Page 59 of Liar's Heart
Ender takes a step closer, getting in his face without risking Alec being able to touch him with his limited reach. “Being your greatest failure is the best gift youevercould have given me. Your disappointment will fuel me for the rest of my fucking life. Thank you for that.”
He straightens, then steps away to wheel the metal table holding all of his instruments closer to his work area. Comingback to stand in front of the chair, he picks up the first tool he needs. Ender’s voice is full of finality when he says, “Alec Sinclair, your fare has been paid. Do you have any last words before we begin?”
Alec’s voice is filled with fury as he says, “You think you know better. You think you know what you’re doing, but mark my words: You’ll find yourself making the same choices I did soon enough. You think you get to keep your moralsandyour crown? You’re wrong. You won’t ever survive as Charon without selling your soul.”
Ender nods, accepting Alec’s final words, before crowding the man. With his free hand, he pinches Alec’s cheeks hard, forcing his lips to part so he can cram the blades of the mouth prop between his teeth. That’s my cue.
By the time I close the confessional door behind me, Ender’s just finished ratcheting and locking the prop as far open as Alec’s jaws will allow. He can still make noise, but without the use of his lips or jaw, we’ve effectively gagged him. Alec Sinclair will never speak another word ever again.
My husband steps back from our guest of honor, holding an arm out for me to take my place at his side. When I’m tucked safely under his arm, Ender kisses the top of my head before he turns back to Alec and says, “Oh, we must’ve forgotten to tell you. This isn’t my Ascension. I’ll never be Charon. Don’t worry though. A Sinclair will still hold the title. We know how much you value legacy. And Merrick is really excited about her new role. Isn’t that right, baby?”
“It sure is,” I reply, not taking my eyes off Alec. I don’t want to miss a second of this moment. His eyes are gloriously expressive as he realizes what Ender just said, moving from confusion to panic to fury. This is what finally gets Alec to fight his restraints, what makes him start yelling furiously, spit flying from his open jaws as his unintelligible words go absolutely nowhere. He’s completely devoid of power, andwatching the panic begin to overtake his anger makes me tip my head back and laugh.
I’ve known that he was done since yesterday, but it’s finally really hitting me. I finallyknowthat this man will never be able to hurt anyone ever again. Not me, not Ender… not anyone. This nightmare is finally over.
“Well,” I say, clapping my hands together to call us back to order. “Before we get too carried away, there is one last order of business that needs to be handled.” I deliberately move slowly over all of the gleaming steel tools, taking my time pulling what I need as I speak. “Ender told me an interesting story about his childhood. Now, I’m guessing you won’t remember this—it was probably just another Tuesday for you or whatever, but Ender? He didn’t get the luxury of forgetfulness.”
Tools in hand, I prowl toward my prey, watching his eyes shift between the two of us, no longer confident in where the bigger threat lies. “He overheard an argument between Elora and you and, being the protector that he is, put himself between the two of you to try to save her from your wrath. She was threatening to tell ‘him’ something, and whatever it was made you upset enough to threaten both of them to keep her quiet. Now, Ender didn’t understand what you two were fighting about, and I didn’t either when he told me this story, but I’ve finally pieced it together. I would say to tell me if I’ve got it right, but it doesn’t change anything for you if I’m not, so might as well save your strength.”
I stop when the toes of my boots are about six inches from his bare feet. “Elora was going to tell Ender about Thomas, wasn’t she? She had finally decided she could withstand whatever punishment you’d inflict on her in order for her son to know the truth, but you knew that. You knew it would hurt her more to watch her son be tortured for her crimes than anything you could ever do to her body. And then, to guarantee her silence, you told her that you’d make her son sitthrough the same psychological torture she just endured. Except you weren’t going to skin her alive. Babe, what was it he said he’d do?”
Ender comes to stand next to me, and when I see that he’s carrying a dental suction tool and a cautery pen, I know we’re on the exact same page despite my trying to keep this a surprise for him. “He said he’d fillet her tongue.”
“Right,” I say, nodding solemnly. “And Alec? You told. Ender found out becauseyoucouldn’t keep the secret, not Elora. So it’s only fitting to mete out the appropriate punishment. Something tells me he won’t mind sitting and watching this time though.”
Alec tries to resist, but all that amounts to is his tongue flailing around in his mouth, making him look like an idiot. He has nowhere to go, and I have no interest in spending good torturing time trying to catch the damn thing, so I dig into his mouth with a pair of forceps until I've got his tongue pinched between them. I straighten the writhing muscle out as much as I can until I have a fairly clear shot at the tip of it. I'll have to hit a moving target, but there aren't any points for perfection here. Striking fast, I sink the hooks of the tenaculum into the tip of his tongue, squeezing until I can’t go any further before locking them in place.
Alec squeals like a stuck pig, and I let him pull the tenaculum out of my hand. The weight of it drags his tongue down, hobbling him even more. It’s too heavy for him to lift or even pull his tongue further back into his mouth, and even if he did, it’d stick out, allowing me to grab it as I please.
