The Hollow Heart by Marie Rutkoski

NIRRIM

THE SOUND OF WARFARE DIMS. The loud, explosive weapons stop shuddering. I look at the dagger in my hand. Has the war paused because this is the answer—to plunge the dagger into Sid’s heart?

The dagger is finely made. I know nothing of weapons but I know this. I can tell by how perfectly balanced the blade is, and how the edge is so sharp it looks like you might not feel, at first, any pain. I have held this dagger only once before, when I used it to prick my finger, and did not look closely at it then, but I see it better now: the slightly blue tint to its hammered steel, and the sigil on the hilt of two eyes lightly closed. It is the sign of Sid’s family, the family she loved so much that she left me for them.

But now she is mine.

She sleeps, her mouth the perfect shape for mine, her hands long and a little large, folded over her heart. I shift them aside, and although before her body had been stiff, as though dead already, now her hands slide away easily at the slightest pressure. I see where I must stab.

Do you not love me like I love you? I remember her saying. Will you come with me?

I remember the force of my love. The memory fills me so strongly that the difference between past and present feels like a lie.

I can do nothing to hurt her, because I realize that to hurt her would be to hurt myself.

I drop the dagger to the floor.