A Cold Wind Blows (Forgotten series, #3)

Chapter 1

Pain.

Pain was a curious thing.

The entire reason for it was to let your brain know that an action would damage your body but it was used in different ways as well.

It was used for revenge, for love, for hate, for duty. Some used it for pleasure, others for joy and sadism. It was used to control people, to manipulate them, to destroy them. I, however, used it differently than most.

Pain used to dampen my mind. For the eight years the Sol Warriors had me, the pain clouded my thoughts and drowned out my feelings. It was a heavy cloak, it overwhelmed everything.

It had been my only knowledge of life in my body. When the pain was gone it was because I was standing on the edge of a cliff above the abyss of death. A moment where I felt like I could jump in and leave it all behind before their cruelty would yank me back to the land of the living.

Pain used to ripple under my skin in waves, flowing through my veins until there wasn't a nerve that didn't scream at me to make it stop. I felt driven to the point of insanity until there was a faint clarity. A feeling of burning in my chest that was different.

Revenge.

It was what I used to escape and when I did, when the pain stopped. I had realized how they had marked me. Not just my skin, their actions had marked a place deep inside of me that wouldn't heal. I was duller without the pain, my actions sluggish, the world slower. Then I realized I could control it.

The pain.

A bit of it could make my world more vivid but too much would darken it, make it impossible to see. It was a delicate balance that I held on a knife's edge.

A razor thin blade of silver for the times I could bleed alone and a simple one of steel when the weakness couldn't be shown. I used my body as a canvas, it was my masterpiece. Mundanes called it scarification, I called it reclaiming. My body was a territory that had been stripped away from me, stolen and ruined. I was simply taking it back.

Their lines were harsh, straight and brutal. Mine were swirling, delicate and precise. One showed my resilience and the other my strength. What they had used to break me down, to sear me with cruelty, I had taken back. They may have given them to me, forced me to carry them but I wore them with pride.

I set the knife down, ignoring the blood that coated my fingers and the blade as I stared at the new marks. The softly curling, thin wounds twirled between the letters of the word Momento like creeping vines. I stared at the blood covered word I had carved into my arm nearly two years ago. I liked the raised pink letters despite the thick redness that coated them now. I liked them just as I liked the others that completed the set on my other arm.

Momento Mori

Remember you must die.

Death would always be inevitable but he would only take me when I stopped fighting him. I fought him with the Sol Warriors, I had looked into his soulless eyes and spat in his face. I had emerged from Hell with the power of the Undergods behind me, they fanned my flames of rage and revenge but no one insulted Death without punishment.

Bloodlust and a feral nature had claimed my wolf, I enjoyed it but I kept her leashed for the sake of false civility. If people knew just how badly we would prefer to have them bleeding at our feet, we would be isolated and I could not be isolated if I were to protect my Alpha's weakness.

"Lace, are you doing it again?" Carla's voice was wavering and I looked up into the mirror, blinking slowly as I did so. In the silver surface there was a faint flash of the gold of my hair as I immediately looked away. One could get lost in their reflection, besides nothing changed when I looked in a mirror. I was still the creature that had been forged with pain and tempered with blood.