#kevstarter

Rose hadn't expected this to be easy. Nothing in her life had been easy so far, so why should anything have changed? After all, her lover had just been turned into a creature of pure evil and she was on a mission to kill him. That didn't exactly speak of a smooth, well-adjusted life. That didn't speak of improvement. No, this year had pretty much been the worst of Rose's life. She could handle all the stress of protecting Lissa - it was what she'd been made to do. And technically she should have been prepared to lose friends in the line of duty, but what had happened with Mason...it had left her in a state of emotional trauma that Rose still wasn't sure she'd escaped from. The guilt had been paralyzing, and though she'd received some closure with his ghost, his absence had left an immense hole in her heart that she hadn't even known he'd nestled himself into. Without his grounding presence, his easy smile - she felt a darkness seeping into her. How could something so sweet as him loving her have lead to something so awful? How could she have been so terrible as to not love him back completely, to not protect him from the storm that was her heart? It made her want to close off that part of herself forever.

But she didn't want to be hard, and ruthless, and cold. Rose wanted to be a great Guardian, but a fun person - a good best friend and a protector to Lissa. And yet she'd abandoned her. She'd had to, she knew that, she told herself every morning and still her chest ached by the end of every night. Rose had terrible dreams of Lissa, and of Mason, both calling out to her...and yet she could never reach them. God, it was awful. And - distracting. She was out every night searching for clues, someone to tell her where Dimitri's hometown was, but every night was feeling more draining since she barely slept. Still that didn't mean her instincts weren't on point. At least she continued to be capable of something. Even if it was just fighting, brutality, knowing how to kill to keep from being killed -

Earth was not very much like Nimueh had imagined it. Perhaps she'd been too far distanced from humanity for too long, filled with anger at their preferential treatment by her Father, and she'd just assumed they were still stuck in the dark ages. Intellectually she knew about their "feats" of technology, their modern wares, but the news had meant very little to her. She did not care for the humans who'd stolen her Father's affections. Until she had started considered that maybe His affections weren't worth much to her anymore. Her rage had been mounting for some time, but angels were patient even in their fury. It had taken centuries for her to consider turning her back on her heavenly family.

But once she'd begun to think it, there was no turning back. Not for Nimueh. She'd always been more headstrong than the majority of her siblings, willful and occasionally downright mischievous. Still, she had never understood why her Father was so...mysterious. So mercurial. It was as though she could never please Him, never understand Him. Nimueh and her brothers and sisters never knew His plans. Frankly - she was tired of it. Living half-slave, half-warrior was no way to spend an immortality. Bound to ridiculous, unexplained rules and the purity - it sent her into fits of wrath.