Volturi Kings X Oc
Maisy Pearl Cullen was the definition of innocent light
a young girl who loved the gentle pull of embroidery threads, and sharing secret, joyful ragtime melodies on the piano with her beloved brother, Edward.
She was a precious h...
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Chicago, 1918
The stench of acid and stale vinegar could not mask the smell of dying. To nineteen-year-old Maisy Pearl Cullen, that smell would forever be a heavy weight at the back of her throat---the scent of charcoal lungs and fever-cooked blood.
The pandemic had turned Chicago into a sprawling, snow-choked tomb. Outside the frosted windows of the makeshift ward, the wind howled off Lake Michigan, rattling the glass in its wooden frames. Inside, the only sound was the horrific, wet chorus of the dying.
Maisy pressed a damp flannel cloth to her brother's forehead. Her hands, usually so steady when she mended linen or played the upright piano in their parlor, were trembling so violently she could barely bring the water from the cotton. She leaned lower over the cot, her fingers brushing a damp strand of copper hair away from his face.
"Edward," she whispered, her voice cracking. "Edward, please. Look at me."
He didn't open his eyes. Edward was twenty, only a year older than Maisy, but the Spanish Influenza had stolen the boy she knew and left a terrifying, hollowed-out changeling in his place. His copper-colored hair was matted with sweat, sticking to a brow that burned like a stoked furnace. His skin, usually fair and prone to burning in the summer sun, had turned a sickening, bruised shade of plum-gray.
A heavy, rattling breath tore through his chest, followed by a violent fit of coughing that brought dark, frothy blood to his cracked lips.
"Edward!" Maisy cried out, throwing her weight against the iron guardrail of the cot.
She didn't care about the contagion. She didn't care that the doctors had warned her, or that the nurses had tried to physically pull her toward the exit where the other terrified families wept. Edward was her twin in every way but the calendar. When their father had succumbed to the fever three days ago, Edward had held her hand. When their mother, Elizabeth, had fallen ill twelve hours later, Edward had been the one to whisper that they would survive it.
Now, Elizabeth lay dying in the ward across the hall, too weak to even ask for her children, and Edward was slipping into the gray abyss right before Maisy's eyes.
"Don't leave me," she sobbed, burying her face in the coarse wool of his blanket, her fingers knotting into the fabric. "You promised we'd see the new century through together, Edward. You promised. I can't be the only one left. I won't survive it."
Edward's hand twitched. With an agony that was visible in the tight, white-knuckled strain of his tendons, he forced his fingers to move, blindly seeking her out on the mattress. Maisy instantly caught his hand, lifting it to her face and clutching his burning palms against her tear-soaked cheek.
