Pure Requiem - Aja James Page 0,35

jealousy festered in her soul, turning her love to hate.

I do not pause to reassure her. In this moment, I cannot find the patience.

“We Pure Ones owned no land. We couldn’t farm and sell crops. At any moment, any Dark One or human could raid our homes and take our possessions, our bodies, whatever they wanted, and no one would stop them. You know this. You became my Mistress.”

“I-I-” she struggles with words, gulping.

I know I am hurting her. I hate it. But she must be reminded of the truth. She must understand who I am.

“Perhaps, in a different time, in a different life, I would have wanted a simple path,” I press on. “It is true that I never wanted to become a fighter. Never imagined that I would lead armies, never mind a rebellion that would overturn a millennia-old empire.”

Her breathing sounds increasingly agitated, as if she is fighting tears.

I want to go to her, but my next words keep me rooted.

“I never expected to succeed. But someone had to begin the fight. If not me, then who? Who should we have waited for to liberate us? In the four thousand years of my captivity since, I have often thought of this. What if I never joined, and then led, the rebellion? Would we still be Dark Ones’ slaves? Would I still be your Blood Slave? It would have killed me, in more permanent ways than anything Medusa has ever done to me, to be your whore.”

“Tal…” she moans.

But I am relentless. She must understand. This reckoning between us is long overdue.

“Even if you never took another male. Even if you somehow avoided it. I would still be a slave. Never your equal. I love you beyond heaven and hell, Ishtar. But I cannot live like that. I am not built that way. I would choose death over slavery, even if my Mistress were you.”

“Tal…” she gasps, moving a little closer, but still out of reach.

“My other choice was to fight for my freedom,” I continue in the same low voice, breathing deeply through my nose to contain the roiling emotions inside.

I must get through this without breaking. She must understand.

“But that fight would lead to the destruction of everything and everyone you held dear. The Dark Ones’ entire way of life. I knew that. I had no illusions that somehow, miraculously, our Kinds would come to an understanding at the end of it, that suddenly, Dark Ones would recognize the equality and right to freedom of Pure Ones, and we would live peaceably in shared harmony.”

A small whimper escapes her throat. She must be remembering the carnage and chaos. She never gave me the details, but I know she suffered greatly.

Yet, still, I press on.

“If I had not seen the extent of the bloody Purge after the Great War, I expected it. So my choice to fight led to the one person I loved above all else to lose everything. To suffer in the aftermath for countless years. I chose that.”

“I chose your suffering, Ishtar.”

We are both silent for long moments. Only our shuddering breaths can be heard in the eerily still apartment.

I let her absorb what I said. Truly internalize it. I’ve said similar words before, but never this blunt, this brutal. We’ve avoided peeling apart the truth since finding each other again. We wanted to focus on our love for each other instead.

But love cannot thrive in darkness and willful ignorance.

I made choices that changed the course of both our lives, as well as the lives of hundreds of thousands of Pure and Dark Ones. Humans too.

Perhaps she would realize, finally, that I am not worthy of her. Perhaps she would think that my love for her, in the end, was not strong enough for me to swallow my pride and simply kneel at her feet. Watch her fuck other males and even take one as Mate while I await Her Royal Highness’s pleasure like a pampered dog. A bridled stallion.

Why doesn’t she blame me for everything I did? I do not deserve her.

But I refuse to let her go.

I should have died. If not in the Great War, then during the millennia of torture. I’d wanted to die that night she tore into me…the night I gave her all of myself, every last breath.

She would have moved on, found a better male. She would have healed eventually, the pain of the past a distant memory. My Ishtar is full of joy and light. She