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She lifted the boy’s head to rest in the crook of her neck, rocking him, swaying him, comforting him, hushing him. All the things I wanted to do with my baby, she did right before my eyes… The woman who had cost me the opportunity to do so.
For eternity.
Hot and biting, anger carved itself into my beating but dead heart, letting my fingers tighten around the blade. Why did she deserve to hold her baby and I did not? What had I ever done to anybody to be denied hushing my child? Why would I deny myself, when all this could end with a single stab?
I’d done it before.
I could do it again.
Just one more time.
For my baby.
For the world.
Eilam cocked his head, brows furrowing. ‘Have you no heart, murdering—’
“I told you to shut up.” With a swipe of my hand, I lashed out at him. The blade cut across his collarbone before tearing open his neck, letting rivulets of blood run down his bare chest no matter how he pressed a hand to the wound, staring at me in shock. “Take the baby!”
I’d only shouted it into the room, but Enosh immediately stepped up beside me. He leaned over with hushing sounds, plucking the screaming boy from Rose’s arms.
Perhaps she would have gone after Enosh, if it wasn’t for the ropes of skin wrapping around her, disabling all fight. Still, she tossed on her arse and screeched frantically, her face a mess of tears and auburn strands clinging to damp cheeks.
I leaned closer to Eilam while readjusting my grip on the blade. “I might rob the boy of its mother, but I’ll also make sure that many other boys will get to keep their fathers.”
Or at least, that was what I told myself when I brought the blade to Rose’s throat with one hand and let the palm of the other touch down on the butt of the handle.
Fast. Simple.
My eyes flicked to her belly.
Throat. Belly.
Throat again.
The next time my gaze dropped to her upper belly, a bone knife protruded from it, close to her lungs, its handle resting in the fist of my hand. How it had slipped so low, I couldn’t say. Maybe the weight, maybe not.
I watched my hand turn, driving it in deeper until a wet cough called my attention back to Rose. Red-cheeked Rose, whose lips parted like that of a fish out of water, unable to take a breath under the flow of blood that gargled from her mouth.
“I am the Queen of Rot and Pain, beautiful and kind, terrible and cruel,” I murmured to myself and Rose, then stared down at Eilam, who still held his hand pressed to a wound already closed. “Now give me my baby.”