from my rotting corpse
I am not watching as she comes closer, and closer, and hums a song that is dead before it leaves her lips. I am not listening to it.
I am only watching my heart beat as it sits on the throne. And I am counting every time her heart beat out a question she does not know she is asking.
And I silently answer it: yes.
I am only watching my heart beat as it sits on the throne. And I am counting every time her heart beat out a question she does not know she is asking.
And I silently answer it: yes.
I
solt is carving scars into the throne room floor when the other mare enters. Each step brings her closer to the throne, closer to her heart, closer to the dare those deadwood ribs wrapped around it are whispering to her. And every steps makes that wave of violence in her empty chest to rise a little bit higher, and crash a little bit harder, and swell again faster than before. She does not have the heart to listen to a song sung in a language she does not know (any language besides that of rot, and violence, and rage is lost on her.) And she is not mortal enough to do anything but look up, and up, and up, and when those terrible ivy eyes blink at her and smile, Isolt blinks back at it. It is not a unicorn, or a princess, or any other lovely thing that pulls its lips back in a look that is more snarl than smile.
But at that word — we — her ears flicker back against her skull. And all her rage that was waiting like gasoline in her veins begins to ignite.
The only we that exists for Isolt lives in the spaces between her heartbeat and her sister’s. And every other heart in the world — every single one — exists only for monsters like her to cut them free of their chests and lay them out as offerings to themselves.
“We will do nothing at all.” The words sound like dead things falling from between her teeth. The walls echo her voice back to her as if each syllable and sound of it is the beginning of war. And still she does not look back, or stop in her advance, or pause to wonder what kind of horses sing songs when looking at the belly of a beast.
On the throne, her heart is beginning to weep blood. Isolt stops only when she is face to face with it, close enough to reach out and trace the tangled lines of driftwood and bone wrapped around it like nooses tied together. And if feels to her like someone is carving lines down her own ribs, and cutting open her own arteries, and oh, oh, oh! how the marrow in her bones sets to trembling.
But she does not stop. As every inch of her skin begins to crawl like her blood is coming awake as it bleeds out of her, she only drives the points of her blade deeper into the wood. Light gathers along the hollow curls of her horn when she lifts her head like a wolf instead of a unicorn. And when she turns her head, slowly, just enough to look over one shoulder at the frost-covered mare, she wonders if it is violence of madness that lingers there in her bloody gaze.
She wonders if there is a difference between the two after all.
With a single violent stroke, she cuts through the first root.
And just like that, the throne room descends into chaos as the walls set to weeping and screaming at once, and the remaining vines wrap tightly around the throne, and the ground begins to convulse.
