Track 5: The Darkness Within

Lyrics by Gemma Ford from Vow of Fire (Blood & Vows: Book 1)

Track 5

There’s a room inside this old heart
I keep locked up with a key,
A place where all the ghosts I made
Still sit and stare at me.

I buried every weakness,
Every wound beneath my skin,
Built these walls so high and thick
Nobody gets in.

This town thinks they know my story,
The man I chose to be,
The cold eyes and the hard hands,
The reputation that precedes me.

But they don’t see the shadows
That follow when the lights grow dim,
They only know the devil outside,
Not the darkness within.

There’s a darkness within,
A fire I can’t show,
A thousand things I carry
That nobody can know.

And if I ever let it breathe,
If I ever let it live,
It might destroy the man I am
And everything I’ve built.

So I keep it underground,
Locked beneath my skin,
She can never know
The darkness within.

She looks at me like I’m worth saving,
Like she sees something good,
Like somehow I could still become
The man I wish I could.

But angels shouldn’t touch the things
That live beneath these scars,
She deserves sunlight on her skin,
Not the storms inside my heart.

There’s a darkness within,
A fire I can’t show,
A thousand things I carry
That nobody can know.

And if I ever let it breathe,
If I ever let it live,
It might destroy the man I am
And everything I’ve built.

So I keep it underground,
Locked beneath my skin,
She can never know
The darkness within.

Every night I tell myself
This burden’s mine alone,
That loving her means protecting her
From everything I’ve become.

But the harder that I fight it,
The harder that I pretend,
The more I hear her name
Echoing through my head.

There’s a darkness within,
But she’s the only light,
The only thing that pulls me back
From disappearing into night.

And maybe one day she’ll see
The truth beneath my skin,
And love me anyway
For the darkness within.

So if you see me smiling,
Know that it’s paper-thin,
Because nobody ever really leaves
The darkness within.