“I think I’ve had enough,” I tell her. Cold. Expressionless. Empty.
“You want him, Patient Two! Youneedhim!” Apple May shrieks, revving herself up into a childish tantrum. “Please your husband! It is your duty!”
The air in the room is sucked from existence as the quietness grows loud.
“One day, many years from now, you’re going to hurt someone I love.”
Beside me, Niklaus covers himself, straightening his back. I can sense he put the pieces together just as I have.
“You insane little girl! You’re more delusional than I once thought! My daughter would love to hear how disobedient you have been, and how your mental diseases have completely overtaken your mind!”
I rise to my feet. “You should spend as much time with your daughter as you can, Apple May.”
“I beg your pardon?” She stands, not coming anywhere close to my height, but trying her best to stand tall to intimidate me.
“Her days are numbered,” I say, detached, dissociated, disconnected from the weakness my body has known for so long now.
Before this psychotic mother can open her mouth again. I take a vulturine step toward her. “Somehow, I don’t think Meridei’s fate will harm you as much as you deserve.”
I remember the pain in Aunt Ruth’s eyes as she recalled the time she spent with Apple May. The way she spoke about the aftermath of the war. How she clearly didn’t want to tell my mother what happened to her in that infirmary. She didn’t want Mom to hold the guilt of not being there for her best friend.
“The injection should have lasted another hour!” Apple May holds a stern finger up to me. “My daughter will make youbleedfor approaching me with such disrespect. I am an Emerald Wife. You’ll wish you were dead when she’s through with you.”
“You made me do intimate acts with a man I’ve known my entire life,” I whisper. And for some reason, it’s as if I’m attempting to convince myself to not unleash something so dark, so sinister, so positively ferocious…it goes far beyond feminine rage. A beast whose hunger won’t end once it’s tasted freedom—because I know that once it’s been released from its cage, there will never again be a world untouched by what comes crawling out.
She was an incredibly vain woman,Aunt Ruth recalled.
The breath between us curdles into earsplitting silence. And Apple May takes a step back, her confident sneer faltering as she sees something sacrilegious, hideous, blasphemous, petrifying spread like a contagion—a black fog from my pupils.
And Niklaus sees it too. “Spitfire…”
“Her name is Ruth. I want you to remember that name.”
She was an incredibly vain woman.
She was an incredibly vain woman.
She was an incredibly vain woman.
She was an incredibly vain woman.
She was an incredibly vain woman.
She was an incredibly vain woman.
The Nightlung crackles from my fingertips as I heave forward, sinking my nails into Apple May’s scalp until I’m certain the moisture touching my skin is her blood. That dark, stunning head of flawless hair shines to me like a beacon. Her screams sing to me, serenading me with that precious tune of terror. I don’t care that her arms punch and flail hard enough to leave bruises across my entire upper body. I can’t even feel it.
And as I drink in her vanity, her constant habits of devilish sins, I let that bond between the Nightlung and the void blast through every pore, every cell, every nerve until it burrows into one targeted area. Apple May’s beautiful black hair.
Just as the Nightlung gives me the path to travel forward or backward through time, it also gives me another vessel to explore. It gives me a magnifying glass to turn the clock forward or backward on anyone or anything.
And I choosethis.
A catastrophic hurricane of power engulfs me, stitching into each hair folic, every pour and imperfection of her scalp. And I fast-forwardherclock…
…by sixty years.
The black hair shortens and shrivels, becomes white brittle straw before our eyes. And as patches of her scalp become clear, that skin withers too. Sunspots, sores, and a horrid smell of decay. I push those years, magnifying all the focus on that hair until it’s gone.
