The Midnight Kingdom by Tara Sim

Author:Tara Sim [Sim, Tara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2023-08-22T00:00:00+00:00

Pay Attention

I didn’t intend to get sick.

You have to understand—I tried so hard to keep my family happy. To lower raised voices, and turn storming footfalls into soft steps. I did what I could for my father’s pride and my mother’s kindness. My brother’s love.

Glowing embers in the dark, beautiful until they were not.

And then a burning from within, a primal return to the birth of the world, when it was all fire and heat and madness. Isn’t it strange that beginning is both warm and traumatic, a terrible scream of creation amid blood and pain, an event so harrowing we’re forced to forget it? In comparison, ending is far gentler, like putting your head on a pillow at the close of a long day.

I didn’t intend to die.

In fact, I don’t think I ever truly did. There was the burning, and the pain—the numbness, eventually, that pervaded everything. But I was still there. Aware. Listening.

They brought me into the basilica. I recognized it by smell alone, amber and teak wafting from the thuribles, so familiar I might have cried. A thumb at my cheek, and my father’s rumbling voice above me, asking for a miracle. For a god’s intervention.

Not yet, whispered the Voice. It was the first time I’d heard it, so calm and comforting, like the cool cloths my mother laid upon my forehead.

I didn’t know if he was talking to me, or to the greater universe, or if my fevered brain had scorched away too much of itself. But I listened, I listened, and by listening I kept myself open like a door inviting the unknown in.

There was a pact made that day. In his basilica. In our blood. My father’s miracle.

My death, coming in the form of a circle, the stirring of a new presence that felt as ageless as—

What are you doing?

“Please, no, keep talking—just a little longer—”

Get out.

“Ri—”

ENOUGH.

(Her eyes are dark like a moonless night, her hair is braided, there is a name that comes to me and is gone, and so is she.)

I see you thought to take advantage of my distraction. That must be how she snuck in.

Do not think of her anymore. These memories will not serve you any longer. There is no use in holding on to them. In remembering.

Pay attention to me, now. We have been injured, but it is trivial. We have been delayed, but it is fixable.

I told you to stop thinking about her.

I sired my bloodline for a reason. We all did. Forget your father’s words, your mother’s touch, your brother’s regard. You are my child, my body. You have no need for anything anymore—nothing that I cannot provide.

Soon you will serve your purpose. Be good until then, and you will be rewarded. I know you hunger for it. I hunger, too.

There are still worlds to devour.

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