Between Burning Worlds (System Divine #2) - Jessica Brody Page 0,117

hood.

Jolras, he remembered, picturing the guard who had stood so defiantly and protectively next to Maximilienne on the bar at the Jondrette, and who had clearly recognized Marcellus. The one who Maximilienne had called her brother.

Two siblings of Nadette Epernay, driven to these horrible acts of revenge.

The branded men were spun roughly around and shoved toward the nearest hothouse.

Then Maximilienne spoke again.

“No longer will the First and Second Estates enjoy the fruits of our labor,” she shouted in an impassioned cry. “Soon every member of the upper estates will come to fear the name Red Scar.”

Suddenly, the screen of the TéléCom flashed a blinding white as a deafening, thunderous boom exploded out of the speakers. Startled, Marcellus blinked to clear his vision, and when he was finally able to focus on the screen again, he saw that the hothouse was gone.

Its plastique roof had been blown completely off, and all of its large paneled windows had disintegrated into nothing. Plumes of dust and rocks engulfed the screen, and where the three superviseurs had been standing moments ago, only a lone boot in the mud remained.

-CHAPTER 35 - CHATINE

WHEN CHATINE WAS SEVEN YEARS old, she found an injured mouse in the Tourbay. Back then, she often wandered around the boglands to pass the time. It was the only place she could go to escape Henri’s ghost. It had been haunting their inn for a year now, and the misty fields near Montfer seemed to keep it at bay. As though it were afraid of getting lost in the dense fog.

She came upon the mouse near a muddy stream. Chatine could tell right away that there was something wrong with it. She cornered it between her feet and picked it up by its tail. It dangled in front of her, squirming in an attempt to break free. And that’s when Chatine noticed that its back left foot had been cut clean off, leaving behind a bleeding stump.

Chatine deposited the wriggling creature into the pocket of her coat and returned to the inn. She knew her mother would slap her dizzy if she found out Chatine had brought a mouse into the inn. The only rodents allowed through the doors were the ones being cooked into her father’s “famous Jondrette sausages.”

But Chatine wanted to cure the little animal. She thought that with enough time and patience, she could not only make him better, but maybe she could make him love her too.

She placed the mouse in an old bread box that she’d found in a trash heap in the Bidon and hid the box under her bed. Every day, she cleaned the mouse’s wound and fed him scraps from the kitchen. And every day, he seemed to get a little better. Each time she opened the lid to check on him or bring him water, he would scurry around the bottom of the box, back and forth, like he was excited to see her.

Until one day, when she opened the lid and he was dead.

She couldn’t understand why. She’d given him everything he needed. Food, water, attention, care. What could have happened? She showed the dead mouse to her older sister, Azelle, who studied the creature for a long moment before taking the box from Chatine’s small hands and turning it around and around like she was inspecting it for defects.

Finally, she gave her very official-sounding diagnosis.

“You suffocated it, Chatine.”

“Suffo-what?” Chatine had never heard this word before.

“This box has no holes for air. It couldn’t breathe.”

Chatine felt frustration well up inside her. And suddenly she was the one who couldn’t breathe. “But I only put it in the box so it wouldn’t run away and get killed out there. By Papa or a cat or the cold.”

Azelle shrugged and handed the mouse coffin back to Chatine. “Looks like it was dead either way, then.”

* * *

Chatine stared at the fresh bandages on her left leg. In the past two days, they were the only things that had changed in this room. Everything else had remained exactly the same. The yellow lights cupped in the ceiling, the shelves of neatly stacked medical supplies, the untouched tray full of food sitting on a table next to her cot. And the numbness. The heavy, mind-crushing numbness that hung in the air like the stink of the Frets. It clung to everything. It slowed everything. Until it felt like the space between breaths lasted an entire day, and the lull between heartbeats, a lifetime.

It was better this