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FOR WHAT FEELS LIKE AN ETERNITY, Violet stands outside of Luka's room staring down the door as though it could grow a pair of red eyes and teeth and a mane of flame. As though it had a heart and Violet could set the wolves on it at the drop of a hand—or, even better, plunge a knife into its heart herself. Month after month, and although there is no dust on the door because the maids keep the premises spotless, no other fingerprints have made it further than the lightest feather of touches on the doorknob. Not even her father, who never faltered in his step, who not once glanced in the direction of Luka's bedroom and Violet was beginning to think he was made of the same marble this house was encased in, a mausoleum of profit and surgical precision. Her father, who Violet was beginning to think did not care.
—PAIN INTO RAGE—
Her hands stayed by her sides, clenched into fists. Every tally mark scoring her arms pulsed, as if there were a million screams inside her threatening to break out.
—IF YOU NEVER SHARPEN YOUR KNIVES, YOU WILL NEVER KILL MONSTERS—
Indifference was not the same as numbness, Violet knew that much. But why couldn't she have both? If her father could do it, why couldn't she? For too long, she'd been named heartless, coldblooded, sociopathic. Behind all those labels, she held the strings of power in her hands. Behind those labels, she had control. In this moment, she had anything but.
Steeling herself, Violet wrapped a hand around the doorknob.
"You better not be in there, Luka," Violet murmured, pulse thudding in her throat like a warning, a hummingbird beating its wings against the cage of her skin. Because I can't kill you. Pain into rage, she snarled internally, feeling the claws of the iron voice in her head digging into her skull like a puppeteer regaining a grip on the marionette, and without thinking twice, she twisted and shoved the door open vehemently before her momentary surge of blood-hot bravado could fade into cowardice.
The door banged open and Violet half-expected Luka to be lying on the floor, fingers stained black with charcoal, left hand moving furiously over his sketchbook. Half-expected his blonde head to snap up and for him to slant her an annoyed look that'd disintegrate the moment their eyes met, because he never could never hold down his anger, fleeting as a vanishing pulse.
But the room was empty, and the afternoon sunlight streaming through the window, pouring a beam of cryogenic dust onto the rum-soaked floorboards, served only a vacant spotlight for a fading memory. Posters of indie rock bands adorned the walls, curling a little at the corners. Four tall stacks of chipped and broken skateboard decks were stacked precariously in the corner of his room, a chaotic mountain that looked seconds away from disastrous collapse although Luka insisted with undaunted faith and gusto that it would never fall. His clothes were a bundled pile on the chair by his desk, which he never used for its intended purpose. Pencils and crumpled balls of discarded sketches littered the ground.
