Sound of Madness A Dark Royal Romance - Maria Luis Page 0,93
by the door, and, finally, to the loo, where it all started with a feather-like shadow darting across my vision when I reached for the bath towel.
A shadow when I was already encased in total darkness.
I want to laugh.
Instead, with my arms locked across my middle, and water droplets dripping from my body to the rug, I slowly turn around. Please, please, please be real. My shoulders curl inward and a sob aches to burst free and this time, I don’t do a single thing to stem the tears that burn the backs of my eyes.
Light pervades the room, revealing everything I’ve seen for years but never thought to see again. The rocking chair in the far-left corner, where my grandmother used to hold me as a child. Behind the sleigh bed, a mural of Ben Bhraggie overlooking the tiny coastal town of Golspie, its blue-oiled bluffs sharp and distinct against a cloudy afternoon sky. The yellow-striped blanket that rests over the footboard, its hand-stitched threads looking worn with age and love.
A birthday gift from Mum the year before she died.
Choking back a sob, I reach for something solid to support my unsteady frame—and graze wood.
The wardrobe.
I step toward it, toward the mirror that Hugh covered, only to slam to a halt when an unexpected shadow flies from my periphery to the center of my vision. It hovers there, a black mark layered over the wardrobe’s filigreed wood.
No.
No, no, no!
Shoving down panic, I close my eyes gingerly. Don’t you dare think the worst. Dr. Matthews said that the woman . . . the woman who fell—hadn’t she seen dark streaks when her eyesight returned? Floaters, Matthews called them. An improvement, some might say, over seeing nothing at all.
A floater, if that’s what this is, will not be the end of me.
“Broken, but never defeated,” I whisper to the empty room.
Damien told me to harness the darkness, to own it with all my heart, and I do that now. My eyes remain closed as I trace the hills and valleys of the ornate wood before coming to the thick sheet of paper which covers the mirror.
I tear it free.
Opening my eyes, I first spy my feet. The black mark now rests atop the big toe of my right foot. Another joins as a slightly oblong shape that remains on my right peripheral, followed swiftly by a third that dances across the rug as I bring my gaze upward.
Disappointment is the thief of joy, and I smother it into nonexistence.
I step close to the mirror.
Brace my hands on the glass.
And see.
The slope of my calves, which are leanly muscled from hours spent walking Highgate Cemetery. The unmarred flesh of my inner thighs and the width of my hips, both soft and curved. And here we are, the beginning of the end. Pulse quickening, I look to my belly and stifle a small gasp. The skin there is textured from the fire, the blisters having formed thin layers of pink that crisscross atop one another. Not daring to tread any closer, I touch a finger to my waist.
My vision shimmers.
I don’t allow myself the luxury of turning away.
Instead, I absorb the yellow bruising over my sternum, from the fallen beam, as well as the constellation of nearly translucent burns that burst across my collarbone. With a deep breath that barely expands my chest, I look up, up, up, and feel my heartrate spike.
The woman staring back is not me.
And yet, somehow, she is more me than I’ve ever been.
The armor of black hair is gone, leaving behind a face that’s both foreign and familiar. Shiny blisters kiss my forehead and the right side of my jaw, turning my porcelain skin a muted peach, as if the fire from Buckingham Palace still burns furiously beneath my flesh. Exhaustion is a curse that’s turned me gaunt, pressing fine lines to either side of my mouth. And my eyes, a deep, effervescent blue that Mum always called violet, give entry to my soul—there, I see the most foreign feature of all: unmasked hope.
A woman brimming with life.
A tear escapes, and as I watch it descend in the mirror, I feel its charted course over my cheek. The floaters follow, clinging to my vision, a reminder that the darkness has been my closest friend for years, and that it’ll swallow me whole if I slow down long enough for it to catch me.
The sound of a car door closing snaps my attention to the window.