Page 48 of Remnants: Disruption
I nod, the exacting pain not yet striking at my heart. Though I expect it to hit at a later, more inconvenient time.
“Omen?”
“I am afraid they eluded my punishment,” the woman’s hauntingly beautiful orange eyes seem to blaze to life. “I would have made them suffer for what they did.”
“To Percy?” I ask, feeling somewhat dazed.
“To you,” she says, jaw ticking. “That is twice now you have almost died—and a third that was almost self-inflicted.”
“You—” I breathe out, adrenaline burning away the cobwebs clinging to my mind. “That was you?”
The woman sits back a little, her face adopting a much sterner expression. I try to wriggle free of the covers, but she places a strong hand on my shoulder.
“Do not move,” her voice soft despite the tight look on her face. “You are not yet healed, and I will not tolerate finding you half-dead again.”
“Tolerate?” I ask incredulously. “Who even are you?”
The woman tilts her head a little, examining me as if I’m a bug. And God, she’s gorgeous. Her hair seems even darker despite the light shining against it. As if the hair itself is absorbing all the light. Her nose crinkles a little every time she talks–like it, too, has an opinion.
A small grin splits her face, but it’s not soft or gentle this time. It’s almost predatory. And, still, she seems to glow.
“You likely know me as Bloody Mary,” she says quietly.
My mind freezes. The entire world seems to halt as I stare up at a literal fairytale. At a woman whose power only sits below Darkrend’s because we simply don’t know what she can do. Or that she even exists.
“Oh God,” I whisper out, trying to summon any sort of protection.
Beautiful or not, she’ll kill me within seconds.
The rising shadow fizzles out to nothingness as I slump back into the bedding.
“Not God,” she says, voice teasing, “but close.”
I try to summon up anything to protect myself from this woman. Anything at all. Yet the shadows themselves seem to revolt at my touch.
“Stop,” she whispers, gripping at my forearm beneath the covers. “I am not going to harm you, Arya.”
Her eyes seem endlessly sincere as she stares me down. The orange irises calming rather than frightening.
She leans closer, her face only inches from my own. A hint of a pleasant, spicy perfume suffuses my senses. I let out an incredibly ill-timed whimper as she presses her lips to my forehead.
“Sleep well, dear,” she hums as the world fades back to black.
Muffled noises wake me from a blessedly dreamless sleep. I glance around the room and realize the chair is still beside the bed. On it sits my cloak and mask, both looking brand new and cleaned of all debris from before.
A note sits attached to the beak of the mask:
Before the Second Disruption, there was a country on the other side of the globe. They had a word: Hiraeth. In some translations it meant grief or sorrow.
I may never know what she meant to you, but you always will. Do not let her death be in vain. There will be a time for grief—and you are entitled to it.
But now is not the time.
Now is the time for vengeance.
M
I press my feet to the cold wood and re-read the letter again. Vengeance? Sorrow? If this woman was predictable, I suppose she’d have been caught already.
