“Fear,” she says, “is more powerful than pain. So is there anything you’d like to say, before I inject Ms. Prior?”
Tobias presses his lips together.
And Jeanine inserts the needle.
It begins quietly, with a pounding of a heart. I am not sure, at first, whose heartbeat I’m hearing, because it’s far too loud to be my own. But then I realize that it is my own, and it’s getting faster and faster.
Sweat collects in my palms and behind my knees.
And then I have to gasp in order to breathe.
That’s when the screaming starts
And I
Can’t
Think.
soon everything you love, everything all of you love, will be taken from you
I would rather die than let you fill your heart with darkness
you’re thinking about what the queen said again, aren’t you?
