Page 62 of Magpie
“I particularly enjoyed her fear when she realized she wasn’t strong enough to hold the enclosing walls apart, the utter despair that filled her as her arms gave way. She didn’t even have the time to cower, not before the walls crushed her and she felt every painful moment of her death. But do you know what made it even sweeter?”
Alister steps closer and closer. He pulls his white gloves off, one finger at a time, letting each glove drop to the ground. It’s a great effort to not shake, to not show a single indication that his story is affecting me, because that’s exactly what he wants. Still, I cannot help but think of Margaux, her light, hergoodness, and imagining him devouring every last fucking drop of it.
He stands directly outside the painted lines of my cage, watching me with those soulless eyes. His wolfish grin grows wider, seeming to split his face in half. “I made her live it again, and again, andagain.”
Taking a deep, steadying breath, I remain silent. Resolute. I’m done being kindling for his fire. I will not add to it with my own fear.
Alister’s expression changes so quickly that if I hadn’t been studying him with the eyes of a hunter, I would have missed it. His confident sneer becomes an enraged grimace. He marches over the barrier and pounces. I tense for the attack, and still, I’m not ready when he grabs my shoulders and slams me into the wall, knocking the breath from my lungs.
His hands move, fisting in my hair, pulling the roots painfully taut as he stares daggers into my eyes. He demands attention, a response, his movements growing impatient and heated. Unlike so many times before, I do not play along. I do not give in to him. I do not burn in his wake.
And it infuriates him.
“She eventually learned her lesson,” he says, almost spitting in my face with the force of his words as he presses his body flush against mine. “She realized that the only way to get out was throughme. She submitted to me fully, allowing the House to crush her, allowing her blood and pain and fear to soak into every floorboard and paint every inch of the walls. She realized that giving in to me was the only true freedom.”
“You’re pathetic.”
He falters, confusion flashing over his features. He clearly wasn’t expecting me to react this way.
“What did you say—”
“You’re fuckingpathetic,” I hiss. I hold his gaze just as tightly as his fists grip my hair. “You have to resort to tricking people, trapping them, feeding them their deepest fear and choking them on it. You did it to me, you did it toIrina—”
I gasp as he yanks at my hair when I mention her name, ripping several clumps from my scalp in the process. But I do not stop. I don’t hold back. I never will again, not with him.
“You saw it in me just like you did with her—a pain you thought was weakness, a hurt you thought you could use to your advantage. You brought her, and me, and countless others down into the dark with you, because the reality is you’re so goddamn afraid of being alone, so fucking afraid of the dark, that you’ll burn anyone to keep the light.”
He’s shaking, dark shadows crawling over his skin as his jaw constricts and his face contorts. But now that I’ve started, there is no stopping me.
“You think that by burning souls endlessly in your flame, you’ll evade death eternally. But Alister, that’s not how you defeat death.”
His eyes widen, his grip on my hair loosening. His expression changes from crazed rage to rapt enthrallment as he waits for me to whisper the answer to his question, the solution to hisceaseless journey to outrun the inevitable. His hands fall from my hair, resting gently on my shoulders. He doesn’t even dare to breathe.
I smile at him as I say the words that Life spoke to me on that darkened path, when I was left adrift and alone without the light of the moth.
“Life has always been the key to death.”
I raise my hand above my head and plunge the luna key toward his chest.
One second too late.
In a flash, he snaps to attention, grabbing my wrist before the key can make contact with his flesh. He whirls around, flinging me against the invisible barrier of my cage. Pain bursts through my head as it cracks against the solid wall of air, and I let out a startled shout, but I have no time to prepare as he pounces on me.
We tumble in a heap on the ground. He pushes and presses me to the walls of my cage. A brief struggle, a flailing of limbs, and before I know it, he is on top of me. He grabs my head, yanking it up off the ground before slamming it back into the floor. Agony explodes through my head, numbing the blind panic that courses through me. Kicking and thrashing, I try to pull out from under him, but it is no use.
The luna key is gone.
Somewhere in the mere moments between my attack and my spectacular failure, I dropped the key, and it skittered outside the bounds of my cage. My head reeling from the impact, my vision blurry, I turn to try to locate it, but Alister rears back and punches me across the jaw. I cry out, the sound mixing with the cracking of bone as blinding pain crashes through my skull.
“You fuckingbitch,” he bellows, cocking back and striking me again. The agony of the blows to my skull and my face are making it hard to focus as he continues to scream. “I dideverythingfor you. I gave you everything. I showed you every splendor life has to offer.”
My ears are ringing, my mind muffled, my vision foggy. Panic is the only thing keeping me from passing out, because there is no telling what he’ll do to me then. I open my mouth to respond, but he lifts me and slams me back to the floor.
Dark.
Black.
Nothing.
