Mary.
She’s standing in the corner where the shadow is thickest, the way she always stands now, the way she never stood in life. Mary was movement. Noise. Life spilling out of her in every direction.
This thing in the corner is the opposite of all of that. This thing is stillness so complete it has its own gravity, pulling the air out of the room, pulling the fight out of my bones.
I look.
I always look.
She’s the little girl first. Six years old. Gap-toothed smile. Green dress with the white collar she kept trying to pull off because it scratched her neck. She’s looking at me the wayshe did then—like I was already enough, like just being there was the whole job, like the world was manageable because her big brother was in it.
My chest caves in.
The love I feel for that little girl is so sharp it feels like it’s carving new wounds into old ones. I want to reach for her. I want to pick her up and hold her and tell her I’m sorry, that I failed her, that I would burn the world down if it would bring her back.
Then the blood starts.
It doesn’t arrive dramatically. It just seeps. From the corners of her mouth first. Then her ears. Then the place in her throat where?—
Don’t look don’t look don’t look?—
Too late.
I’m looking, and the little girl is gone, and what’s there instead is the last version of her, the one I carry like a blade in my ribs. Wide open eyes. Ruined throat. Hair dark and wet and matted. The expression on her face isn’t accusation. It’s worse.
She looks surprised. Like she never thought it would beme.
“You were there.” Valeria’s voice slithers out of Mary’s mouth. It’s everywhere at once, threaded into the walls, into the stone, into the marrow of my bones.
“You were right there, Nazareth.”
“I know what I saw.” My voice comes out wrong. Thin. Worn down. But there’s still steel underneath it. I’m still the man who survived her for thirteen years. I cling to that.
“Do you?”
Not a question. Never a question anymore. Just theshape of one, placed where a question would go, doing different work.
Mary in the corner. Her surprised eyes. The blood. My hands in my lap, heavy and useless.
I look at my hands.
The compass. The ink. The needle pointing?—
Where the fuck is north?
There’s a name. There’s a name, there’s a name, there’s a?—
“You killed me. The little girl you swore to protect.”
“And you betrayed me!” I shout, the words ripping out of me. Every bone aches, every muscle trembles with the effort. My skin feels too tight, too hot, stretched over something that’s about to explode. “You let them hurt me. You stood there and you let it happen!”
The craving hits then, sudden and vicious. It’s time. It’s fucking time, and she hasn’t been here yet, and there’s no bag or vial, and the need is crawling under my skin like fire ants, like something alive trying to eat its way out.
“Fuck!” My fist slams into the floor, knuckles splitting, but I barely feel it. The pain is distant. Everything is distant except the need and the guilt and the rage.
How long has it been?
Days?
