TMBIPYMEN Chapter 22

Laila's head whipped toward the source of the voice. Where moments before there had been nothing, a silhouette now stood.

She—the outline of a dress confirmed it was a woman—appeared as nothing but a black shadow even beneath the soft, bright light spilling from the palace.

Perhaps it was the backlighting.

Laila tried to cling to that hopeful thought, but the longer she looked, the more she understood it for the delusion it was. This was darkness itself. Darkness wearing human form.

It spoke.

—Come here, child. I'll show you something good.

No. Laila said firmly within her mind. Though her voice would never reach that thing, she nonetheless raised her internal cry as though it might. No. I won't come!

—You're already here.

Suddenly, everything at the edges of her vision stretched like a tapestry left carelessly in sunlight. Not just her surroundings. Her own body did the same. Pulled downward, into somewhere else. Laila screamed as she watched her fingers elongate like serpents.

When the screaming stopped, Laila found herself back in the corridor with the busts.

She looked around in panic. "It can't be." An involuntary whimper escaped her lips. She had been standing on her own two feet just moments before, yet now she found herself sitting on the floor.

"It can't be."

When Laila murmured the words again, she heard:

—What can't be, child?

The voice came from right beside her ear. Laila cried out and scrambled backward, but the place where the sound had come from held nothing.

—I'm here.

Cold breath suddenly touched the nape of her neck. It was the breath of ice at its most refined—as though the coldest part of frozen water had been finely ground to powder.

Her skin prickled. Her hair stood on end. Laila didn't turn her head, yet she could sense a presence leaning close, a head near her shoulder.

—I'll show you something interesting.

"I don't want to," Laila answered immediately.

The ominous voice unexpectedly broke into laughter. It wasn't an unpleasant metallic sound, but neither was it joyful. No one with sense would enjoy hearing a ghost laugh, no matter how much of a witch they claimed to be.

—You will see. If I wish to show you, you'll see. You have eyes, don't you? That's right…. I've been waiting so long for someone like you. Waiting for someone with eyes to witness me.

"I don't want to see. Are you Yustar's grandmother?"

—That poor thing is my grandson, it's true. That's right. I was already gone from this world when he was born, and yet I watched him be born. Right there, between his mother's thighs.

How repulsive. Laila thought. Being able to see ghosts was particularly detestable for this very reason.

She could see them, but others couldn't. They went about their shameful affairs without knowing they were being observed.

Once, she'd witnessed a man clinging to another man's wife—he'd lost his own wife long ago—and she'd found the ghost of his true wife standing silently beside him far more revolting than the infidelity itself.

The ghost stood watching her living husband's face, and whenever he thrust with effort, she opened her mouth wide as if to laugh loudly in mockery. A silent, soundless laugh.

"I don't want to see what you show me. Send me back to where I was."

—If you see what I have to show you, I'll send you back.

Laila squeezed her eyes shut.

"I don't make deals with ghosts."

—Then there's nothing for it. You'll be helpless, with no promise and no assurance. Come now, open your eyes. And look at this. Hurry. Here is safe. You need only open your eyes….

No. Laila cried out silently. But such things had a way of proceeding regardless of her will.

She already knew that closing her eyes physically didn't make "overlay" impossible. Moreover, this ghost wanted Laila to see her "core"—she was forcing her to look.

A dusty-seeming image appeared before Laila's eyes. She fought against seeing it, but it grew steadily clearer. The palace came into view, followed by a woman walking with an imperious bearing, attended by several others.

Laila understood at once that this was the bust's subject, Yustar's grandmother. She appeared far too young to have a grandchild, but Laila knew it not from her appearance.

She had been Sierrow's queen, yet bore no children. The king labored alongside her for years, seeking an heir, but all effort proved fruitless. He took a concubine. Then another.

The concubines were lavish and loud. They had no choice—survival itself demanded it.

The queen bore them no resentment. Yet no children came from the concubines either. The king grew more hysterical with age. No heir meant civil war within the palace walls.

Then both the queen and one of the concubines became pregnant simultaneously.

Both sons. Within the vision, watching the two visibly swollen women, Laila suddenly understood. A boom sounded, and the scene shifted.

Two boys, perhaps three or four years old, appeared. One was born of the queen, one of the concubine. By then, the king had banished all but one of the concubines and sent them away. And he loved the remaining concubine more than the queen.

