Lento Dissonance

I was tired of fighting for my own air. 

When had I ever had the chance to be impulsive? To act without thinking five steps ahead? To just do something without the risk it might kill me? 

I used to think of myself as cautious, reasonable, shy — but I'm not. At my core, I want adventure and action and movement. I just never let me myself even imagine it, back when it seemed so impossible.

But nectar made it possible. Nectar let me be the person I am, the person who has to be locked up most of the time so I can just keep breathing. 

Without it, what am I? Pathetic. Weak. Slow. Breakable.

I almost suffocated today. And that's not how I want to die. 

Evidently, the only way to make sure it doesn't happen that way is to take care of death myself. 

It doesn't seem selfish. It's logical — the only way out. My body rib change is tightening around my lungs, squeezing the life out of me, and now that I know what it's like to breathe, I can't go back. 

And would it matter to anyone if I just wasn't here? As a child, I caused pain and panic when my attacks hit, and I built my life around creating as little harm as possible. But today I was here basically alone — only servants and a doctor — and if I had died I would have gone without anyone I love. And I knew it — I felt it down to my bones — that I was dying, again, and this time no one came.

My family has a complicated relationship with assassins. 

I almost wish my grandmother were here so I could ask her what she thinks about all this. But she and Grandfather stay mostly in the mountain region at one of the older manor houses, and ever since she started complaining about migraines in the city Grandfather won't step foot near court (national holidays and important ceremonies aside). 

(There is a family rumor that my grandmother does not get migraines but invented the act to finally remove my grandfather before his heart or the court did it for him. Whether or not that's true, it's been effective — he has taken to his version of "retirement" with all the zeal that made him a legendary king.)

She isn't here, though, and even if they plan to come to the summer ball (which I suppose must still be happening, even though Dasah won't be helping plan it) or even if I tried to write, it would all take too long. Now that I am not battling death twice a day, I have a lot of time to lie awake sleepless wrestling over what should be done. 

Dasah's father was the Raven. Her goofy, clumsy, unassuming dad had been the most notorious assassin in the past fifty years.