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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. it hurts to become.
THE SUN SET THAT NIGHT, and the world was quiet.
And it was in this quiet Mercy sat. With a hand on the fluttering shell she called a heart, wondering, amongst a million other things, if anyone ever knew that they'd gone "too far".
Because the weeks had given her space to think and because hindsight was a wonderful thing. But it was just that, hindsight. An after-the-fact thing. A looking-into-the-past thing. When she gave the Darkling a sweet and tender bleeding hole in his chest, she would have no way of knowing his death was too far until his blood bled into the ground and grew thorns instead of roses.
And yet, Death was still too kind. To pay that eternal debt, Mercy was going to annihilate the Darkling, crush his soul, his spirit and his heart and leave him for dead in some unmarked grave, very much alive, wondering if perhaps he'd picked the wrong little girl to present to the Lantsov's. That was his pound of flesh. How is getting what she is owed "too far"?
Revenge bled like something sweet on her tongue and stained her teeth red until it was the only thing that Mercy saw when she looked in the mirror and smiled. Revenge became her and the pirate disavowed everything she had known before that familiar power consumed her whole. It would be so much more filling to watch the Darkling bleed when his blood stained her too.
You see the dilemma, right? Was that too far? Or was it not far enough?
But then what did it even matter? Her guilt-ridden dreams were fleeting blemishes on the psyche, paling once the morning sun rose. She wouldn't remember the conscience of her damned soul, not like she'd remember how the light faded from his eyes.
She'd do it - for them, not for some ungrateful world that never lifted a hand to her. If victory meant the world was saved, it was a reluctant side effect because honestly, Mercy'd rather break the world apart than lose them. But she'd fight to keep it from shattering so Alina could be more than the Sun Summoner. So that Nikolai would never have to exchange her heart for the weight of a crown again.
It was as close to good as she ever wanted to get.
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"YOU LOOK VERY WELL rested."
Like most nights, Mercy found herself perched up a window ledge. This particular concoction of wood and paint and whatever Fabrikators used to make Palaces was beginning to hold more memories than one feeble timber carcass could handle.
Mercy often wondered if the Little Palace walls had eyes. Because if it saw her, how would this beautiful prison perceive her?
Determined to bore the walls to death, Mercy often sat on her window ledge, night after night, looking at the stars and wishing for nothing but the gentle lapping of the waves. And then she did nothing. Because nothing was so easy to do, especially when you are on your own.
