Page 61 of The Shard and the Serpent (Shard Daughters #1)

Hurt Girls

Rayze

The Truth, Pt. II

My mother loved reading to us, her favorite an old story penned by an unknown author. It was older than every other text in Squallspire’s library, half of its pages illegible, the slanted cursive long faded.

It was a story of a girl named Rayze Angeline: the Angel of Sin.

Mother believed the story was written before our realm, Mirror, came to be—when mortals and monsters had a single home in a place called Ealluria.

The story spoke of Gods and their children, Guardians, and of humans.

A beautiful land belonging to every being known in existence, all of our species now spread across the multiverse in prison realms.

Mirror being the one belonging to mankind.

Rayze was a human girl but a hero, nonetheless.

She was strong and confident, and because half the pages were unreadable, our mother let my sisters and I decide the adventures Rayze went on.

She fought demons and had magic, chosen by the Gods to be a savior of any fearing innocent trapped by sin and corruption.

I loved pretending I was Rayze when I shot my arrows, and when Warrick first called me angel, it only made the fantasy more solid.

When The Serpent first hung me in chains, it wasn’t hard to pretend again, to reach for her. Fictional or not, Rayze was a source of strength. A way to remember my mother and sisters as they were, not as the limp things I was forced to leave behind.

Then Russell tied me to a bed, and it got harder.

The Angel of Sin wasn’t coming to save me. I needed to become her. She was cunning and sharp, escaped every trap my sisters and I threw her way. There was nothing— nothing —she couldn’t survive.

Especially men.

The cuts The Serpent made were never deep enough to bleed me dry. That was his first mistake.

His second was forgetting hurt girls become angry women.

Every bruise against my skin, every dissection made to find the source of my magic, became fuel. My power nurtured itself within my rage, resting dormant while I knotted myself into who I needed to be to survive.

I couldn’t command him. Not then. I didn’t know how to maneuver my magic without volatile emotions involved, and the more he hurt me, the less accessible my power became, my emotions trapped under a suffocating veil.

Hallie numbed.

Rayze screamed.

Hallie whimpered.

Rayze planned.

Hallie died.

Rayze smiled.

When violence becomes your every day, it’s easy to normalize it. I hadn’t meant to. It just happened.

Maybe it was when I fully felt Hallie die somewhere deep inside me.

More likely, it was the day Warrick banged on the door hiding me, demanding a meeting with The Serpent.

He was so close to finding me, but Russell had him escorted away.

He came back more than once, and I know now that it was because of the living shard of my power within him.

It was desperate to reach me, to save me.

My snake didn’t understand why he was drawn to a random door in the Underground. He wouldn’t have remembered me, but the Bond was there, waiting for us to find each other again. One look at me, and he would’ve known he needed to protect me.

If only he’d opened the door.

Two years. I was The Serpent’s favorite toy for two fucking years. I’d never know sex the same, never feel touch without wondering what ultimatum it holds, never have kids, never be the woman I could’ve been.

But there were two things he couldn’t ruin—my magic and Rayze Angeline.

When Russell slept, it was my turn to play.

Carefully, slowly, blood seeping from my nose and eyes, I tied my first commanded knot.

Then another. A third. The very act forced me unconscious, left me more pliable to him when he awoke, but magic, I’ve found, is a lot like a muscle.

It can’t grow unless you push it further and further , and despite being vulnerable because of it, Russell started hurting me less.

“Stop.”

“No.”

“Please.”

Three commands buried in The Serpent’s mind, night after night. One year. Then two. Until a week passed when he didn’t come for me. Like he’d forgotten me just as his son had.

Sometimes, a girl’s true hero can only ever be herself.

11 Years Ago // 16 Years Old

My feet bleed with every smack against gritty, grime-covered rock, the tunnel a narrowing blur as I sprint.

I’m slow, no matter how hard I pump my arms, my body feeble and hungry.

My shoulder knocks into a Night Market cart when I careen around a corner.

Its keeper flashes me a hard glare, several of her wares toppling to the ground among the crowded section of the Underground.

