Chapter 53
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Eurydice
My mother pressed one soft hand over my chest. “Oh, Eury—”
I pushed her hand away. “All my life you spoke of the monsters outside the wall.” The words pressed out, sharp and desperate. “All that time, you knew I was one. And half the time you treated me like one.”
There it was. The jagged truth, undeniable from any angle. Dredged up and out of me with my hands pressed over my chest, though it held nothing anymore.
Vaelen’s bleeding sky, it took death to say it aloud. I’d always hoped after we died, we didn’t have to think or feel or remember. Because then, then—
Then I wouldn’t have to know. I could have lived in the false light of her love and died happy.
Her hands opened, palms out, empty. She said nothing. I wanted to rage; I wanted to cry. It was just like her to go silent when I needed her most. On her last day alive she’d been sweet and loving, but that couldn’t undo the whole of my life.
My gaze flicked toward the throne, toward the dagger resting there. I wanted to grab it. Instead, my voice came out thick and childlike. “Say something.”
“You read the journal.” She was soft, careful. “You know my feelings about you, Eurydice.”
Oh, fuck the journal.
“Yes, in the journal you once wrote that you loved me.” I stepped toward her. “In life, you spent a third of my childhood in bed. Days, sunrise to sunset.”
“My girl—”
“Some days you loved me, and some days you couldn’t even look at me. You let me go twenty years without understanding why.”
“I didn’t understand it. Not for years.” Her hand came out toward me, reaching. “You can’t imagine. You can’t imagine knowing what was outside the wall, seeing a thing wheeled in, and then your child gone one night. And you don’t realize it for years.”
I longed to take her hand; instead, I scoffed. “I didn’t choose to be put in the bassinet. I only knew you. And now…”
Now it was all pointless. I was just a whelp of the Dip, and then a guard for a few months, and so briefly a queen I could barely remember the sharp points of the bramble diadem pressing into my scalp.
She came toward me. I hadn’t realized how far my gaze had fallen until her hands touched my shoulders. “Look at me.”
I didn’t.
She lifted my chin until our eyes met. “You aren’t meant for this place. Not yet. Already you’re on your way back.”
“I’ve died, Mama.”
“Listen to me, Eury. Listen. It’s impossible not to love you.”
Just words. My eyes burned, and I slumped, but her fingers only tightened.
“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.