Muriel's POV
Janice covered her mouth and laughed. “That’s right, Muriel. Your child can atone for you and also help you earn good karma.”
“Honestly, it’s lucky he died young. With a mother like you, even if he hadn’t been turned into a rosary, he’d have been ruined by you. So it's like I’m giving him a chance by calming my mind and helping me get pregnant. That’s his good fortune. Maybe God will smile and move up his next life, letting him be reborn as a dog.”
Her words hit me like an explosion. They shredded my heart and soul.
Vexed, I kicked her hard, grabbed the glowing-red tongs from the barbecue, and pressed them against her belly.
“Should I burn your uterus now so you won’t need fertility help?” I snapped. “Oh. No. I should just stab through your skull so you’ll never have nightmares again. If you still love your life, give me the rosary!”
“Muriel, will you ever stop?!” Alaric roared as he clamped my wrist so tight I thought he’d crush my bones.
“Janice is only trying to help you. You caused too much trouble. I only you hadn't, maybe your child wouldn’t have died so horribly. Stop this!” he barked.
I stared at him in disbelief.
In my life, I’d failed only two people: my mother and my child. For countless nights, the guilt had eaten me until I could barely breathe. Everyone in the world had the right to blame me, except Alaric. He didn’t deserve it. If he had listened to me, if he hadn’t underestimated our enemies, he wouldn’t have been kidnapped. I wouldn’t have lost my child or my right to be a mother.
I remembered him kneeling in blood before the doctors, begging them to save me. I remembered him outside the operating room, bowing to the gods and the heavens a hundred times, saying, “I’d trade the rest of my life for Muriel’s. From now on, I live only for her.”
Remembering those, I dropped a low, mirthless laugh that made my shoulders tremble, and I let go of the tongs.
Only then did Alaric breathe out, relieved. “Muriel, you—”
But the next instant, one of his ears dropped on the floor.
I toyed with the knife in my hand and wiped the blood from my face. “So dirty,” I said, then smiled at him. “Alaric, getting old? Why can’t you understand plain speech?”
“I told you to make her miscarry, and you pretended not to hear. I told you to give me the rosary, and you pretended not to hear either. If those ears of yours are that useless, then better live without them.”
“Alaric!” Janice screamed. “Muriel, you’re insane. You want the rosary? Fine! Go get them yourself!”
After shrieking, she hurled it into the pond. Smart move. She knew she couldn’t beat me physically, so she tried to hurt me emotionally instead. But ever since Alaric turned me into a madwoman, my heart had been steel.
I grabbed Janice by the hair, dragged her to the pond, and kicked her in.
“Muriel! It’s the dead of winter! She’ll freeze to death!” Alaric yelled as he lunged forward.
