“They will call you a monster. They will call you worse. They will hate you. But remember this.”
This felt too real to ignore. It felt like the last time I might ever hear her voice. “What, Mama?”
Her eyes had gone soft. “You can’t change them. You can never change the thoughts of others.” She set one hand to my chest. “So let them think you’re a monster, but keep your heart soft.”
Easy to say. “How do I do that?”
A light grew in her eyes, bright and encompassing. It didn’t come from her, but from behind me—from the throne, and what lay on it.
Her pupils shrank, became slitted. Her lips parted to reveal pointed teeth, and she grinned or grimaced or both at once.
No longer Mama, but someone else.
“Remember who took your life.” Her voice had gone deep, gravelly, half-amused. “And remember who gives it back to you.”
With one thrust, she pushed me backward into the throne. My body hit the seat, my arms the brambles, my head the unforgiving bone backrest. My eyes closed, and her words were drowned by a bellow. A man’s voice all around me—one I knew, one I loved.
What had Mama said? I needed to hold on to it.
Let them think you’re a monster, but…
But… the rest was gone. The world had gone hazy, slip-slide.
Let them think you’re a monster… Let them think you’re a monster…
Remember who took your life. Remember who gives it back to you.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Dorian
I had said the words,though I didn’t remember choosing them. They had come from somewhere deeper than thought, deeper than the place where Caustrix’s power lived, deeper than the brand on my chest. They came from the floor of me, the last and lowest room.
Take it all.
And the dagger listened.
At first, nothing. Just my hand, her sternum. And then a tickling, an aching—the feeling of being emptied, of something flowing from the center of me into the center of her.
Mypower, my life.
With a jerk, the magic moved like barbed wire dragged through my marrow. My spine bowed. My mouth opened, and I might have screamed. It was hard to know—the current tore through me, drowningeverything else.
Death did not arrive as darkness. It moved through me, the extraction of flow and beat and breath.
Fully conscious. Fully aware. This was the hardest thing I’d ever done. But this was the death I deserved, after the life I’d lived. It was the only right thing to do.
My hand did not waver; the dagger did not fall. I lowered it into her lap, kept my fingers around it, and bent forward until our faces were close enough that the rest of the world didn’t exist.
I leaned my forehead against her temple. Any pain was endurable for the right reasons, and I had the very best. The only reason, really, any of us did anything at all.
The light of life. The love of another.
Numbness seeped in at the edges, fingers first, then forearms, then ribs, the pain becoming muted beneath it, and everything slowed. But I didn’t move my hand, didn’t close my eyes. I had to see, to know for sure.
She didn’t move. Her heart didn’t beat, her chest didn’t fill with air. Strength drained from my shoulder. My hand slipped from her body. The dagger rolled from my grasp.
Still the magic seeped out of me, slowed now to a trickle.