PROLOGUE: The Hands of a Killer
His were the hands of a killer.
Though his fingers were short, they curled around a throat just fine; the callouses helped his grip gain purchase, and the hard muscles in his hand served to knead the breath out of a stubborn neck. A wrench of the wrist would end their suffering quickly, but he was never afforded such luxury. He was made to hesitate in it, to thus prolong their suffering, to become the avatar of that which he hated the most. He was made to be a tool, a means to an end. An enforcer—a consequence…
But never a man. Man was fallible and frail, things he was not allowed to be. He did not have a chance to be swaddled to the breast of Compassion, nor would he ever be, for in his mind he had done nothing to deserve it. Each time he reached for it, he came away clutching sand; it slipped right through his fingers. He found there were bits of himself going that way, too.
A mind awash with vivid, tactile memory kept him awake, most nights. He felt each lash upon his back like they were all the first, and he felt her hands pushing against his chest all over again. That wicked woman, the way she would order him about—the things she would make him do. She took pleasure in the snuffing of life, he knew. She ought to have enjoyed the end of her own.
He was a boy, then. He remembered squeezing so tightly he thought he might trap his hands in such a position forever. His fingers locked up as her eyes bulged. And in the aftermath, he could only breathe, reveling in the stolen air. The life of the life-taker was his; she would never bring harm to another soul, for hers had been torn from her mortal trappings.
They found him bundled up beside her, wide-eyed and sleepless. They hauled him out of the workhouse and beat him until he could no longer see. They dragged him to the front of the estate and unleashed whips upon his back. They were going to kill him, he hoped, until he overheard something of a new benefactor. For that woman was not important—no, in fact, she was no one at all.
She was like him.
He had not killed his torturer, but one of the tortured. The coarseness he had almost-felt was not a hood of fur, but hair, dark and thick like his. And the demon he thought he destroyed stood behind him as they saw him off to a new family, simpering to herself. He barely managed to hold himself back from her, his palms itching for the pulse of her throat. His new owners took his shaking for fear; he was praised for knowing when to be afraid.
In a way, he was afraid. But not of them.