Then she looks me up and down, taking in my naked body and the deep lacerations along my wrists and ankles where my restraints had been before I commanded them away.

“Skin,” the woman accuses. She reaches below her stall’s counter and pulls free a knife. “Where you escape from girl?”

Knees shaking, gasping for air, I shove away and further into the Underground. My ears prick to the sharp clang of armor beating through the crowd at my back, The Serpent’s Chrome Guard closing in.

The crowd begins to part, glares and grief turned my way, but no one tries to save me.

No one.

Fingers shaking, I pry through civilians until I break through to the end of the cavern, rain thundering just beyond the gaping mouth of the Underground.

I plunge into it, water hitting like blades of ice against my hunched shoulders and bowed head.

My legs tremble, minutes from giving in, but I force them stronger than they are.

The dark of an alley swallows me, tattered banners and tarps flapping against the storm.

Puddles splash with each of my steps, my vision blurring with exhaustion.

Buildings rise all around me, the coils on their tops sparking when lightning crackles through the dark.

Wires strung overhead pulse and hum, their soft buzz lulling me into a deeper trance.

I stumble into a wall and catch myself against its rigid brick, my fingers skimming dark, tinted glass. My face reflects back, and my lips part. There’d been nothing but cavernous walls, darkness, and that bed in the place Russell kept me. I knew he’d made me smaller.

I just didn’t know how much.

I can see bone through my skin, my face a sickly, bright pale. My dark hair is a tangled mess of grease, sweat, blood, and cum, stringing past my waist as rain washes over me.

Tilting my forehead into the glass, I press my palm against it, closing my eyes and inhaling deeply. Then my gaze focuses slowly on the rickety, rusted staircase climbing the side of the building.

My body carries me forward. This—this I’ll keep going for.

I climb up the steps, hands gripping the rails on either side, thighs shaking. I don’t stop, the sound of armor and orders echoing through the city.

My hand slaps against the top of the roof, and I drag myself onto its concrete surface.

A low, pained groan leaves me as my stomach slices against the rough surface, elbowing my way toward the edge.

With a sputtering breath, I roll to my side, my back toward certain death, and my eyes toward the skyline.

Synlon . I’d always wanted to see it.

Across the city, rain falls in a sheet of gray. Neon flickers in time with flashes of lightning, the morning sun beginning to peak between high rises and mountains.

Pretty.

I close my eyes, tilt back my shoulders—and plummet off the edge.

For a single moment, falling to my death, I remember briefly what it feels like to be alive. The feel of the rain against my skin, the air whooshing around me. The beauty to the stars peering between storm clouds, and the way my power shifts and expands hungrily in my gut.

I’m not done.

Far from it.

I made The Serpent and The Kraken a promise to pay, I plan to keep it, and Warrick—a piece of my power grows inside him. My. Power.

Mine .

I want it back. Sacrifice be damned. If it’s my body I must give, then so be it. My heart? Dead. My morals—there’s no line I won’t cross.

If you’re going to win, you can’t be afraid to strike where it hurts most.

A void wraps its arms around me in a firm embrace, and I fall unconscious to the glittering presence of a crown among an endless, dark mirror, my wrath reflected in each of its spires.

What’s your name, my Daughter? A voice whispered between stars.

I spread my arms, sure that I’m flying, smiling because finally something among the darkness of my life doesn’t want to drag me down.

It wants to talk.

“Rayze,” I whisper. “Rayze Angeline.”

Black warps to the white peaks of mountains, my body shooting down from the sky like a falling star.

Dry your tears, my Angel of Sin . A queen steps from a house made of glass.

I slow as I near marble, my body floating down and my toes skimming its cool surface. I hold my breath, the ground shaking with my touch, and the queen dissolves into shadow. As she disperses, the mountains calm and three girls peer out from the thin veil left in her wake.

Shard Daughters do not cry , the girl at the front says, her voice ringing through my being just as the queen’s had, her head caged in spikes.

She walks to me, stiff black skirts shining beneath the sunlight. Then she lifts a gloved hand and presses it against my back, guiding me toward the house.

We get even .