Pure Requiem - Aja James Page 0,33

that even though I don’t have a Pure soul, my soul won’t rest until it finds what it’s looking for. You.”

“Well you found me. You can kick up your heels, wither and die now,” I grunt with as much spitefulness as I can muster, acting like I mean it.

I do mean it. I do.

But really, I don’t.

And she knows it too, because I feel a small smile against my cheek.

“I will, don’t worry. I’ll definitely die. If not right this second, then for sure at the end of my short, human life. Most likely I’ll die a lot earlier than that in some grisly death, given my job as a Chevalier.”

“A really gruesome death,” I concur.

“The bloodiest, vilest, most painful demise,” she adds almost comfortingly.

“I hate you,” I mutter.

But the way I say it sounds almost like “I love you.”

“I know,” she sighs. “I looked for you afterwards, I did. I looked everywhere, but you left the village, and I didn’t know where to find you. If I’d come to my senses sooner, maybe I could have…I don’t know. I died regretting it. Every life I’ve lived, I regretted it.”

“Why…” I gulp down a fresh surge of splintering pain.

“Why…”

Why did you break my heart? Shatter my soul? The pain of losing you was far greater than the pain of what those brutes did to me. You were all I had. My only friend in the world. My only family. Why did you abandon me too? WHY?

She loosens her arms a little to put her forehead against mine.

“Will you listen to my story? I want to explain. None of it is an excuse. I just want to explain.”

Jerkily, I nod, taking a deep, bracing breath.

“You see, I wasn’t always an orphan,” she begins, her first words making me stiffen in full attention.

This is important. I need to understand.

“Children aren’t supposed to remember things so early in life, but I do. Or I did. I remembered my parents. Not what they looked like, but my mother’s scent, my father’s laughter. We lived in a small hut on the edge of the village. I don’t recall what they did for a living, but I remember crawling after chickens and rabbits in the patch of grass in front of our hut.”

Before I realize what I’m doing, my hands start making soothing circles on Liv’s back. My instinct is so strong to comfort her, that I’m helpless to fight against it.

“I remember one night, there was a knock at the door. Mama had just put me to bed, but I wasn’t asleep yet. Papa went to open the door, but there was a terrifying shout. Mama ran towards the commotion, and I heard her scream too. And then there was silence. Dreadful, awful, tomb-like silence.”

I wrap my arms tighter around her, my breathing coming faster just like hers, as if I feel vicariously what she feels in that moment, in that memory. She’s so frightened. So small and scared.

“I called out to them, but there was no answer,” she continues in a whisper. “I clambered off my cot and toddled to the front of the hut.”

A seismic shudder racks her body.

“There’s a beautiful strange woman in my home. Her eyes were pitch black. Monstrous. Her mouth, chin, jaw…they were all coated and dripping with blood. She clutched a beating heart in her hand. And she ate it right in front of me, staring into my eyes. I know she saw me. I know it. But she didn’t care. Blood spurted everywhere when she chomped down with sharp teeth. I couldn’t make a sound for the horror of it.”

Liv suddenly pulls away from me, her eyes unfocused, lost in the memory.

“And then…and then…when she finished devouring the heart, she started transforming. Slowly, her face and body changed. And…and…she became my mother. This monstrous thing became my mother.”

Shit. No wonder she hates shifters. But I don’t know of any shapeshifter or animal spirit who eats hearts, for fuck sakes. At least, not in their humanoid form.

“I couldn’t believe it,” she whispers, as if speaking too loudly will somehow conjure the memory into reality. “But before I could do or say anything, she left as suddenly as she came. I called out to her, thinking maybe that was my mother. I didn’t want my mama to go. But then I felt the wetness that was oozing across the dirt ground of our hut. And I saw the two bodies by the door.”

Liv looks into my eyes then, her