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There was a thrill in killing him, in particular. The same thrill in killing the cardinal but here it was increased tenfold. The cardinal had been dying, Boreal was all her and he had never seen it coming. It almost made her laugh that he thought he was going to be able to fuck her and control her, that he had power over her and now look at him. She wondered what it would feel like to kill MacPhail next. Would it be the same thrill or would it dull over time. She suspected the latter, everything dulled eventually.
Still revenge was sweeter than she expected. The freedom of the female scholar in the other Oxford had set a new fury with in her, bringing back old memories and frustrations. It made her want to cry and scream. Worse it made her feel helpless, that in another world she could have been everything she had ever wanted to be but instead she had been stuck in her own and it had turned her into this. The fury of it, of every abuse and humiliation, burned under her skin, buried so deep it was like some strange aching nothingness.
She wondered whether she could kill Asriel. She had imagined it over and over once, imagined feeling his heart and his breathing falter until eventually it stopped. It was not in her interest to do so now of course, nor more importantly Lyra’s but the image remained stuck in her mind all the same. She had thought that Asriel had given her freedom but now she wasn’t so sure. She had felt so wrapped up in him, intoxicated by him almost, it was itself its own form of bondage. He had taken some of that pain and anger and wound it into love for him to the point where a part of her still did. The part of her that had kissed him at the opening of two worlds and had wanted to go with him. Be with him.
If only it hadn’t been for Lyra. Motherhood had not come naturally to her. When Lyra had been born, she had scarcely looked at her, shoving her into the nurse and then to Asriel as soon as she could. She knew that the love for Lyra was twisted with the same anger and pain as her love for Asriel and some part of her knew too that it would have the same destructive power as her relationship with Asriel. She had seen it in her daughter’s face as Lyra’s daemon had clutched hers as hers had once clutched Lyra’s when she had told Lyra that Asriel was her father. Some cycle of destruction but how could else she teach her daughter to survive? How else could she keep her daughter safe? She needed to keep her daughter in her arms, close and safe and surviving. She loved Lyra like she had never loved anything. The feeling had been sudden and not the warm loving glow that other women had described but it was there and it was real, even if nothing else was.