“Did these people want to be turned?”
“Yes! They were in pain!”
“You asked them?”
“N-no, but they were suffering. They asked me to make the pain stop, and I did! I did...” She was becoming frustrated at the back and forth, pressing the knife a little harder against Phoebe, drawing a thin dripping of blood.
“Wait! Wait, Edith, tell me more.” I took a slow step forward. “How do you want me to help?”
“We could get a group together! I wouldn’t need many—a few to help tame them, feed them, and show them the way things work. I already have Luka to help; I just need a few more.” She turned to look at Luka, but he couldn’t look at her, either; he was stoic, frozen,useless.
He glanced at me, and something in those dark eyes told me something was terribly wrong.
“Edith.” I took another step while she wasn’t looking, hoping the more I said her name, the more likely she was to wake from this manic frenzy. “We can’t just take people’s autonomy away, remember? Autonomy is one of our tenets.”
“So is utilitarianism. What are we if we don’t have manpower? What if someone else gets the same idea, and we lose more than we did the last time? If you aren’t willing to take risks, maybe you shouldn’t be the head of our Nest.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t.” Another step. “Who would you suggest?”
Her expression went from feral to something softer, something youthful and full of hope. “Myself and Luka.” She beamed, turning her head to look at him over her shoulder.
That is when I chose to move. I slapped Edith’s hand away from Phoebe’s neck and shoved her roughly out of the way.
“Alina!” Silas shouted from behind me along with the slap of the door as he entered, but it was all clouded to me. Too quick.
Edith and I were nose to nose, my hands on either of her shoulders.
Edith’s wicked stare met mine, flashing some deep rage within her that I could not place before her eyes immediately widened. I even caught a tremble in her lip.
Why is she looking at me like that?
All I could do was stare into her eyes. I swallowed and tilted my head at her, unable to comprehend the scene before me.
My blurring vision trailed down until I stared at the knife pointed at me, but I couldn’t locate a blade, just a hilt and a white knuckled hand holding it there. My vision filled with red—no, the red was on my clothing. I was bleeding. My brain connected where the blade was, and I grimaced at Luka, his eyes wide when he realized.
Everything was moving so slowly. Luka’s eyes darted behind me toward Silas, fear and trepidation twisting his features beforehe looked at Edith again. His eyes held something tender in that last expression.
His hand reached out and caressed her chin, turning her head toward him. The look in his eyes was nothing I could ever expect from a monster like him. Then his other hand rested at the back of her head.
Edith smiled so brightly that she may have been mistaken for some lovesick child, a complete shift of her energy when he touched her. Such hope and joy in that last breath.
He pulled back, snapping her neck where she stood.
The old scar opened across her neck, black as tar. A martyr twice over.
Now more than ever, I understood what that look was before. That tenderness he held when he looked at her, I realized, wasmercy. He wanted to be the one to do it. One last kindness.
“Alina!”
Silas called my name again.
It was unusual when it hit me. I was certain that at a time like this, I would be alone. A near-zero chance, I was sure. A thing like me must be all right with loneliness. It was expected. But today, I was not alone after all. My fate sealed by one of my own, surrounded by the only ones who knew me, truly knew me. It must be intentional, a cosmic joke.
My knees hit the floor with a muffled thud, the impact quaking through my body, movements like cold molasses.
Behind my eyes was a red-hot moon. Like the glow of an ember, the red illuminated the backs of my eyelids, the outside light desperately wanting to burn through. The red vessels pulsed steadily until they slowed, and the blood ran black.
