Would Tian do it? Trade herself for Adeline? Adeline feared that she would and then feared that she wouldn’t, and then that’s all there was, fear in every direction, because she’d always had an active imagination and now everything she could imagine was a nightmare. How long had it been already? She had no sense of time. It could have been hours. It could have been a day. Should it be taking this long for Tian to have an answer? She felt like she had when she found out Tian needed her blood: their private moments turned into horrific public caricatures, like her insides dug out and smeared over her face. How long had people seen, known, guessed, assumed? When had it become enough for them to realize it could be used in their favor?
Fan Ge came back once. He squatted so they were face-to-face and pinched the thin skin of her wrist tattoo. “My tattooist has gone missing. You know anything about that?”
“Why would I?”
He pinched one of her stiff fingers instead. Her nails had gone purple with cold. He squeezed, just hard enough to threaten breaking it. “Maybe my information was wrong. Maybe she’s just taken another girl into her bed by now. Must be convenient for her, being Madam Butterfly. Does she rotate between all of you?”
“The Japs should have skinned you, too,” Adeline snarled.
“Don’t worry. You’re useful whether or not she answers. You make a lot of people very curious.”
That might have been hours ago, or it might have been minutes. But the door was opening again, and this time it was an unknown man with something pinched between his fingers.
Adeline saw the green sphere right before he gripped her jaw, forcing her mouth open. His other hand tried to push the pill past her lips, but she bared her teeth and bit down.
Blood exploded in her mouth. The Steel bellowed and staggered backward, clutching two fingers that looked like they were coming off the knuckle. Adeline felt sick, the taste of flesh rotting on her tongue, but she grinned at him. “Should’ve tattooed your fingers.”
She wasn’t laughing for long. Lilian’s boyfriend rushed in, so heavily tattooed that she felt the metal on her jaw when he wrenched her head back, pinched her nose shut, and dropped the pill into her mouth. She tried to spit it out, but he clamped one steel hand over her lips even as the pill started to dissolve. For a moment she was struck with the bizarre taste of something metallic. Then the panic took over again, blinding white.
No—it wasn’t just the panic—something was enveloping both her eyes from the inside, seeking the exposed outer softness, seeking light. It had sensation, it had firmness against the back of her sockets, it hadfur—
She was aware of a man watching her but even as she tried to make out his features, they vanished behind yellow clusters bursting in her vision, opening and dying against the invading magic and still blossoming like fractals. These, familiar. Oh, terrifying, but familiar, at least, part of her,wanted.Lady, she begged.Help.
A god’s attention swung. Clustered insect eyes, fluttering wings; long hair wrapping around a sharp-toothed, emerald-eyed hare.
Cold fire screamed through her. Lady Butterfly knifed in, needle stabs taking hold deep into her veins. Adeline twisted, openly sobbing, or shrieking. The goddess’s puckered mouth split, revealing the red coil within, and she plunged the long proboscis into the hare’s neck.
It might have been seconds or it might have been hours before a numbness swept through Adeline. In the stillness, she felt something shift in her skull.
They came once more with the water bucket, then with another pill. They didn’t even give her a chance to bite this time, just held her jaw open and shut until it had dissolved down her throat. She already felt raw inside, and now her skull and spine felt like they were being prized away. Surely this couldn’t be what they were giving the girls—surely it would just have killed all of them—but she was seeing gods, they were feeding her gods, and she already had one of her own, and the Lady did not like to share. The Lady was jealous. The Lady wanted her own territory. This time Adeline glimpsed an old woman missing half her flesh before the Lady devoured her, too, proboscis drinking and fluttering and drinking.
People observed her from the shadows, roving out of reach. She did not give them the satisfaction of begging or crying, although her insides felt as though they were dissolving again and again only to reassemble in unrecognizable forms. The White Man appeared at least once more, patchwork face the brightest thing in the room, and she thought he might make good on his threat, but he merely stood there and pulled out a cigarette and a lighter. The click of the wheel jolted her like a bullet. Her eyes flickered to the flame and then fixed on the glowing tip of the cigarette, loathing like she’d never loathed before. He contemplated her until the cigarette was a stub, then tossed it aside and left.
It could have been hours or days after that before the chisel on her bones lightened away, and the door opened again.No, she thought. She kept trying to find fire, but her limbs felt like they’d been detached from her, and nothing moved. A Steel, Lilian’s boyfriend again, swam over to her.
“This one’s hers,” came the distant voice again. A man’s, untraceable in the cosmos.
Steel clamped her jaw. Something slipped along her tongue and tasted like blood going down; she’d cut her cheeks on her teeth. She was frozen to her bones, clinging to her goddess, begging her to stay. The Lady liked begging. The Lady fed.
“I’ve got to get to Saigon. I’ll be back later. Make sure you get what your boss wants.”
This time there was no specter of divine creature, no war. Just a girl she thought she recognized, and fire, and she did scream then, searching for the goddess, but Lady Butterfly had burrowed into her and there was only yellow and red and gold and white.
Consciousness did not find Adeline until she was freezing again. She felt like she had been scraped out from the inside. Her teeth chattered so violently they almost took her tongue.Lady, she thought,please please please.
No unfurling, no yellow eyes, no heat. Maybe the prayer didn’t have enough ritual to count. She was abandoned. She had not felt so empty since Tian stopped the goddess up.
For a moment that thought struck her nearly back to warmth. It couldn’t be, Tian couldn’t be dead, but she wouldn’t know, would she, because now she was something besides a bargaining chip. They were testing something on her, they wanted something from her.
She wanted to believe Tian was not stupid enough to trade their lives. Death was all right, she thought. It was finite.
Well, came a dark thought.There are slow ways to do it, and other things besides.
She shredded it again and shredded it thin.
Pek Mun would have told Tian it wasn’t worth it. She’s right, Adeline thought, the shivers coming in starts and stops now. Listen to her.Hey, Mun. We’re on the same page for once. Isn’t that all you everwanted? I’ll say it to your face. You’re right you’re right you’re right. Tell her you’re right.
Then, to Tian:But come get me anyway.
