of my life.
I gave her a tight-lipped smile, and she went back to studying the head. As I moved around the table, I could see the face on the other side moving, laughing and grinning darkly at us. The thing wasn’t Janus, its faces weren’t equal, one wasn’t looking to the future and the other to the past. No, this whole thing was distorted.
The head itself was dried, and most of it was sunken in with stringy bits of hair here and there, making me think that when Edward was alive, he probably had long, dark hair. His actual face reminded me of the photos of mummies that sometimes make the news.
It was the second face that was the problem. The features were all scrunched together, the eyes and mouth so close together that the nose barely existed at all. The forehead was only a couple fingers in width before the second face receded into what looked like the hairline of Edward Mordrake’s actual head, the same with the chin.
You’re never going to find it, never going to get the skull back together to find out how to kill him. You’ll become his queen and watch the men you love die.
“You don’t know shit about anything,” Mae mumbled.
Cruel laughter filled my head, and I was sure it filled Mae’s as well, judging from the grimace on her face. I know more than you think, Mary. How many lives have you taken? How many have died by your hand? How many kills do you have stacked where you didn’t even have a weapon, just your bare hands?
“I always had my magic,” Mae hissed. The tone of her voice was the only sign that the head was starting to get to her.
But you didn’t always use it, did you? Sometimes, you liked the fight. You liked feeling them struggle against you, didn’t you? Gasping their last breath under your hands, letting the anger that rages inside you be the last thing they saw—it all gave you a thrill, didn’t it? You’re no better than the people you killed, the people you thought of as scum of the earth. You’re exactly the same. It’s why your parents helped the Wardwells capture you.
Mae’s head twitched to the side, like she was trying to control a rage that was building within her. I wanted to go to her, but I also didn’t want to interrupt whatever she was doing or studying, so I sat back and waited. If she needed me, she would ask, that much I was sure of.
You think these men are going to stay with you if you defeat the Horseman? Once they know the rage that boils within you, they’ll leave. You won’t give them a choice. Your rage and bitterness will consume any love they show you and twist it until it’s nothing but a withered, dying thing. They’ll be lucky if you don’t kill them outright.
Her nostrils flared with anger as her jaw clenched. She turned to me and looked me dead in the eye as she asked, “What was it asking you to do to me before?”
“To kill you, rid the world of your darkness, and deprive the Horseman of his queen,” I replied, guilt twisting in my stomach.
“Do you still feel compelled to do so?” Her voice was cold, clinical. All of her emotions were on lockdown. I recognized it from when Hunter and Ellis would do the same. It was a trait I’d never mastered, not really. I could put on a brave face, but anyone who could read me well enough would know when I was fucked up emotionally. The only reason the guys had missed it with the wound on my chest was because that was more physical. The darkness that had been spreading within was subtle, only changing my behaviors and emotions slightly as it took greater control of my body and mind.
“No,” I stated, my voice as clear and strong as I could make it.
“When you ran before, were you just trying to put distance between yourself and it? Did the voice fade or weaken at all?”
I shook my head. “I ran because of what it was saying, but overall, I just hoped it would stop and I wouldn’t have to listen.”
You will hear my voice in your head from now until the end of time. You’ve looked into the void. It’s seen you, and now there’s no going back.
“Did anything you do help weaken the voice?”
I shook my head again. “It