Page 29 of Dissection of Immortal Hearts

Something landed on his empty plate with a sickening thud. All eyes turned to the young trainee, whose throat emitted a horrific gurgling sound.

Dear God.

Petrov froze, his mouth agape in shock.

“Damn it!” His son leapt to his feet, knocking over his wineglass and spilling crimson across the white tablecloth.

Amelia’s stomach churned, but she suppressed the bile rising in her mouth. The Chosen collapsed to the floor, clutching at the torrent of blood gushing from her throat. Hermissingthroat. The Queen had torn it out and thrown it onto the General’s plate.

Amelia’s instincts screamed at her to rise and help. But it was hopeless. The girl was gone. She couldn’t have been more than twenty years old…

Amelia’s heart raced with the need to flee, but she remained rooted in her chair. Across the table, Kathrine and the advisor sat motionless, while Sevar… that bastard was smirking.

The Queen appeared neither angry nor pleased. Observing Petrov, she seemed to be waiting for the initial shock to fade before speaking in a calm tone. “If I’m capable of doing this to someone I care for, what do you think I’d do to a useless general and his even more useless son?”

General Petrov’s eyes dropped to the bloody organ on his plate. “You… you’re a monster…”

“The General calls me a monster! Listen carefully, Petrov. The second you leave Antambazi, you’ll pick up your black book and call every politician, mafioso, and power broker you know until my request is fulfilled. Do you understand?” Without waiting for a reply, she stood, the screech of her chair piercing the room. “As a gesture of goodwill, I’ll give you a tour of mylaboratory so you can see just how far my capabilities extend. Coming?” She extended her hand towards the General. “Or would you prefer to finish your dinner first?”

***

Amelia

Amelia closed the door to her room, resting her back against it. She had witnessed death before, but never such calculated cruelty. This wasn’t primal aggression, like an animal killing for survival, nor an act of passion or vengeance. The Queen had murdered the girl as a mere demonstration of her power, her authority.

Kicking off her sandals, Amelia exchanged them for ankle boots, then stepped out again. She couldn’t afford to remain idle any longer while this woman held Mikhail.

The marble staircase loomed at the end of the corridor, and Amelia broke into a run. As she descended, her reflection flickered in a sidewall mirror, but she ignored the warning that seemed to radiate from her own eyes.

Reaching the fourth floor, where the Queen’s quarters lay, she felt the arched ceilings pressing lower overhead than she remembered. Her hand paused over the serpent-shaped gold handle. Just before she pushed it, a stained glass window on the opposite wall caught her eye. She squinted, scrutinising its details.

She stepped away from the door and approached the window for a better look. Across the three tall, curved panes played out a bloody tableau, interrupted only by the mahogany frames dividing the panes. The central motif was a stone wall, draped with gruesome human forms. Some figures were impaled on spears; others lay dismembered or with their exposed organs protruding from gaping wounds. Blood poured from their openmouths, streaming down the wall.

Amelia staggered back from the stained glass, her breath uneven.

She couldn’t let a decoration scare her! Steeling herself, she returned to the Queen’s chambers. Her hand hesitated over the golden serpent-shaped handle, gripping it, half-expecting the snake to spring to life and bite her.

The door opened with a soft creak. Amelia scanned both directions, checking the hallway for any sign of movement, before advancing. Peering through the gap, the dim light from the corridor lit up the large table in the centre of the room. A faint breeze drifted through the open window, lifting a few loose strands of her hair.

“Your Majesty?” Her voice carried through the stillness, though she didn’t expect an answer. The Queen was in the laboratory and hadn’t invited Amelia, leaving her with a perfect opportunity to look around.

Closing the door, she observed the room. Shadows pooled in the corners. The cold air from the window made her skin prickle. The scent of the sea mingled with traces of extinguished incense and the faint waxy smell of a snuffed-out candle.

Amelia approached the heavy double doors of the bookcase and ran her fingers along the spines at eye level, hoping one might spark a vision or guide her intuition. None stood out. There wasn’t time to flick through them all, so she moved to the opposite side of the room.

Her reflection in the glass-panelled cabinet startled her, causing her heartbeat to skip for an instant. She examined the array of figurines inside. In stories, it was always some trinket or artefact that activated a secret door. What was the Queen’s magical object?

She considered opening the cabinet and twisting or pressing each figure, but paused when her eyes fell on a book lying facedown on the table. Moving closer, she realised it wasn’t a book at all, but a thick sketchbook. Lifting it towards the window, she let the moonlight reveal the graphite drawing on the rough pages. It took several moments of scrutiny until she could make sense of the image.

At first glance, it appeared to depict a transformed manticore, standing on its hind legs and shown in profile. Fury twisted his snarling face, his large wings spread wide, and his barbed tail curled menacingly. Yet something seemed odd. The hind legs ended in hooves, not paws, and the wings had feathers, more like a bird’s than a manticore’s smooth, leathery span. And those strange protrusions above its ears –horns?

A chill swept over her, making her shudder. She glanced towards the cabinet, recalling the small manticore figurine within. She was familiar with the transformed form of a manticore, having studied it in detail during her fleeting, joyful days with Mikhail. The sketch before her was inaccurate…and grotesque.

She flipped back to the previous page. A sketch of a naked woman – a nymph, judging by her elongated, claw-like nails. Where her mouth should have been, a bird’s beak jutted.

Amelia shook her head, willing herself to ignore the unease these drawings inspired. Whoever had drawn them had a disturbing, vivid imagination. Yet, she flipped to another page.

A sudden gust of wind billowed the curtains, lifting them for a moment. She glanced over her shoulder and froze. Someone was behind the curtain. It had been a fleeting glimpse, caught in her peripheral vision, but…