The queen became, for all practical purposes, a living widow. Yet she had to maintain her composure. Sometimes unbearable hatred rose within her, but she managed it with skillful ease.

She was always imperious and expressionless, which earned her both fear and respect from her subjects. After all, a concubine, however accomplished, remained merely a concubine. She could never surpass the queen, the very bedrock of the royal house. Never.

Favoring a concubine was like caging a beautiful bird temporarily to admire it. Once the bird aged, its feathers fell out, and its voice grew hoarse, it would be disposed of quickly. The queen cultivated her patience, waiting for that day.

But when the king's favor transformed into love, everything reversed.

The king came to love the soft concubine, who enfolded him with tender wiles, far more than the rigid, sanctimonious queen.

Her whispered pillow talk sounded like sage counsel, while the queen's advice became nothing but tedious nonsense. The concubine's power grew daily.

Rumors even dared circulate that the concubine's son might become crown prince, displacing the queen's legitimate heir.

That, the queen could not bear.

—So I removed it. I destroyed the thing she held most dear, thinking to kill her with it.

The ghost whispered, and Laila felt a sting of pain and cold pierce through her, like a wasp sting. Something terrible was about to unfold…. She wanted to close her eyes. To not see.

But she couldn't. Laila was forced to keep watching.

It was far easier to act against a mere illegitimate child than to approach the concubine, who remained constantly at the king's side.

The queen had a few trusted people deliver sweets to her son. Children naturally loved sweet confections. There was no need to resort to dangerous poisons.

She merely twisted a thread of her own magic into it—just a tiny bit.

The child, who was called remarkably intelligent for his age, whom people regretted was born to a concubine rather than the queen, stopped breathing less than two hours after he'd finished eating what she'd sent.

"How could you do such a thing…."

—It's too early to say such things yet, child.

Laila tried to turn her head toward the voice, but her head was locked in place as though gripped by an iron frame. She couldn't move an inch.

I'd do anything to escape from here. Laila thought. But neither freedom nor captivity came under her control.

—That cunning woman realized it.... Perhaps someone leaked word. But that's all in the past now. Yet unforgettable. Come now, look. Watch what that woman did.

Laila witnessed the concubine, devastated by the loss of her son, hurl herself at the queen. The concubine had tried to stop her using the meager magic she possessed, and it had worked, but imperfectly. What the concubine held in her hand, which she'd meant to throw into the queen's face, succeeded only in soaking the front of her dress.

Yet the queen collapsed, clutching her chest in agony. Her skin reddened as though cooking, then blistering and pustules erupted across it in moments. The concubine was arrested on the spot. The queen fell unconscious.

—What that woman poured on me was a very deadly, very potent corrosive. So strong that even a touch would flay skin and dissolve bone. A tincture of such strength…. Where she obtained it, I cannot imagine. Which witch she procured it from.

Laila's shoulders flinched. She managed to shift only her eyes to one side. Unable to turn her head, this was all she could do.

Laila spoke.

"The only witch left in these lands is me. Before me, there was only my mother, and before her, only my grandmother. Are you saying my grandmother killed you?"

The ghost laughed again. This time it was a harsh, ringing sound like scraping metal.

—So the story goes that way. Well…. In any case, I weakened after that. But I'm grateful. I was able to see that woman die.

"You killed her? Did you kill her yourself?"

—More precisely, His Majesty killed her. At my final request. He wore such an anguished expression then, though he'd never loved me. It was so amusing. So I ordered him to throw her into the corrosive she'd poured on me, still living. And I watched. I watched most eagerly as it screamed and wailed and spewed blood before dying. Then I died peacefully.

Laila's body trembled. This woman was not human. Not because she was a ghost, but because she was so monstrously cruel that calling her human seemed impossible.

Laila spoke.

"You hurt that woman's son first."

—She seduced my husband first.

"And for that, you killed a child? Beasts don't commit such acts! To do something so bestial, then to feel wronged when your own cruelty is returned to you? Is that why you killed her so horribly?"

—Wronged? Far from it.

The vision faded. Laila's eyes went black before snapping bright as light flared on.

A woman stood before her. Her clothing was burnt and fused to her flesh from her shoulder blades to her chest and across her belly. Her skin was flayed raw. She was smiling.

—I didn't kill that woman out of any sense of wrong. I simply wanted to, from the beginning. And now….

The woman's eyes, pupils invisible, moved as though writhing as she spoke.

—Now I want to kill you.