Page 222 of To Snap a Silver Stem
I swallow. Look at the cloak. Reach out and pick it up, rubbing the material between my trembling fingers—so much thicker and softer than anything I’ve ever been given before.
There are no holes. No frayed ends. It smells clean and safe.
Standing on wobbly legs, I swing it over my shoulders and huddle in the warmth still caught within the fibers as the Irilak creep closer, padding at the shell of my lantern light, making that rattling sound.
I stare at the space between my cell and the tunnel beyond.
A memory creeps in of a family, smiles, laughter. And then that other memory of it all ending.
A memory that hurts as much as the ones made in here.
But maybe that man’s right … Perhaps life doesn’thaveto hurt.
I snatch the lantern’s wiry handle and stand at the doorway, his fading footsteps nothing more than a whisper of something hopeful.
Dragging a shuddering breath, I step into the tunnel.
Ilook at my bloodied hands likethey’rethe enemy—not the man I just staked through.
That voice inside me sits in stunned silence while my heart wages a war against itself. A beat that’s a distant echo felt through the layers I’ve stuffed between me and my caged emotions.
I don’t want to feel.
Don’t want to look at this brutal, bloody scene without the numbing veil, because I know I’ll hurt in ways that’ll threaten to split me down the middle.
Perhaps I’m halfway there.
Tipping my head, I look to the sky, draw a shuddered breath, and crack that crystal shell I’d built inside myself, freeing the swarm of hurt and hate and love and guilt and spine-crushing sorrow.
My mouth falls open, and I suck a hollow gulp as the feelings culminate with the force of a thousand thorny vines slithering for release.
They coil around my ribs, crunch them into shards, sowing the seeds of more vines that germinate from the marrow they spill. They puncture my lungs then snare my helpless heart so tight the organ withers and rots, proliferating, mounting themselves on the walls of my chest until there’s nowhere else for them to grow.
Spearing up my throat on a slashing rise to freedom, they leave a trail of snapped thorns wedged in their wake. And then they’re sitting coiled on my tongue with a weight too heavy to bear, forcing my lips further apart as they spew their anger, hate, and hurt to the sky with a sound that shreds my throat.
Gravity pours upon my chest with such violent force I doubt I’ll ever be able to stand again …
What have I done?
