you think I trust you?" Frost is laced in every syllable as I glare at him, my eyes flickering down to his large hand, clenching and unclenching beside him.

"I've never laid a hand on you." He says each word carefully, the dark anger wrapping around him slowly creeping towards me and staining the crisp air.

"Maybe you should, it might make this conversation more enjoyable." I mumble sarcastically under my breath, stabbing a piece of cake with my fork.

"That's the last thing I would do, but you're making it sound really tempting." He crosses his arms over his chest, the dark fabric of his shirt straining against the rippling contours of his muscles hidden beneath.

"Good job, you're officially not a monster. Want us to celebrate the bare minimum?" I say with an empty smile, the gesture sitting on my lips like a forgotten remnant of happiness. It's not warm, nor cold, it's merely there, a curve with no meaning beside pissing off the man in front of me.

"You don't get it. Of course you don't." He shakes his head, a silent anger burning behind the layers of ice frozen over his iris.

What is he even talking about?

"Since I don't get it, maybe you should go find someone who does."

"They're not the ones that treat me like a fucking abuser," he raises his voice.

"Not an abuser, a murder." I grind my teeth together, picturing how many innocent lives he took and ruined. How many mothers he has stripped of their sons. How many children he has left to grow up fatherless. The weight of his destruction lingers in the empty corners of homes they once filled, in the silence where their voices should have been.

"You're throwing around accusations you don't understand, be careful." I hear the warning in his voice, but pay no heed to it.

"Throwing around accusations? I'm just calling it like I see it."

"Coming from a girl who's never had to face a real problem a day in her life."

"You have no idea what my life has been like!" I yell, my vocal chords immediately regretting the action. A soft wince slips past my lips before I can stop it, my hand flying to my throat.

The moment seems to snap Eros out of whatever haze had clouded his focus, something unspoken flickering in his eyes right—there and gone in the same second. By my next breath, that award winning, emotionless mask is firmly back in place, draped over his hauntingly beautiful features.

He raises an eyebrow in my direction, "that shut you up really quick."

"I'm about to make you shut up really quick." I point my fork in his direction angrily, ready to hurl it in his direction.

"Go ahead. See what happens next." His dark eyes trace every movement as I take a sip from the old glass of water left on my nightstand, not having any idea of how long it's been sitting there. I shift under his gaze, glaring and forcing down all of the curses sitting on the top of my tongue.

I'm not in the mood to argue with him.

His gaze falls away from me after a minute, drifting across the room and taking in the mess around him with silent calculation.

He seems to take notice of every surface cluttered with scattered papers, overturned books, and random pieces of clothing tossed aside.

The sharp glint of shattered glass captures his attention as it catches the light, fractured pieces of a picture frame left broken and abandoned. It was a silent casualty of my anger and grief all boiled over, each shard a testament to the storm ranging within me. Violent, broken, and wholly unforgiving.

"Should I even ask what set you off this time?" He asks, pulling his eyes back to me.

"I didn't mean to." The lie burns my mouth, just like the reminder of why I did it burns behind my eyes in the form of tears I don't deserve to shed.

I snapped the other night.

The nightmare was different this time. Instead of that night, it was one of the ones leading up to it, dragging me in chains to the inevitable ending that I know I will never be able to change.

"You have to breathe, Ara. Please." She begs, pushing a strand of hair behind my ear and wiping one of the many tears from my flushed cheek. I clench the note in my hand that won't stop trembling, unable to let go.

The ink dragged across the crumpled paper in his familiar handwriting feels like it's being burned into the palm of my hand, tethering its existence to this world through my pale skin.

My rose, You're still running. Still pretending that you have a choice. It's almost admirable, really—your persistence. But it's also pathetic. How long will you tire yourself with this little charade? Try to slip through the cracks and shadows? How long will you pretend that this game of ours is not over, that I have not already won? This dance you persist on continuing is wearing thin, my love. My patience along with it. I can only imagine how exhausted you must be—checking over your shoulder at every turn, holding your breath each moment. Always waiting for the minute you realize I caught up. Have you noticed how much smaller your world has become? How every door you open leads you back to me, waiting with open arms. How the shadows you love so much to hide in aren't as empty as you think. I know that you must feel me in every breath you take, feel my hunger drinking in that constant fear in those pretty eyes. You must understand by now that this resistance of yours is futile, that no one can keep you or your throne from me. My father is eager to finally meet you, and I would prefer to introduce you in one piece. It would be a shame for you to be anything less than whole. Do not make me drag you by those gentle hands of yours. Do not make me carve obedience into that sweet smelling skin. I have already drawn first blood, and I found the sight exquisite, found the sounds of your screams delicious. I am more than willing to do it again, Arabella. Stop fighting. Stop running. Step into the light, my love. The thorns of my rose are nothing compared to what's lurking in the dark if you don't come home before I make you. ~Forever yours, and always watching

She gently pries the letter from my hand as I sob incoherently, the words a terrifying promise of what's yet to come. She lifts the red rose that was left on top of my pillow while I slept, a companion of the note.

He always leaves a rose, one with pedals the color of blood and thorns sharp enough to draw the same color from my hands.

Careful not to prick herself on any of the thorns, she places the two emblems of the man haunting me in her bag, tucking them away from my view.

She knows what he's capable of, just as well as I do. The collection of scars he's adorned my body in reminds us both each day.

This is a game to him, and my skin is becoming the score board.

"He's going to hurt you," I get out through a choked sob and her eyes soften. "You have to leave."

"You know I would never leave you," My best friend whispers, shushing me through gentle touches and quiet promises. "I am forever right beside you, and I will never leave. I promise."

I screamed when I woke up as if it was her fault. I called her a liar, threw the picture frame at my wall while sobbing that she left me, abandoned me.

