Furyborn

Onto this bleak and unknown path

Born from loss and paved with wrath

Cast down your heart and light the way

From darkest night to brightest day”

“I didn’t tell him anything,” Simon whispered urgently. “I would never. Never. Not about you. He could have cut on me until the end of time. He could have whispered in my ears until he killed me from the inside out.” He laughed again, but it sounded horribly sad. “It wouldn’t matter. I’d never tell him about you

“I can’t see you very well,” he said. “A blur of color, shadows for eyes, but I know your face even so. I’d know it anywhere.”

That I love you!” she burst out, tears splitting her voice. “That for all my years of work, every night alone, every prayer… It’s undone when I’m with you. You touch me and I burn, and I could take everything burning down with me!”

She shook her head slowly. “I think what it means to be human is that you are able to move past that darkness and do good in the world even so. And you, Audric”—she laughed a little—“I’d wager everything I am that you never experience such thoughts as I do. Sometimes your goodness shines so brightly that I want to devour you. Maybe if I have enough of you, that light you shine will stave off the wickedness that lives inside me.”

A sword forged true in hammer and flame

Flies sure and swift

A heart forged in battle and strife

Cuts deeper than any blade”

“My story is the same as all the others. Everyone I love has died; all my nightmares have come to life. Our world is lost, and so are we. There. Will that make a good story for your collection?”

Have you always been this unspeakably irritating?”

“Has your face always looked so temptingly carvable?”

“Lift your eyes to the eastern skies

Wait for the sun, and with it—rise

We will march down the roads gone black with the dead

We will tear down their walls and paint their crowns red”

The pain thrilled her. I am here, it said, and I do not run from death.

I seek it out.