Prologue
Blood soaked the ground, once a healthy brown colour now stained crimson by the broken body, twisted and cut open on the forest floor Her hazel eyes were dull and her skin pale and stone cold, her usually clean designer clothes now ripped and dirty hanging from her corpse. Her attackers seemed long gone by now, but why would they remain? They had succeeded in their plight. She was facing north, looking toward his house, as she lay dead in a pool of her own blood.
Sun shone brightly in the sky above of deep clear blue that resembled her eyes, pure and untouched as she'd once been. But that was a while ago, back when she could laugh hearty with her friends and dance and have fun without the ever-present memory of that night. She supposed she shouldn't, but she couldn’t stop the blame on both him, but mostly on herself. He had promised her, protection. He'd been too late, liar. Because at the end of the day she was still a shell of what she had been, forever haunted by the night she'd stopped shinning like the sun.
Darkness stretched out around him, drowning the ache and the horror he'd witnessed during his long, empty life. It had been that way ever since he could remember until it began fading away, disappearing slowly with the sound of her melodious voice and the sight of her angelic face. His loneliness was being overrun by her presence, he could not sleep, think, eat without her in his mind, so when her light began fading he cursed the weakening darkness.
Tears had not grazed his face in a very long time, not since he'd first lost her, so when he stopped his nightly run through the forest at the familiar tang of dry blood, he thought nothing of it, except the usual curiosity drawing him in. Yet even then, he realized, as he dug the hole that would become her final resting place, that his heart ached and hurt, that his eyes grew heavy with salty water and his stomach clenched painfully. That the smell was not a random person's. As he stumbled upon her body, torn and bent at impossible angles, he wished he could find the strength to let them run freely again, he wished them back, the tears.
Love. Her last thought had been of love as she was beaten and dying. She cursed her attacker for weakening her, she cursed her body for falling under its effects and, more specifically, she cursed herself. For lying her whole life, for deceiving the innocent, for hurting and killing others like it was now done to her and for hurting him. She had known it was a stupid, horrible idea to lie to him again. She had realized her mistake as the words tumbled out of her mouth and his face crumbled with the agony of the world, but it had to be done. He was in danger for loving her and she couldn't let that happen, not to him, so as she drew her last, unnecessary breath, she looked toward him and thought of their lost love.
