Dear Readers: Back at the Golde penthouse with Atria and Axel...

P.S. Parts of this scene are pretty dark and possibly Rated R - just so you know :P

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Scene 9: The Parting Gift

A.D. 2015

Sorry… was she even sorry? What did it mean to be sorry—to wish that something had not happened? She wished every day that she’d never been born. Didn’t that make her sorry for everything that’d ever happened since she walked the earth?

All the hoards of self-hatred that Atria had harbored in her heart, throughout her life, came to the surface in this instant. Summoned forth at the sight of the boy, of the blood that she’d shed. It didn’t matter whether she had meant for this to happen. For it had. Because of her. Because she had been born and walked the earth, and walked into his life, the boy had died.

Axel’s chokehold tightened, harshened, where he stood behind her, viselike grip around her speechless throat. “You can’t charm your way out of this one. You can’t fuck your way out of this one.”

Atria wished his grip could reach back to before her birth, to grant her death wish in advance.

He swung her forcibly around to face him, pinned her to the wall, one hand still encircling her neck. She saw her deadly image mirrored in his darkling eyes. The epicenter of his rage, reflected endlessly between them, steeped in his brother’s blood. Upon her hands.

His other hand reached toward the collar of her coat, grabbing the pendant that hung just above it. “You came back for this? For this, and not for him?”

He yanked it from the chain and flung the sundered necklace to the floor. She didn’t flinch.

“The boy whose heart beat for you, bled for you—you couldn’t do him the honor of abandoning him to his face? Not even the fucking gift of a goodbye, before he died?”

Axel untied the belt of her trench coat, with one hand; he was well practiced in this maneuver. The other hand remained clamped hard around her throat. Another move that both of them knew well.

But in the past between them, these motions had always been born out of sheer, simple lust. Never bloodlust, as now. There was a thirst for blood now in his eyes, and Atria wanted him to slake it. She deserved it. That, and so much worse.

“Well,” he grunted as he cast the coat to the floor, then pushed her over to the desk, on which she'd left the fatal note. “Let me do the honors.”

“Do it,” she breathed suddenly—two words, nearly silent, slipping past her lips, resounding in the blur.

He had heard them, clear as day here in the dark. “Do it?” he echoed in her ear. His whisper was a snake that slithered deep into her soul, suffused with vicious venom. “Do what—fuck you? Kill you?”

She was not sure how her shattered mind could form the words to answer him, but somehow a word poured forth. Freely and willfully. She wanted this. Every demon in her shadowed heart demanded it. “Both.”

She felt his lip twist up into a smirk, against the soft lobe of her ear.

“No,” he sneered, and then spun her to face away from him again, the full force of his body driving hard into her backside. Thrust her down against the desk, her cheek against the note she’d left, the scribbled sorry shoved before her open eyes. “Just one. For now.”

Tore her dress roughly in half. The tight black dress, her shadowy second skin—he may as well have torn the skin off of her bones. Maybe he had. Numb as she was, she couldn’t tell the difference now.

“This is the breakup sex he never got,” he snarled as he undid his own belt, violently unleashed his manhood, threw off his shirt, all while clenching his grip closer around her gasping throat. “This is the gift. The fucking parting gift…”

He entered, in a place that gave her all pain and no pleasure. Part of her wished their previous time had been the last. Remembered how mere hours ago, and many other times before, she had savored and worshipped this same weapon that was ravaging her now, with such adoring passion as she'd never shared with anybody else.

It hadn't been a weapon then, as it'd become tonight. All the same, Axe had always known how to make her want it. Badly. Every time, even this time. Especially this time. She shuddered in self-loathing shame at the thought. Did that make it even worse? She hoped so; she deserved the worst.

He leant in close, the solid muscles of his torso cleaving to her naked back, chin rammed against her jawline, mouth upon her ear as if to bite it from her head. Pronounced the parting gift: “…Your life.”

Atria cringed. That was no gift. It was a curse. Death was the gift: the unwanted gift she gave to others, the desired gift she’d never had herself.

“You owe it to me now,” he claimed, his teeth grazing her ear, tongue flicking out to taste her pain, fingers indenting her flesh where they dug deep into her skin, virtually underneath, to claw at every crevice of her soul. “You don’t get to die. You don’t deserve to die.”

She stared at the note, at the ink bleeding now from her own sweat and tears.

“I am the one who let you run. To let you live,” he hissed. “With every deadly breath you take, remember that. I own you.”

He erupted deep inside of her, and it was living death.

Whispered words coming in spurts, in sync with his sadistic seed. “And I… will see to it… that someday… you… are truly sorry.”

