Grinning, the woman’s serene smile broadens into a Cheshire Cat’s crescent moon on her face. Color forms in the void around them while the air crackles with heat. A circle of blue flames surrounds them both as the woman’s hair flows behind her, carried alight by the wind. A slow transformation, a burst of color: her hair changes from tips to crown from white to blood red.
The gentle laughter from before comes from the woman, though her lips don’t move at all. Despite the fire and brimstone, the bell-like quality of her laugh doesn’t change.
So much for not being alike, Mister Bunny Ears. You and I are the same, as much as you don’t want to admit it.
Mind games are her specialty, but here, in this endless dream world, Dahlia Hawthorne can do whatever she pleases, unbidden by the rules of Heaven or Hell. She lifts a slim hand and abruptly crushes her fingers against her palm in a tight fist. As if on cue, the air fills with the thick black smoke once more.
You’re a killer now, too. You’re guilty, dear boy, and your punishment is death.
Her voice distorts, like TV static, and she’s gone. Shadows move in the corner of your eye, blink and you’ll miss it, always behind you. Dahlia’s slender hands encircle Apollo’s throat and savagely press the life from him, leaving an icy ring around his neck to match the marks of the noose around hers. No use fighting, no use slipping from her grasp, the air is hot and her fingers are freezing and it’s so hard to breathe—
Like that smile that had split his own face when he’d stared out through eyes that weren’t his own, so hers seems to be mirrored. It’s like watching blood stain a perfectly good sheet, overtaking without prejudice, just like her.
His voice is like a torn flag, shaking and shuddering because of the suffocating air. He can taste the acrid smoke, as if the flames were just beneath him, like a slow descent into a pit of coals and his sins accused were waiting to consume him. There was no defying her words, choked out by the heat that he would’ve used to scream, deny and deny again.
Such delicate, refined fingers, fine manicured nails that press relentlessly into his skin while he fights their grip, and just when he would’ve grabbed at what his brain told him were actual hands, falling through them, and instead, scrabbling at fabric.
Apollo hadn’t remembered being face down before he closed his eyes. His lips were dry , and it was evident by the wet spot on his pillow he’d been trying to breathe through with the expected difficulty that would bring.
The bed was left unoccupied, willing himself through the wee hours before the sun finally rose. The light of day did not bring comfort through his window, only reminded him that he was still living.
The nurse who’d come to give him his discharge papers was more shocked by what she was sure wasn’t there before. Security feeds were needing to be checked. There were fresh burns on a patient that’d had a third floor room, who had no such equipment to create a fire in his possession or within immediate grasp. Apollo Justice would need to be under strict observation for the next few days.
