Page 138 of Dance of Thorns

I know who I am.

I AM who I fucking am, always have been.

I’m Dove.

My name is Dove fucking Marchetti. I dance ballet. I paint. I’m a recovering addict. I’m married to my dead sister’s high school sweetheart.

Everything runs and swirls together until the whole world is inky black, suffocating me, obliterating the light.

Choking out the difference between truth and lies.

Up and down.

Black and white.

Reality and fiction.

My hands are shaking uncontrollably and my whole body feels numb as my eyes drop to the last line of the final diary entry.

Burn scars are forever. Like us.

My trembling, unbelieving gaze slides from the page to the hand holding it.

…The hand with the little shiny pink crescent shaped scar tissue across the back of it. The scar I got from the fire that night.

That night whenLarkdied andIlived.

Reality crumbles and falls around me, turning to ash, choking me until I almost drop to my knees.

Lark died.

I lived.

Lark died.

I FUCKING LIVED.

But then my blurred vision stabs into the back of my hand again.

The shiny pink scar, in the shape of a curved crescent.

I used to call it my moon.

But it’s not a moon at all.

It’s half a fucking heart.

And suddenly, something that’s been teasing and prodding and needling at the back of my head pierces through. I choke, gasping as it hits me full-force, and before I know what’s happening, I’m whirling and staggering half blind out of Melinda’s bedroom.

“Why do you never say my name?!”

Bane whirls when I find him standing in Lark’s room. His brow furrows when I scream it at him.

“What—

“WHY DO YOU NEVER SAY MY FUCKING NAME?!”

His jaw sets. “What are you talking about? I say your name all the?—”