Page 86 of The Reaper's Vice

Madam sneers, gripping me by the back of my hair and dragging me across the ground, kicking and screaming. She dumps me next to Maggie’s body, and the crows scatter as my heartbroken sobs fill the clearing.

“Get yourself together!” she barks, kicking me in the ribs in a fit of rage. “You are the next Madam! This behavior is unacceptable!”

She yanks me by my hair and shoves my face within inches of Maggie's bashed face, and another sob of agony tears from my mouth as I gaze upon those dull, cobalt eyes that once held so much warmth. So much life.

“Please,” I whisper. “Please, please, please. I’ll do—I’ll do anything,” I bargain with the gods above. Hoping this time they will listen. Will give a damn.

But they don’t.

They never do.

I blink up at a pair of chocolate-brown eyes, deeply set in a face I barely recognize. My neighbor’s mouth is moving, but I can’t understand a word of it. At least, no more than the phrase “ambulance is on the way.”

No. No, they can’t find me. I have to get out of here.

Struggling to a stand, I close my eyes against the dripping walls and stumble in the general direction of the front door. The woman calls out something behind me, but I’m too far underwater to understand. Too tired to give a damn.

I make it halfway down the steps when my legs collapse. I tumble down the rest of the stairs, numb to the pain as my vision shudders and fractures like a kaleidoscope.

The back of my head smacks against the concrete. My limbs are heavy—so, so heavy—and though I try to raise them, I don’t have the strength.Not now. Not anymore.

I blink up at the gray sky, wishing for something—anything—to take away the storm brewing in my mind. But it’s too little, too late.

And I fall back into the dark.

“Congratulations, Seraphina.”

There are ants in my head, and they won't get out—ants in my head and under my skin. The moon is too bright and too hot and too salty on my tongue. The beauty of it burns my retinas, and I want so badly to blink, but I’m frozen in time. Frozen to this singular moment stretched between somewhere and nowhere.

“You are the last one surviving.”

My body twitches, something deep in my subconscious remembering—but then the memory fractures, falls away like shards of glass—and I forget.

The drugs did something terrible to me. Something irreversible.

Something unforgivable.

I raise my head, finding Calathea, the Madam, dressed in her full regalia, her gold Venetian mask obscuring the hateful features beneath. I blink, and a deep purple haze blossoms around her, filling the room with her noxious stink. Her aura flutters between mud brown and purple as she gazes at my crouched form, and by the way she jerks back, I know she realizes what she’s done to me. Finally, she understands the monster she created.

“Rise, Seraphina,” she commands, taking a tentative step back as I do just that. “Rise and take your place at my side as the next Madam of the Sanctum.”

I glance over her shoulder, the ringing in my ears subsiding just enough to let in the high-pitched yowling filling the space. A small gray cage sat atop Calathea’s red oak desk, perfectly unassuming save for the fuzzy white paw stretching through the slots in the bars.

“Ah. You wish to see your children.”

I clutch the scar on my abdomen, a shot of pain running straight through my marrow as I’m reminded of what the Sanctum took from me, what theystolefrom me.

“I cannot have children.” My voice is low and robotic. “As the Sanctum ordained.”

“Perhaps not biological children, but now that you are chosen to be the next Madam, you are allowed certain… privileges you were not before.” She motions to her side, where her twin tigers, Nix and Niege, sit dutifully. “I remember when I was given my tigers… I’m quite certain I felt just as you do now. Angry. Confused. Unwilling to accept the path that lay before me.”

She looks up, and for once, the look in her eyes is pure anguish. “It was all taken from me, too, you know.”

Calathea shakes her head violently, and when she looks at me again, that piece of humanity is gone, replaced with her usual cool malice. “No matter. Youwillaccept your place. You will raise these tigers as your children, as your ultimate protectors. When the time comes, you will replace me and train other young girls to replace yourself one day. You will take this all in stride without complaint or refusal. And when your time comes, you willdie.”Calathea takes a step forward, gripping my chin in her ice-cold fingers. “Is that clear,Seraphina?”

I don’t respond. I can’t—I’m frozen. Rooted to the spot by my anger. Myhatred.

“Seraphina?” she asks, her grip tightening painfully along my jaw. “I asked you a question.”

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