Page 121 of Petrify

This is another thing I thought about—when you are relegated to a small decaying room with a locked door, you have nothing else to do butthink. And over the years I’ve thought long and hard about what I would say to them. What I would do.

I figure I am blameless in my revenge.

The moment is here. Now. And watching the life leave Leo’s eyes…

I hum at the wave of stillness inside of me. It’s like all the noise has been dialed to ten my whole life, and now, it’s down to seven. I didn’t realize just how obnoxious it was. Only a little more to go.

Still, Mariane is silent.

The snake curls around my bicep, over my shoulder, before I hold it up in the air. Both of us, predators, one staring at the other. Its tongue flicks out. Can it sense my next victim’s dread in the air? The animal hasn’t eaten, so it writhes with hunger, wanting to search the room for prey.

“You knew this was coming, didn’t you? Maybe you’ve thought about how you could get out of this. Maybe now you’ve realized you can’t.”

Mariane doesn’t react when I turn toward her again.

“Youmademe,” I say. “Would it have been better if I were a doll? So you could prop me up for your friends to stare at, andthen forget me at night? Neglect me for days but tell everyone you were the doting mother and father, and isn’t your heir so great,what a talent, he’ll makeBeauchenea household name.” Each word punctuated with another step closer, and still she won’tlookat me.

I reach for the rope and yank, and then she’s finally reacting, choking when she’s jerked nearly a foot into the air and back down. Her eyes finally snap to mine then. “Bastien, listen?—”

“No, listen tome!”

She jumps when I shout, another lone tear tracking down her cheek.

“You’ve had fuckingyearsto say what you want. It’s your fucking turn tolisten. None of this blood is on my hands. It is onyours. You never cared when you fractured my mind. You never cared when it led me to kill. You nevercared. You never stopped it—you never stopped me. And now you want me to listen while you beg for your life? When I have wanted so badly to take from you what you took from me?” My patience has already worn thin. “Get up.”

Her eyes widen in horror, and then she’s shaking her head as if to plead for mercy.

Mercy.

She only finally decides to listen when I tug on the rope again, threatening to cut off her air. And then she babbles. She tells me how sorry she is that she failed. That she wasn’t the mother I needed. That she let everything else get in the way. That she didn’t care enough.

Maybe if she had said these things long ago, I could have forgiven her.

No, Leo never would have let me out—he nevereverplanned to let me out.

She wouldn’t have fought him about it. She neverdid.

Instead, she turned her back for a decade, and waited to repent only when Death is staring her right in the face. Of course she’s sorry now.

I tighten the slack of the rope until she’s forced onto the tips of her toes. Snakes are already curling around the legs of the stool.

She says my name, over and over, begging me to listen, to look at her, to give her one more minute.

But I told Mallary five minutes, and the clock is running out.

In my pocket is an old automatic lighter. I found it in Leo’s desk. His father’s once upon a time, for the cigars he’d smoke only in his study and nowhere else, like it was some secret.

And now it’ll be used to burn down the very house they worked so hard to build. It’ll burn away their mark so nothing is left but ashes and ruins. The entire legacy, gone up in smoke.

The flame wobbles after thesnick.

Mariane sobs. She knows her pleading lands on deaf ears and yet she still begs for her life, even when her husband is dead at her feet.

It’s easy to get the flame to catch. The curtains are gauzy and go up like kindling. The paper decorations around the room won’t last long, either. At each jumping spark, the snakes’ hissing turns fervent.

I have no doubt they’ll find a way out. But Mariane doesn’t know that.

I stand before her once my destruction is underway. The inferno starts small, but it’ll grow into something inescapable, something bright and purifying and clean.