Chapter Fifty-Five #2
My mother’s face slowly fades. Yet even as it goes, her eyes hold mine, as if she can see something I can’t.
“You remember,” she says sternly, “this is not your fault. You do not let this break you. You do not let them win.” Despite everything, she brims with strength.
“You do not cower. You do not yield. You do not falter. Say it.”
My lips tremble. “I will not cower. I will not yield. I will not falter.”
Despite the nightmare, hope blooms across her lips. “That’s my sweet flower.”
Against my own volition—despite my attempts to fight back and hold steady—my arm extends and my fingers uncurl, releasing the burning wick.
“I love you,” she whispers as the wick falls to the spilled oil in slow motion.
My mother disappears behind an eruption of hungry flames.
I fall to my knees, screaming, cursing—sobbing uncontrollably. My fists pound at the ground. Again. Again. Again. Until they are a bloodied, ravaged mess, chunky skin peeling away from my knuckles.
A cacophony of voices sing in my ear. “ She is waiting for you. She is coming. Finally, she comes.”
The fire dims to a dull glow, revealing an incinerated corpse.
The horrifying thing creaks its neck and pins me with a molten stare, charred skin reaching toward me.
“This is your fault .” The body once belonging to my mother pries itself from the wooden post, making strange popping noises that make my blood run cold. “Look what you’ve done to me. Look. ”
Limping toward me, my mother’s black, crumbling fingers grip my chin, and she forces me to look at her.
I shatter completely.
“I’m so sorry,” I rasp with utter brokenness. “I am so, so sorry.”
A horrid cackle breaks from her lips. “And what am I supposed to do with apologies now? Do you see this burnt skin? Do you know what it feels like to be burned alive?”
“No,” I squeak.
“Want me to show you?”
I lift my head and stare into the abyss of her eyes. “Yes,” I breathe.
Finally, what I deserve.
“Say it,” the voice hisses. “Say you want me to make you burn .”
I choke back my sob. “I want you to make me burn.”
She grins, her chapped lips splitting open to reveal rotted teeth.
Suddenly, her burnt body morphs, and black and brown, thorn-coated vines twirl around her torso, twisting and knotting across her arms, rising up into her neck, covering her scalp.
Beneath the vines, a fiery glow—resembling charcoaled embers after suffocating flames from wood—intensifies, making her burn a shade of vermillion.
Her black eyes become ringed with that same glowing fire, and at the center of her forehead a mark appears—one I don’t recognize.
And it’s like I suddenly can’t look away. My eyes are drawn to that strange, glowing ring of fire circling her depthless eyes.
Voices whisper in a frenzy, different from the ones before, just barely audible. Erhè akta maht. Erhè akta maht. Erhè akta maht.
That’s when I realize—with no small amount of horror—this is an Abdite.
My whole body explodes with a sharp, searing pain. It’s like a hot iron is being shoved against every crevice of my skin. Panic sweeps through me as I grit my teeth against the baffling sensation. Needle-pricks, being stabbed—throbbing, pulsing, burning . It hurts .
I scream and collapse, my body shuddering and thrashing against what’s too immense to even fully process.
The Abdite kneels down next to me. It glides a strangely cold hand along my cheek. “It hurts, doesn’t it?”
I can’t speak; the pain is too great. I whimper instead.
The Abdite leans forward and brushes its chapped lips against my ear. “Want me to tell you a secret?” she whispers. “It doesn’t hurt forever. Not if you give in to it.”
I claw at my throat, edging madness. It feels like I’ve swallowed molten lava, blisters replacing saliva.
The Abdite chuckles, watching me with delighted interest. “The throat hurts, but not as bad as the eyes.” She points to her own as if for emphasis. “Let the fire ravage you. Once it does, you will have power far greater than you can imagine.”
I gasp in wet-sounding breaths and begin choking on ash.
The Abite strokes my hair and hums. Then, as if hearing something, she whips her head toward something in the distance. When she returns her attention to me, her expression is entirely changed. “A gift before I go, Master’s Precious.”
She presses her finger against my forehead, and a blast of searing heat sizzles against my skin. A choked, gurgling gasp of pain is the only sound capable of leaving my lips.
“Goodbye for now. I’ll be seeing you again very soon.”
A wave of total darkness crashes onto the Abdite, shattering it into oblivion like an ice sculpture cleaved by a hammer.
Branches whip and extend from the charcoal sea, bringing everything around me toppling.
The unfurled darkness lassos around the sky and sends it plummeting. Forces the ground to crumple .
A small tendril extends to me and whispers something in my ear. It feels familiar and warm and good.“ It isn’t your fault,” the darkness whispers. “It should not have been you.”
Confused, I blink—still clutching at my burning throat, pain creating flurried snowflakes in my vision.
“It isn’t your fault ,” it repeats. “ It should not have been you. Say it . You must say it aloud.”
Maybe it’s because of the delirium I feel setting in or the sheer amount of pain warping my senses, but I do as it asks while everything crashes and crumbles into dust around me.
“It isn’t my fault,” I croak. “It should not have been me.”
Everything fades to black.