I nod. “And relieved. I’ve never felt such relief before. It’s just…gone.”
“What is?”
“The cage.”
He doesn’t ask me to elaborate, because I can see by his expression that he knows exactly what I mean.
“I’m still processing.”
“His death?” he asks.
I shake my head. “No. The depth of his control over my thoughts. My decisions. My life. Even now, I find myself cringing away from people, not just because of my power, but because he never wanted me to be touched. I saw things one way; he told me I was seeing it wrong. I felt something; he convinced me I was crazy or overreacting.”
It all comes rushing up. So many little moments. Times I was too blind to see. Too cowered by silver-tongued words in a gold-plated castle.
“It’s everything,” I explain. “The little things. How submissive I’d become. How trodden. I was nothing but a road to him. A means to get to where he wanted to go, and I paved that path in gold. Even now, I worry I’ll never really be rid of him. I worry that I’ll still be walked all over. What if I never truly heal from his manipulations? What if the damage he’s done to my person is never undone?”
There’s a long thoughtful silence before he says, “The emotional trauma you’ve endured will take time, and you need to know when to be gracious with yourself and when to steel yourself. But if you’re ever doubting, just stop and listen to the voice in your head. So long as the voice is yours and not his, then you know you’re beating the bastard.”
Beating the bastard.
I like the sound of that.
“To be honest, I was bracing myself for the guilt to hit me, for regret to shove its way in. Midas manipulated my emotions for so long that I fully expected the damage of that conditioning to rear its ugly head. But what he did to me…”
I clear my throat and look away, one hand feeding into my coat pocket. My fingers twist the piece of my ribbon around, the satin fabric looping around my hand, bolstering me.
“I don’t feel regret or guilt,” I admit. “I’m just fucking angry. Angry that I let it go on that long, that I let him take so much. I’m angry at everyone who ever wronged me or used me. And I’m angry that I didn’t figure out how to save myself sooner. I don’t know what I’m going to do with all this inside me, but I’m not afraid anymore. I’m not trodden with guilt or regret. All I feel is anger.”
Rip’s mouth curves. “Good. Use your rage to complete your courage.”
I suck in a breath of air, the fae beast inside of me practically purring at his claim.
“Anger can do a lot of things,” he goes on, thumbing over the sharp tips of his spikes. “It can drag you down, make you bitter. But if you wield it another way, it can be a stepping stone for your determination.”
“You sound like you’re speaking from experience.”
“I am. I learned to use my own rage to my advantage.”
The idea that this sharp anger that’s carved into the recesses of my chest could actually be put to use intrigues me. “So you’re not going to tell me to live and let live? To work through my anger and move past it?”
“Absolutely fucking not. I’m going to teach you to use it.”
CHAPTER 29
AUREN
I don’t want to become bogged down by my anger, dragged under it, to turn into some bitter, miserable person. But using my anger in a different way? In a way to bolster me up? Now that—that is something I can get behind.
I’ve always been more passive in life. I think passivity is often mistaken for weakness. Really, it’s just a different way to cope. To survive. The safest way I learned to react to situations was to endure. To let things blow over. To please. To peace keep. To constantly regulate my own reactions and thoughts and emotions so that the tyrant could be appeased into a lesser form of abuse.
So from an early age, I learned that my anger wasn’t safe. Then, I learned that it was irrational. Then, it was just plain wrong. I was always in the wrong.
Fuck that.
My Divine-damned mind was warped into the mold of someone else’s purpose.
The abuse came in shades of gray. Some were darker and more noticeable than others. Some, I probably haven’t even noticed yet. My healing from this isn’t going to happen overnight.
But…I’m free now. Truly free. For the first time in twenty years, I have the chance to decide who I’m going to be, how I’m going to be. And I don’t want to waste it on him. I want to sever his effects as meticulously and as thoroughly as he severed me.