“They were my world,” I tell him quietly, never breaking eye contact until he looks away first. “You took them. Now, I will break yours.”
I reach for the candle and pluck the cylinder of wax from the holder and hold it up over the fluttering muscle pumping rapidly in the cavity of Bernard’s chest.
“What are you…? No, stop that.”
I ignore Augustus with the first drip of wax straight on the heart.
“Veyn, I would like to hear him, please.”
The scream is violent, ripping through the room. It mingles with Augustus’s tortured whine as I drop another white splatter of wax over the organ.
“Does that hurt?” I ask, genuinely curious.
“You bitch! You stupid bitch,” Augustus cries as Bernard gives another howl of agony. “I’m going to kill you.”
I feel rather than see Veyn move up behind me, still and silent. The heat of Marcus’s body warms my spine through the thin fabric of my top, but it’s the arms he snakes around my middle — protective — that speaks the loudest.
“We want him,” he murmurs into the side of my face as I move the candle downward, leaving a white trail across the liver and spleen. I nearly miss the rest of his words over Bernard’s howls begging his brother to help him. “We will make him eat that tongue.”
I tilt my head back and peer up into Marcus’s beautiful face and Veyn’s haunting eyes. Mine flutter closed with the first sweep of his lips over mine.
Distracted by the feel of his hold, the delicious taste of his mouth, I don’t notice the candle slip from its holder straight into the cavity of Bernard’s chest.
For a heartbeat, nothing.
It lands amongst the organs with a wet slap. The flame sputters against the slick membranes of his pericardium. And Bernard gives a gasp that increases the faster his brain begins to process his new reality. Still, it’s not quick enough when the inferno catches.
It ignites with a hiss of greedy tongues of fire lapping at the edges of his lungs, searing the delicate alveoli. Bernard’s bodyarches violently against the restraints, bones cracking as he breaks them in an effort to gain his freedom.
Over him, Augustus tries to get to his brother, fighting the invisible forces controlling his body, but it only generates awkward twitches and shallow jerks. Meanwhile the acrid stench of charred flesh mingles with the iron tang of blood. It twists with the heavy musk of warm wax and dust.
Behind me, Veyn pulls me back as the flames run rampant, scorching and devouring the length of Bernard’s prone body. His shrieks hollow to raspy wheezes as his lungs turn to a crispy lump and his heart becomes a black husk.
Still, he continues to live.
His body quivers with micro spasms of pain long after the fire has gone out and columns of gray smoke rise off his scorched remains. His chest shudders with every wheezing whine.
“Help him!” Augustus cries, staring at his brother’s body with horror and helpless devastation.
I wasn’t there, but I see my boys on that street. Walking together. Doing their best to finish their tasks quickly so they could come home to me. I see them crossing the street for the last time.
Had the Duvals approached them? Had they even warned my boys that they were about to die? Or had they shot them from the shadows like cowards?
Ames would have tried to protect Eliah. As the eldest, he had always put himself in front of his twin. Or had they shot Ames first? Had Eliah run to his brother, devastated the way Augustus is now, watching his brother die and being helpless to save him? Had Augustus let him watch Ames die before shooting him?
So many questions and I know I will never get the answers. Even if Augustus confesses, tells me every detail, I don’t know if I’m capable of hearing it without slipping even deeper into my madness.
“He’s yours,” I tell Veyn before I can change my mind.
He lifts a hand and lightly brushes back a lock of hair. “You might want to leave, little one. This will not be pretty.”
I shake my head. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Rather than push, Veyn smirks. I taste his pride and desire when he brushes it across my mouth. His arms pivot us around, turning me away from the sickly-sweet stench of scorched meat back in the direction of the mirror.
I’m released to the winding tendrils. They bind around me and lift, forming a seat the way they had the night the snakes killed Etienne Duval. They draw me far enough that I’m not in the way as Veyn faces Augustus.
“I warned you to watch your mouth. Now, I will teach you.”