She was not sure what happened next. Axel left as soon as he was done, and Atria could not take another second in the room stained by his brother’s blood, shrouded in all her sorry sins. Amidst the blur, somehow she got her hands on her black coat, her bag of bare essentials, and the pendant that had been flung to the floor. Somehow escaped the building, by a back exit, steering clear of the freckled bellboy. The living ghost of poor lost Ro.

Some indeterminate time afterward, she found herself in a dark alleyway, alone with sputtering rain that ricocheted from every surface in the shadowed night. Huddled in a corner, trench coat clinging to her clammy skin, scarred and bruised and stripped down to the bone beneath the shroud.

She clutched a small round pendant in her hands. A locket, opened to reveal a miniature image of two faces, the poster-children of innocent youth, in a close cheek-to-cheek embrace.

A beaming boy, with eyes as dark as new moons, and yet as bright and beautiful as full ones. Eyes that never failed to see straight into Atria’s soul—even after all these years she had not seen him, even only from the picture captured in this tiny circle. Beside the boy, a younger girl with raven hair and pine green eyes. With no ounce of the shadow into which she’d someday grow. The dark rose, not yet in her full bloodstained bloom, not yet ruing the day she was born.

Atria blinked at the faces, at the mirror and the memory. She had been looking at them for what seemed like hours. Closed the locket, lost forever from its chain, and tucked it safely in her bag. Reached for the scrap of paper in the pocket of her coat. Unfolded it gingerly, as if one wrong move from her ruinous hands might crumble it to dust.

This note could not have been more different from the one she’d left for Ronan. In every way, it was the utter opposite. Such genuine care and devotion resonated in each word, such honest love that promised to be constant through all things…

She did not deserve such love. Maybe the little girl inside the locket had, and always would. But certainly not Atria. Not now.

She read it again and again, and was reminded just how fiercely she had shaped her way of life around these words: ‘Run far. Run fast. Never look back. As soon as you know you’re safe, find me. I am here for you always. Counting the days till I see you again, safe and sound.’

The rain subsided as she read it one last time.

She had listened to him, as well as she could have, all her life since they had parted ways. Even if she did not deserve this love, he gave it. And she needed it, now more than ever, no doubt.

She stood, on shaking feet that practically refused to hold her up. But she persisted. Forged ahead into the shadows, on stilettos that would have to bear so much more weight tonight—she now carried a burden of blood, which she could not relieve or release.

And the baggage of hope, lifted in her heart by one look from the boy inside the locket. Hope that felt heavy on her shoulders, since she’d never harbored such a thing before.

There was a payphone down the block, luckily enough. She fumbled for coins, punched in a number that she knew by heart and would never forget, although she hadn’t dialed it for a decade and a half. She hoped to all things holy that his number hadn’t changed.

She knew that he would’ve kept it for as long as he could, for her sake if nothing else, so that she could find him. But she still had to hope that other forces hadn’t intervened, in all this time…

The receiver rang thrice. Brief silence before the fourth.

Then a voice, on the line. A voice she knew and loved. Atria’s heart convulsed in hopeful spasms, soaking in the warmth of home evoked just by his voice—she had forgotten what that felt like. She had forgotten so many feelings, in her time spent as a shadow.

“It’s me…” she murmured through impending tears.

She might have heard his heartbeat on the other end. An echo of instant recognition, overcome with emotion upon hearing her voice. She smiled at the sound, even if she had just imagined it; she smiled through her sorrows, and in spite of all the shadows all around.

But she knew the heartfelt hellos would be sweeter in person. He seemed to know it, too. So they shared few words during this call.

“I’m not safe,” she stated truthfully, in reference to the last phrase of his letter. “I’ve never been safe. But I want to find you. I need you.”

He asked if he should come to her instead. She said no, that she would be safer away from this place. He told her where and how to find him. Then they said goodbye, hearts full of hope for their hello.

She staggered into a hotel across the street, tossing rainwater off of her hair—still a sleek sheet of sable silk, in spite of everything that she’d weathered tonight. All eyes in the lobby were drawn instantly to those bronze legs, bare up till mid-thigh below her trench coat, and to that face that would make Aphrodite downright seethe with envy.

The face was streaked with tears, all mingled with the lingering drops of rain. She was visibly shaken, stricken with deep anguish, cold and vulnerable. But still she looked untouchable. If they had to guess, the hotel guests probably would’ve inferred that she had just looked in a mirror and simply couldn’t handle how stunning she was.

Atria walked right past the concierge, reception desk, and sofas full of staring strangers. Into the business center. Sat at a computer.

Booked a one-way ticket to another world. To Greece.

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Anyway, looks like more than one of the girls is headed off to Greece, huh? ;)

Next scene, we stop by Stonehenge to see Lachesis and her new mortal friend Donal... and if you liked this one, please don't forget to vote! :)