The Sweetest Dark

CHAPTER 8




Letter dictated and signed by Rue, M. of L., dated August 3, 1808


My darling girl,

You’re sixteen. I’ve counted the years until this day, felt them pass in my marrow, each minute creeping, each second a fresh bleeding ache. How I long to be with you during this time. You’ve no idea what’s to come, and those with you now have no real way to prepare you. Not as I could. I knew the moment I first cradled you in my arms how strong you were going to be. How different. Our blood is thinning, and there are not many born such as you. Perchance that’s a blessing; I truly don’t know. But what I do want you to know, the very first thing, is that it’s going to hurt. It’s going to hurt so very much that you will wish you could die.

You must not die. Not yet.

When it first begins, you’ll feel a sense of tearing within; I can think of no better word to describe it. Tearing. Renting, your skin from muscles, your muscles from bone. It will be a pain at once so exquisite and so horrifying that it will devour you whole. And it will be swift. You won’t even have the dubious relief of opening your mouth to scream.

You will no longer have a mouth.

Nor eyes, nor face, nor limbs. You will no longer have a human body. You will exist as nothing but smoke and pain.

I require that you hold on to one single, final thought during this agony: I will live.

Without it, every bit of you, every last lingering essence, will merely evaporate. Your parents will have nothing left to bury.

I wish I might be there for you when it happens. I wish I might be a better guide for you, my beloved girl. You are my great-great-grandchild. You have my husband’s eyes. And yet I remain trapped, old and blind, at this miserable distance, countries away, mired in my worry.

The first Turn has destroyed so many of our kind. Do not become one more early death.

All my love,

—Rue