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She swallowed hard before speaking again.

“One night, he finished work early. He came into the kitchen, demanding dinner. I told him the water in the pot hadn’t boiled yet, and I couldn’t cook the pasta until it did.

He got furious. He knocked the lid off the pot on the stove, grabbed me by my hair, and shoved my face into the pot.

The water was hot but not boiling yet. The pot was high and only half filled.

My throat hit the edge of it, the steam made my eyes tear up, but my face stayed above the water.

I choked and coughed. He threw me to the floor, and I realized that he didn’t know how hot the water was or how much of it was in the pot.

It could’ve been full and ready to boil, and he would’ve burned or drowned me.

He acted as if he wanted to kill me. And I knew right then and there that one day, he would. ”

“What did you do? How did you escape him? Or was it when the queen’s guards took you?”

“This happened a couple of days before they came for me, but I knew I had to get away from him. I also was very sure that if I told him I wanted to leave, he wouldn’t let me.

So, the next time I went grocery shopping, I asked a kind old lady to borrow her phone and called my aunt.

Then I came home and quietly packed my suitcase while Dylan was in his office working.

I thought I had enough time to sneak out of the apartment without him knowing, but he came out and caught me with my suitcase.

” She lifted her hand to her cheek again, gently touching the bruise with the tips of her fingers.

“That’s when this happened. He beat me in earnest, not holding back…

That’s when the last pieces of me broke and every feeling I ever held for him changed to nothing but hate. ”

“Please tell me he was flayed or at least burned alive for what he did,” I gritted through my teeth, wishing I could go to the human world right now and do it myself—slice the flesh off his bones strip by strip while he screamed for mercy.

“Well…” She spread her arms wide. “He got arrested. My aunt and uncle got there just in time. A neighbor helped to tackle Dylan and hold him down until the police arrived.”

“He deserved to have his spine pulled out of his body while alive. Please tell me there is this kind of punishment in your world.”

She stared at me with her eyebrows raised up high.

“Um… I don’t think I’ve ever heard of something like that being done to a person.”

“It’s a shame,” I said with deep regret.

She covered my hand with hers, the ever-present smile playing on her lips. “ Joy Guardian sounds like a peaceful occupation. Where did all this thirst for blood come from, Kurai?”

“We’re warriors, sworn to protect the temple and the Source of Joy by any means necessary. We’re trained to fight and even kill if needed.” The words I often said with pride came out hollow as I couldn’t tear my eyes away from her bottom lip and the cut that split it a little off center.

Like her bruises, the cut was healing slowly. Her lip still looked swollen slightly on the right. Red blood dried inside the cut. And it looked so painfully familiar, dragging out my darkest memories from their graves.

“You’ll be safe here, Kurai,” Mother said, placing a kiss on my forehead. “The Joy Guardians will take good care of you. They don’t accept just anyone into their ranks. Blessed be the kindness of the Master Guardian.”

“But when will you come back?” I asked, fighting tears.

My stepfather used to say, “Big boys don’t cry. They accept their punishment and learn from their mistakes.”

And I tried, I tried very hard not to cry. I tried to act like a big boy, even as my mother walked away, leaving me at the temple to never come back for me.

For years, the memory was a source of pain and later the source of anger at my mother. It had tormented me so much that I buried it, refusing to ever look back, as if the first six years of my life never happened at all, as if I was born at the temple where my real life began.

But now, I remembered seeing a similar cut on my mother’s lip. I saw it clearly just before she kissed me goodbye.

Bruises didn’t show on our coal-black skin. Wounds healed quickly, easy to hide for a little while. But a cut on the lip remained visible for everyone while it was fresh.

Mother had been hurt the night she dropped me off at the temple. Then she went back to my stepfather to face him alone…

My next breath came out shaky. I flexed my fingers, fisting the plain material of my skirt.

A gentle touch of Ciana’s hand covered my fist.

“Please don’t tell me you’re going to run away from me again,” she said with a gentle smile.

I had to run. I had to crawl into a dark, cold place somewhere and stay there for the next century or longer to process everything I’d just remembered.

But as I stared at her small brown hand on my large black one, I had no strength to pull away from the comfort it gave me.

I didn’t know what she saw in my eyes when I looked at her, but her features crumbled with compassion.

“Oh, Kurai,” she breathed out, shifting closer. “Please, my past isn’t worth it for you to be upset about. ”

She wrapped her arms around me and pulled me into her warmth.

There, on the shoulder of the woman whose kind I swore to cleanse the kingdom of, I let the memories assault me. Because at that moment, I couldn’t think of a safer place to face them.