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22 this is what it means to be a king / the fine print
It is easy to ignore a call to arms when you're familiar with the number. Mercy feels no remorse as she hits the red decline button, but Calla is equally as unremorseful, filling the teenager's message box with a plethora of colourfully worded voicemails through 300 Fox Way's home number.
Ignoring Calla once again, Mercy shoves her phone in the back pocket of her jeans, pressing her fingers into the skin of her moistly slick temples. Steam rises and falls around her, streaking the mirror and curling around the redness of her fallen halo of curls like horns. A collection of pills rests in the sink in front of her, tiny rivers of disassociation all culminating into one ocean of an inevitable choice. Removing her fingers from her temples, Mercy grips the sink's edge in whitening hands, gnawing at her lips. Berlin looms behind her, perfectly free of any source of water that drips from the bathroom. She's never safe. Especially underneath the damp darkness that casts over Henrietta via the night sky's blanket of cloud-covered stars.
"Just try one," they say. "There's no harm."
"There is always harm," replies Mercy. "It's a by-product of your existence."
Berlin turns their nose up at her.
Somebody bangs on the bathroom door.
"King," Ronan says. "Hurry the fuck up."
Mercy doesn't answer verbally, delivering a swift kick to the door in return. She hurries, expertly twisting her strands of red hair into Dutch braids and crowds the rainbow pills back into their white bottle, shoving them into the safety of her jumper pocket. It's less than five minutes before she's back out into the openness of Monmouth Manufacturing. seated on the floor next to Gansey and his model of the town. Glue rests in the space between them, a small tube that she toes towards him whenever needed and then pushes away from his work area as Gansey attempts to keep his anxious hands busy.