Tossing the hemostats back onto the table for later, I unsheathe the knife I tucked into my boot earlier. It’s a short fillet knife, thin and flexible and so very, very sharp. Fear floods Alec’s eyes, finally overwhelming his rage. Oh, how I have longed to see that look right there. I wonder if it was the same look he saw in Ox’s eyes before the end. Certainly, it’s one he saw in my husband’s eyes many times over the years. “Don’t worry, Alec,” I reassure him. “I won’t take the whole thing like you threatened my husband with. It’s been my experience that the screams don’t sound as pretty when I do. We’re just going to take a little bit off the top.”
Ender hands the suction tool to me and grabs the tenaculum, pulling the muscle taut and steady. Alec starts to scream the moment my knife touches his flesh, but it quickly turns garbled as blood spills into his mouth and down his throat. The knife is sharp enough it slides through the muscle like butter, so I peel the top half centimeter from about two inches of his tongue before picking it up and flinging it into the metal bucket beside the chair. Our fun would be over entirely too soon if I let him choke or bleed out now, so the suction tool is next, clearing out as much of the blood as I can.
After sweeping his mouth thoroughly, Ender takes over holding that as well in the back of Alec’s mouth while I work on cauterizing the wound. The pen loop is small, so it takes me a while to cover the whole wound well enough to stabilize Alec, something he apparently does not appreciate based on the amount of crying he did during the procedure. The stench of blood and burning flesh fills the air, metallic and sticky and charred.
Unlocking the tenaculum, I pry the metal hooks out of Alec’s flesh, letting him slump as much as he can in his current restraints. I won’t give him long to recover—this is only the beginning, after all—but sometimes it helps to let their adrenaline come down in between sprints. Ender and I return what we just used to the table, and I wipe my hands off on a towel while he browses the spread before us. He selects a pair of pliers and a set of scalpels, holding both up between us. “Lady’s choice?”
I smile, taking the scalpels from him as I step into him, rocking up on my toes to wrap my arms around his neck and kiss him soundly. Warm, capable hands grab my waist as he kisses me back, making my heart flutter as that all-consuminggravity flares between us. I close the kiss, settling back on my heels and loosening my hold on his neck, but I don’t let go. “That’s awfully generous of you, Mr. Sinclair.”
He pinches my chin between his thumb and pointer finger, drawing me in to plant one last kiss on my lips. “I live to please, Mrs. Sinclair.”
I take one last look into those silver eyes, watching them dance with excitement, before we both turn, two wolves hunting together who have finally cornered their prey.
Ender starts with the fingernails. I start with the arms, taking my time as I work. I’m no artist, and it takes me hours, but by the end, I have a respectable likeness of my husband’s tattoos sliced into his father’s skin, the ones that hide the worst of the scars this man carved into him as a child. All of that memento mori to remind Alec that death is inevitable.
Alec’s screams throughout were music to my ears, as well as his silence when he couldn’t even manage that anymore. And when it became clear that his broken body really couldn’t take any more pain, the point where you either have to walk away and let them recover or end it, we chose the latter. Watching Ender slit Alec’s throat, seeing the relief mix with bloodlust in his eyes while he watched his own personal monster bleed out in front of him, is something I’ll never forget as long as I live. If either of us ever doubts that we did the right thing, that look is all the confirmation I’ll ever need that we did.
Removing a human heart is not easy. The human body, for all its failings, is put together surprisingly well. The first few times you do it tend to be clumsy. It’s easy to make mistakes, and if you don’t have a good bone saw, you’ll be at it for hours. Even with the right tools, it’s still not easy to get past the rib cage. But Alec’s heart came out of his chest just the same as all the others. Still warm, but beautifully, breathtakingly dead.
Cradling his heart in my hands, careful not to let go of theslippery, dark mass, Ender and I finally leave the confessional. Exhausted and covered in grime, he and I walk through the Aedis like wraiths, ignoring the whispers of the cloaked figures we pass. We don’t stop until we climb the stairs that bring us to the Sanctum, where Len is waiting for me, holding a box for Alec’s heart. I nestle my trophy inside but don’t bother with words before I’m moving again. She knows where I’m headed and why.
Hands now empty, I fill one of them with Ender’s, the blood growing thick and sticky on our skin, nails stained pink where they’re caked with gore. My husband lets me lead the way up the stairs and down a different hall from the one that leads to our room. We’re probably tracking carnage everywhere, but I don’t care. I don’t care about the bloody smears I leave on the door when I find the one I’ve been seeking and open it.
Entering the room I haven’t seen since I left it to meet my husband at the altar, I walk us straight to the French doors, then through them onto the same balcony where I sat and greeted the dawn on my wedding day. The same place Len and I linked our pinkies together in our sacred ritual and swore I’d avenge the man we both love.
In that same place, I close my eyes and feel the weak, first rays of sunlight begin to climb up and over the horizon, breaking apart the night sky. Tears slide down my cheeks, no doubt cutting paths through the blood and dirt caked into my skin. I feel Ender’s body wrap around me as he holds me from behind, squeezing me tightly into him. “It’s dawn,” he observes quietly, the significance not lost on him.
“It is,” I reply in a hoarse whisper, the tears coming faster now.
