The Dawn Chorus (The Bone Season, #3.5)

by Samantha Shannon

A disembodied mask drifted up to me and told me it looked forward to our meeting.

My skeleton was ravenous, every joint a panting mouth. I was starving. For the drug. For the oblivion promised by a needle. In oblivion, I was not an orphan. I was not hunted or trapped or broken from torture. I was fog, impossible to chain.

I was a razor blade, all edge and gleam, and I needed to be dulled. I needed to fade. Not to die, not to disappear altogether – just to soften, so the world stopped catching on my sharp corners. So I didn’t feel it when it scraped me. I ached for the comfort of absence. I longed to exist less severely.

Trying to get a handle on your sanity, once it starts to slide, is a balancing act. Give a little to the broken parts of you, to keep them quiet and satisfied. Give a little more to the repairs.

‘Warden, please don’t dissuade me from the solitary mote of joy I have left in my tragedy of a life. I’m being hunted by a tyrant, my entire family is missing or dead, and I’m fresh out of the torture chamber. Please, just let me enjoy my coffee.’