God of Fury (Legacy of Gods #5) by Rina Kent

I was so jealous of Lan, so filled with envy that I started to distance myself from him. I blamed him for how I was broken. I hated him because I wasn’t like him. I despised him for having everything while I had nothing.

It was colossally irrational, but there was no logic in the daft, angsty fifteen-year-old me.

My biggest mistake was voicing my displeasure about Lan to Grace. She latched on to it like a hyena and got me exactly where she wanted me.

Powerless. Hopeless. Used.

Since then, I’ve been submerged in the dot of ink on my hand that I looked at the entire time she fucked herself on me. While I screamed and begged her to stop. Like a fucking weakling.

I could’ve fought her or pushed her off. I was hitting puberty pretty hard and was definitely physically stronger than her. But I was too confused, too caught up in the attention she showed me, too scared and horrified about the thought of hating the idea of having sex with everyone.

The reason I cut my left hand is because it’s the hand I wrapped around her nape when I kissed her that day. When I gave her the opening to violate me thoroughly.

I’ve often had fantasies about cutting off that hand. Chopping it to pieces. Extracting the cancerous organ that signed my mental death certificate.

The reason I posted stories with #NewDay every day is because I was proud for surviving another day, for not letting my head get the better of me and pushing me down the cliff of my sanity.

It’s been over eight years, but I still can’t escape the ink and the nausea that flooded me during the whole experience.

I remember that day so well. After I stumbled out of her flat, I spent it roaming the streets, walking in the rain with a dazed expression. Though I was drenched, it wasn’t the physical discomfort I felt.

No.

I was frozen, cold and frosty, all the way to my goddamn mind.

When I got home, I stood in my shower for two hours. But it wasn’t water that rinsed me.

Black ink poured down on me, covering my eyes, nose, and ears and jamming inside my throat until I was retching on the shower floor again and again. At some point, I was dry heaving. The entire time, a strong floral perfume clogged my nostrils and my fucking throat and her red fucking nails choked me.

I didn’t go to my bed. I couldn’t.

Whenever I moved, I felt her ghost right behind me, cackling and cooing, her nails sinking into my arm.

I was terrified that she’d do it again.

So I ran to Lan’s room. Ironic, really, since I was the one who demanded we have separate rooms two years prior. Lan never wanted that and he became so petty afterward.

However, when I stood in his doorway, he immediately knew something was off. He jumped from his bed and asked me what was wrong.

I whispered, “Nothing. Can you hug me?”

The moment his arms wrapped around me, I broke down. I cried in his chest for so long that I think I passed out.

My brother held me through it all, and even though he doesn’t know how to soothe people, he was patting my back the entire time. He carried me to his bed and let me sleep in his arms.

He whispered, “Tell me who did this to you so I can end them.”

Then he begged me for the first time in his life.

I didn’t tell him the real reason. Instead, I poured my heart out about how I was struggling with art and school and attention. I also admitted out loud that I hated how I wasn’t as strong-minded as he was.

That worked for a while, but I don’t think he ever believed me.

Then the experimentation phase I went through bit me in the arse and some homophobes started mocking me and calling me slurs.

Lan thought the breakdown was because of that, and I saw firsthand how he targeted them and turned their lives into a nightmare. To this day, not one of them is a functioning member of society.

For a long time, Lan kept watching me, but I was already good at building façades and perfecting my image.

I stopped trying to experiment with guys and kept to girls because they made me feel like Lan. Straight. High sex drive. Normal.

As for Grace, I handled her soon after.

She made the mistake of sending me the footage of what happened with the caption: Study this and you’ll let your raw talent loose.

I told her she needed to be the one who told Mum that she was discontinuing my lessons because of work or whatever excuse she could come up with. If she didn’t, I would show the footage to Mum.

That was a lie. I would rather die than show that to anyone.

Grace was appalled. She thought we were in it together and that I liked her. She even told me that she felt like I’d used her.

I used her.

Me.

She complied, not because she thought she’d assaulted me. No. It was fear of the scandal of having sex with a minor. To this day, she believes it was consensual and has often told me we could revisit ‘the good old days.’

She was out of my immediate life, but she never left it completely, not when Mum’s career depended on the almighty Grace Bruckner. She worked so hard to be considered by her and I couldn’t be the one who ruined that.

So I swallowed the knife with its blood and pretended everything would be fine. I did encourage her. I did kiss her back. I did feel drunk on the sense of power she offered me.

A man can’t be raped by a woman.

That’s the stigma that stayed in my head even though the nausea from that time followed me for the rest of my life.

It got worse, not better, but I had it under control. I believed myself to be fine.