When the door opened again, you thought it might have been only a day or so. Black Heart stood there, his massive shadow blocking the light from reaching you. “Are you my good girl?”
Forcing yourself to your knees, you crawled to him, resting your forehead against his dusty boot. “Yes, please John,” you recited dutifully. “Please let me be your good girl.”
He lifted you to your feet, kissing your cheekbone. One dark brow raised, he pulled you abruptly into the light, looking you over as if seeing you for the first time. “No longer a girl, are you darling? You’re a woman, I believe.”
Your anxious eyes searched his. You didn’t know what he meant. This wasn’t part of the script of penance and forgiveness that played out so many times in the Birdcage. He chuckled at your expression and touched his lips to your other cheek. That smell again, old blood but something underneath. Something oddly fertile and … alive?
“Don’t worry,” Black Heart soothed, “you’ll understand soon. The moon is almost full.”
Chapter 2: Eyes Bled Gold
In which Black Heart celebrates your birthday. On the First Day of the First Year of your Eternal Night. There are gifts of jewelry, though none that you understand.
It took you a moment to realize after Black Heart left you with a dinner plate and an order to eat that there was something off about the Birdcage. And when you figured it out, the bread in your mouth turned to ash as tears wet your face.
He had painted over your windows, black paint on glass reflecting back the eternal night.
You’d not realized before how important the view was from your little perch. It was your timekeeper. Even though the sky was oily billows of pitch black, you could see the slow progression of the sun attempting to fight its way back through the filthy layer created by the bombs set off by the Night Brethren. Black Heart’s band of monsters. The ugly, ashy hue meant they could hunt and feast and rule what was left of the planet after they desecrated it.
But Mother Earth had a way of healing herself from the most grievous of wounds. You counted the seasons with the grey, wispy snowfall, or the rain that only left more dirty streaks on the outside of your windows. But they were there, all the same. You would stare out the windows when the monstrous things below seemed dormant, imagining that your mother was looking for you. That this gigantic mausoleum of a mansion would act as a beacon to her. Surely that day when you were torn from her, she survived. She was always very strong, even in the times your father seemed weak, seemed disinterested in anything about you. You carefully wrote notes, memories about her in the margins of your books where you didn’t think Black Heart would find them. You wouldn’t forget her. No one could make you.
Your cruel and beautiful captor tolerated your silence for several days, how you’d flinch when he came near you. He would chuckle and drop your food carelessly on your table. “Eat up, Little Bird. I need you strong and healthy.”
And he brought you other books now, frightening, arcane volumes, with disturbing pen and ink illustrations, odd recipes that you didn’t understand- were they for potions? There were pictures of metal embedded in skin. The metal was stamped with crests of Brethren Houses.
You didn’t understand most of what you read, but the words and images stirred something in you, quickened your pulse as you turned one page after another. After hours of this, you pushed away from the table, standing and rubbing your hands over and over your skirt. Those books were evil. They were wrong and they were tainting you.
As if he’d heard your thoughts, Black Heart entered the Birdcage with your dinner. He eyed the tottering stack of books and leered with his fanged grin.
“You’ve been reading, doing some study, Little Bird? Do you have any questions for me about what you’ve learned?”
You stilled. He had never offered to answer a question for you. In the beginning, when you’d wept and plaintively asked for your mother, Black Heart would respond by throwing another terrified human to … whatever those things were at the gate. “I could never hurtyou,Little Bird,” he’d purred. You’d never asked another question.
“Just one,” you said warily.
“Hmm?” he murmured, picking up one of the books and flipping through it.
Wiping your suddenly sweaty palms on your skirt again, you managed, “What- what happens on the full moon?”
Black Heart glanced up from the book and his ocean blue eyes bled to gold almost instantly. “Why, Little Bird. It’s your birthday.”
“I have a birthday?” You flushed, what a stupid thing to say. But you’d never celebrated your birthday while a captive here in the Birdcage.
You heard the thud of his boots moving closer and his rough hand went under your chin, forcing you to look at him. “My sweet fledgling. Of course, you do. It will be a very special night.”
When you were a girl and your mother celebrated your birthday, there would be a cake, frosted pink with candles, and maybe some of your friends from school there to share it. You couldn’t imagine what Black Heart would consider a “special birthday.” And you really didn’t want to know. But he was still staring at you, his gaze rippling like the waves in the ocean and you forced a smile.
“Th- thank you, John?”
His gloved hand slid from your chin to stroke slowly down your throat, a low purr rumbling his chest as his fingers felt your frantic pulse. Leaning close, he whispered in your ear.
“So ripe, Little Bird. I can hardly wait to taste you."
With your painted-over windows, there was no reason you would think to know the rising of the moon, but you did. You could feel it - making your skin itch and prickle. The words blurred on the page and you slammed the book shut, groaning.
“Little Bird. Are you restless, darling?”
Letting out a shriek, you sagged against your bedframe. Black Heart was just … standing there, looking down at you in amusement.
