Page 30 of The Reaper's Vice

“Perhapsthiswill jog your memory.” Madam turns on her heels and fists her fingers in my hair, then hauls me into air like I weigh less than a feather. She holds a dagger poised just above my right eye, the blade glinting in the sun and promising my swift end.

“Which is it?Thief.or.liar?” Her voice remains eerily calm as she inches the blade closer. It’s just about to touch my eye when Maggie cries out, tears spewing down her cheeks.

“Please don’t! She didn’t do anything wrong! It was me, I swear! Just let her go!”

Madam tuts, readjusting her grip on the blade so the tip of it pierces my right brow, drawing a pearl of blood as she breaks the skin.

“Please!”Maggie falls to her knees as Madam presses the blade deeper into my flesh. I can feel the blade scraping against my skull, pressing into the thin bone separating the steel from my fragile brains. “Please don’t!”

“Such a pretty face, isn’t it?” Madam muses, looking at me like it’s the very first time. Like she just nowseesme. “How terrible. Beautiful girls don’t last long in this world.”

My vision fractures as Madam drags the blade diagonally down my face, causing white- hot agony to burst from my every pore as she slashes deep across my nose bridge and into my smile line. Something warm is flooding down my face, but I can barely feel it past the searing pain throbbing from the oozing gash. I can barely see from my right eye, but when I look at Maggie, my heart splinters at the horror etched into her gentle features.

“Nina!” she screams, clawing at the ground as a Mask appears, holding her back by the scruff of her shirt. “Nina, hold on! I’m coming!”

“You’re not going anywhere except the dungeon.” Madam drops the weight of my body, letting me crumple to the dirt. “Take her.”

The Mask grabs Maggie under the arms, hauling her away to be punished in kind. She snarls and bites at the man’s skin, but he barely registers the young girl's attacks as he drags her past the clearing.

I want to run to her, but something is stopping me. It’s this sharp, searing ache throughout my body, pulsing with a life of its own. Holding me to the ground.

“Maggie,” I rasp, fighting to push myself onto my elbows. Thick drops of blood slide down my face and fall to the ground, mixing with the dirt and creating a horrible, slippery sludge. “Maggie.” I fall forward with my arm stretched out to where she’s disappearing over the hilltop.

The Madam kneels beside me in the dirt, brushing the silver hair from my face in what could be mistaken as a motherly gesture. “Oh, sweet Seraphina.” She drags her thumb delicately over my cheek, collecting the tear forming at the corner of my eye. “Why must you be sodisappointing?”

Her palm comes down hard on my cheek, and I wince from the jarring pain it sends straight to my skull. “Ipicked you,girl. Saved you from your disgusting, X- addicted excuse of a mother. Saved you from a life of addiction. Of despair. You should begrateful.” She stands, kicking me in the ribs. Once. Twice.

“Instead, you disobey me at every instance. You align yourself withswilllike Margaret L’Amore.” She uses her steel-tipped boot to clobber me in the temple, and stars spark in my vision. “I should have the Mask kill her. If the Code allowed it…”

She sighs, delivering one last kick to my ribs before stepping away. “She will be dead soon, and there’s nothing you can do to save her. Nothing anyone can do to save a sorry excuse like her. She was selected forfodder, Seraphina. This is not the design—-she should have died long ago. Shewouldhave, if it wasn’t for you coddling her and getting the other girls to join in.

“You… You’re wrong,” I choke. A smile spreads to my cheeks as Madam’s eyes light with fury.

“What did you say to me?” The tips of her bright red nails dig into her palms, causing pearls of blood to form anddrip drip driponto the grass. “What did you say, little girl?”

“I said… You’rewrong.”

Madam’s boot rears back. But when it slams into my temple this time, I’m blessed with the kiss of unconsciousness.

Hours later, when I’m finally able to stand again, I hobble the distance toward the cabin me and the rest of the girls share for sleeping. My face is still oozing blood, and though I know I’ll probably need stitches, there’s no way I’m going through any more pain tonight. After stopping at the first- aid box and wrapping my face the best I can, I step into the rat dung -dung-infested quarters, desperate for sleep to take this cursed pain away. I shuffle slowly to the back where mine and Maggie’s bunk is situated, and as my eyes snag on the empty top bunk, fear gripping my chest.

Did the Madam do it? Did she kill Maggie?

I’m about to charge right back out before my gaze snags on a tiny thing huddled close to the wall on my bed, piles of carrot red hair spilling over her freshly bruised, tearstained-stained cheeks.

“Nina.” Maggie sniffles, wiping the back of her hand across her face as she stares at the blood-stained bandage wrapped around my face. Her eyes widen with heartbreak, big fat salty tears falling from the skies and staining her tattered tee shirt. “I-I’m so sorry, Nina. I never thought?—”

She breaks down into heaving sobs, and my chest cracks at the pain practically seeping from her pores. It’s like I canseeit—like I cantastethe notes of sorrow zesting the air.

“I didn’t want them to hurt you!” she wails, pulling up her knees and hiding her face. “I thought…I thought if I told them the truth—showed them that you were only trying to begood—that they wouldn’t hurt you. I failed you, Nina. I failed, and now you hate me.”

All I want to do is scoop the tiny girl into my arms and tell her everything will be alright. And so, I do.

“Hey, hey, hey.” I climb into bed and pull Maggie into my lap, brushing the messy curls from her forehead with a shushing sound. She pushes her face into my chest, her stringy arms hanging onto me for dear life as sobs rack her body. “I could never hate you, Magoo. You’re my favorite person in the whole wide world…. You were only trying to protect me. You were being brave. A heck of a lot braver than me.”

I gaze down at her, pulling her tiny body tighter against my chest as her sobs die down. “Plus, I’m pretty sure both of us were gonna get punished no matter what we said. We weren’t supposed to be out in that field in the first place—the magazine was just the cherry on top.”

Maggie’s sobs subside with the last of my words, and she sniffles weakly against my tee. “I’m gonna miss it. That was my favorite one—it hadallthe best mountains in it.”

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