The Shield lit a lone candle, its flame pulsing hungrily against the dark. With quick fingers, he sifted through the wall of vials. Each clink of glass knocked against her skull.
Offering a wide grin, he jabbed the needled point of a syringe into a narrow glass. “I bet you have all sorts of nightmares. Do you meet them often?” Lux bared her teeth, splitting her lip further. A drop of blood formed and dripped down her chin. He wiped it clean. “Answer me, girl.”
She watched him through hooded eyes. “I am the nightmare.”
The man chuckled, bringing his face within a mere breadth of hers. “No, you’re not.” He pressed the needle to her skin. “You’re just a pathetic, broken doll. I don’t know what the mayor is afraid of.”
Lux fought back a cry as the metal punctured her jugular, but not hard enough. She screamed as it burned through her veins.
A satisfied murmur in her ear. “Let’s meet them, shall we?”
The Shield retreated into the shadows as did the burning in her body; she couldn’t see him any longer. Instead, she watched the flame. Flickering, flickering, tendrils of smoke winding from its tip.
The smoke grew. It puffed from the candle in clouds. Clouds that twisted and warped and began to take form.
The darkness quaked around her. It beat in tempo with her heart, and Lux couldn’t help herself. She gripped the chair beneath her, her bruised back pressed tight against it.
Murky-grey eyes materialized, staring into her own. A shape. A shadow. The form of her mother floated toward her. Lux’s feet pushed uselessly against the stone floor.
“No. Stop.”
A second form shuddered into view. Her father.
You have forgotten us, Lucena.
Rasping voices filled the room. It filled her head. Their mouths didn’t move, and yet they spoke to her, and her alone.
A tear tracked down Lux’s cheek. “I haven’t.”
Dark blood ran from their throats—from where they had been murdered the first time. It ran from their hearts. Where they had been murdered the second time.
Lux stared at the site. At the knives resting in their chests. The knives she had placed there.Pierced.
As one, the shadows of her parents pulled them forth, leaving gaping black holes in their wake. Smoke and darkness poured from the openings.
How could you?
They moved closer. They raised their blades high.
We loved you. We trusted you. You betrayed us. You failed us. It should have been you.
It should have been you.
And Lux screamed as the blades tore through skin, muscle and bone. She screamed as they pierced her heart.
All she could see were the eyes. The distorted, unnatural eyes of those that should be dead, but were granted another life. Their faces warped, their lips pulled up in scorn, twisting into unrecognizable shapes, until they dissipated into nothing. Lux was certain their blades had remained. Her chest hurt with every heaving breath.
The smoke hovered, unmoving.
Until, slowly, it churned anew.
The mayor. And another. Morana.
Lux’s breaths picked up speed. The shadow of Morana noticed, and smiled, but it was the mayor’s form that spoke first.
Little Necromancer. You will always be second best. But if I cannot have the healer, I will gladly take you in exchange.
A grey finger brushed across her cheek, and she flinched.