She broke her promise and I blamed her, even though it was never her fault.

It is mine.

"That excuse won't help if you end up cutting yourself." His deep voice is as hollow as wind moving through an abandoned house, stripped of everything that made it a home.

"I'm not stupid, don't talk to me like I am." My words come out with less bite than intended, sounding more weak and broken than anything else. The fight behind them is gone, washed away by the waves of memories that play in my mind and then rewind back to the beginning, all so I can relive them again.

"Really? You could have fooled me." He answers bluntly, like the smartass he is. He pushes off of the bedpost.

God, I hate this man.

"What the hell are you doing? Don't touch that!" I scramble off of my bed, quickly making my way to him as he crouches down by the shattered ruins of my frame.

I reach him right as he brushes the glass off of the photo, the small shards not daring to draw blood from the rough calluses of his hand, the skin too rough from pain to be pierced by the small knives.

My body freezes as his eyes run along the picture in his hand, having been too slow to stop him from picking up a small remnant of my past, the moment captured in time as my last picture with my best friend. The last photo of her, since she was never here to take another, and me, because ever since I lost her, I've been ready to follow. I want no memory of me left in this world, I want to fall between the cracks of time as an unknown tragedy to the Karve name.

My breath gets caught in my throat, waiting for him to speak. I prepare myself for him to ask questions and pry open my past, dissect it just like everyone else.

"You should smile like that more often," he says casually. Huh?

He reaches up, handing me the picture with no questions.

"What?" I scrunch my nose, scowling down at the man crouched in front of me.

"It's much more enjoyable than that." He answers with an unamused look, taking in my scowl.

I scoff, grabbing the picture from his hand with more force than needed. "Did it ever cross your mind that you never see me smile because you're around?"

"If that's true, then why do you look even worse when I'm not?" He carefully gathers the larger shards from off of the floor, his fingers deft yet cautious. Each fragment glints in the dim light coming in from the window before dropping into his cupped hand. His expression is unreadable, but there's an unexplainable gentleness in the way he picks up the broken pieces from my bedroom floor.

"You're an asshole, you know that?"

He hums in response, not bothering to look up at me. "You've made it very clear what you think about me."

I go quiet for a moment, "so...you're not going to ask any other questions?"

"You'll tell me if you want to."

"Well I don't." I say defensively.

"I figured." He tells me as I look down at the picture in my hand.

Me and Tara are captured in the image, a picture taken of us on her twenty-first birthday.

Our bodies are draped across the Florentine bench sitting in the garden, the bench carved from white stone with vintage swirls and designs adorning the sides.

She is smiling up at me through hooded eyes, amusement captured in them at my head thrown back in hysterical laughter. The happiness spilling all around us in that moment leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

My hair is pulled back in a dark braid, the long strands held together by a thin blue ribbon—an unspoken reminder of simpler times. There is no scar along my neck in this moment, nothing to hide, nothing to be ashamed of. I miss the feeling of freedom I had, simply gathering my hair up without any hesitation.

Her body is sprawled on top of mine, my arms wrapped around her neck. We laugh together—recklessly, genuinely—in a way neither of us have since. Her caramel-colored skin is a rich, warm contrast against mine, though in the picture, my skin is darker than it's been compared to everyday going forward. Her silky black hair is chopped at her sternum, framing her sharp features, and a dark blue sundress hugs her thin body along every curve.

I cling on to the memory of her even as it is beginning to slip from my grasp. The warmth of her body against mine, the scent of the shampoo she washed her hair with, the sound of her voice—a sound that used to fill every corner of my world. But they are slowly slipping away, becoming harder to recall with each passing day. It feels like losing her all over again, piece by piece, losing her to somewhere I can't reach.

It's so cruel, each piece is so hauntingly familiar, yet becoming blurred by time into something so foreign. I remember the curve of her smile and the way she laughed, but when I try to picture it, it's blurry. It feels like looking at a picture left out in the rain that I left out. They're fading, and it terrifies me.

I feel the ache, the loss of her slipping into the back corners of my mind, the person I loved most in the world sitting with all the memories falling from in between my fingers.

I am breaking, and the more I try to keep her, the more I realize I am forgetting.

This is a torture, a raw and sickeing torture. To have loved someone so deeply and yet be left with the unbearable truth; I will forget. I will forget the one thing I promised myself I never would.

She will die in my memory, just like she did in my arms.

A choked sound breaks past my lips, my trembling hand pressing against my mouth to try and keep the others from escaping. I didn't realize I was crying until small drops of water begin falling on the photo like rain on one of my few good memories.

"Bella?" Eros pushes to his feet, his face blurry behind my tears. I can't make out his expression, only left with the assumption it's either irritated or emotionless, just like it always is.

"Get out," I rasp out, my voice suddenly hoarse with anger and heartbreak. I turn away from him briskly, aggressively wiping away the tears rolling down my cheeks.

"Are you hurt?"

"Get the hell out!" I scream, hatred in every word as I finally snap, my sadness shifting into undeserved anger at the man standing in front of me.

I avoid his gaze, stumbling towards the bathroom on unsteady legs that threaten to give out underneath me. I don't want him to see me like this. Weak, pathetic, vulnerable.

He will twist this moment under his influence, hone my vulnerability into a blade he can use against me. I have been taught better. Taught what happens when you let people see you like this, let people in.

The bathroom door slams shut behind me, its echo reverberating throughout the room as the shower hisses to life. The water hitting the tile drowns out every other sound—my muffled sobs as I curl up on the cold floor and the knocking at my bathroom door that I never hear.

My heart struggles to beat under the crushing weight of my pain, nothing more than a labored ache in my chest. Each beat is more painful than the last, and I find myself praying for it to stop, praying for the end of this everlasting pain.

꧁꧂