Page 41 of Wings of Destruction

I refuse to check and see if the necklace is there. Besides, she’d look puffed up and pleased if she’d managed to steal it.

“You’re denying it?” I press.

The girl scoffs and draws her bony shoulders high enough to wear them as earrings. “You have such an inflated ego.” She tries to step around me. “That will be beaten out of you soon enough.”

Instead of letting the matter drop, which is the smart thing to do, I grab her before she makes it past. My mother’s voice screams in my head to stop, think outside the blazing flash of anger, and use reason. None of it matters.

My mother is dead, and I plow my fist into the girl’s chin hard enough to break the bone.

Nine

Morgan

Something snaps inside of me.

Anger blazes, heady, and dissolves any trace amount of good sense or self-preservation.

“You can’t steal from me.” I punch her again and her eyes widen as she stumbles.

The back of her knees hit the nearest single cot and she goes down, sprawling over the mattress. Those fluttering hands clutch her ruined chin.

“You’re insane!”

The plume of darkness inside me grows and I throw myself on her. The clash of our bodies colliding echoes through the empty chamber. The girl screeches out a curse and I ignore her, focusing on her neck.

Her delicate and breakable neck. For every hit I land, my sanity recedes. I push past the pain but it doesn’t matter. She’s not matching me blow for blow. She’s taking everything I give her with her arms lifted in front of her face to defend herself.

“Stop! What do you think you’re doing? Girls!” Mrs. Milkin’s shrill and insipid screech rings out from across the room.

It’s lost in the roar inside my head.

The maid blinks up at me in surprise, her jaw already discolored from the hit. She finally finds her nerve, or her wits, and brings her knuckles up to drive them into my soft belly.

“You’re insane.”

The hit barely registers. Neither does her whisper. There’s a disconnect between my head and my body. I’ve fractured into two pieces, the anger the only link between the two of them as I knock her off the cot and onto the floor.

She lands hard on her back. I leap on top of the maid, oblivious to the audience growing around us as the others return from their duties. My legs fall on either side of her hips to pin her in place as I pummel her. Control slips. The girl manages a few hits I’ll probably feel later. At the moment, none of it matters.

“It’s my necklace,” I hiss through my teeth. “Mine.”

The housekeepers and cleaners cluster, pressing their ranks closer to us, either keeping us contained to allow the fight to play out or hiding us from Milkin’s view.

But it’s too late.

She sees. And I’m dimly aware of the consequences for this.

The housekeeper pushes her way through the circle to get to us as I leap on top of the maid.

“I didn’t take your stupid necklace!” she yells in my face.

She might have, though, if I hadn’t caught her in the act. I’d been so careful to stash it when I arrived⁠—

Of course someone saw me.

It’s the only thing I have left to my name when everything else has been taken. My future, my existence, my identity, they’re all in the hands of someone else. Someone who doesn’t know me and doesn’t care about my wishes or dreams or safety.

They only care that I’m alive when I shouldn’t be and want me to suffer for someone else’s resistance.