The Last Writer Adriane Leigh (story reading TXT) 📖

in her office. But I knew the terror that existed between its pages must be truly horrible, from the way the faces of the onlookers dropped when Yarrow or I stepped outside. Some even shouted questions that I couldn't quite understand, but I knew that someday, it would all make sense.

I turned my attention back to the cracked mirror, wiping at my cheeks with the tiny wipes soaked in alcohol my mother kept stocked at my vanity. Every day I wore makeup to lighten my skin tone, and every evening as the sun went down, I sat here and scrubbed my flesh until it was raw to remove any last traces of the sister I’d become.

I didn’t recognize her, the girl with the bleached hair and strained smile.

The reflection in the mirror gazed back blankly, all traces of life snuffed out.

I was just about to change into my sleep gown and skip another meal in favor of a book from the library, when another thought occurred to me.

Long ago, and for safety reasons, I’d stolen the governess’s skeleton key and had a replica made at the hardware counter in the village. I’d looped it lovingly with one of Yara’s baby-pink hair ribbons and the tiny finger bone I’d found my first day in the garden. I slipped them into my pocket and moved swiftly down the stairs. The house was silent and moving easily, I crossed the hallway that led to the governess’s office. Only darkness slipped out from under the door, so I knew it must be vacant.

Trying the knob, I opened it easily and slipped inside.

My eyes crawled across the bookshelves in search of a copy of Lilies in the Cellar to bring back to my room. After searching the shelves I tried the cupboards beneath, relieved when I found a stack of dozens, all with a tiny sticker on the front advertising that they were signed by the author.

Zahara Usher, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author

I rolled my eyes as I snagged the first copy and shoved it under my arm. I slipped out of the room as easily as I’d come, surprised I hadn’t needed my secret skeleton key at all to swipe my signed copy of the book that was inspired by my life.

I wondered if writing the story of someone without their permission was legal.

Was it my story though? It looked like it from the outside, but it didn’t feel like it. At least not yet. I‘d grown up in the library, and my life had become a book. Or rather, someone's life. In a weird way I’d come to think of myself as a hybrid human—part Yara and part Zara, neither me and fully me just the same.

I picked my way through the fading light of evening, following the tall hedges and smiling softly when Carnegie and Astor sniffed me out. They trotted up, greeting me with wagging tails as they nuzzled into my thigh. I patted each of them, quietly grateful for their company as I opened the gates to the garden and followed the pathway I’d been walking for over a year now.

I reached the fountain and settled myself against the cold stone, angling myself so the last remaining rays of light lit the opening page of my book.

Ten little lilies lined up in the snow, one tumbled down to shattered bones

The next little lily broke its back, and the third little lily's petals turned black

The fifth little lily wept no no no, so the sixth little lily had to go

The seventh little lily ran to cliff’s edge, and the eighth little lily is already dead

The ninth little lily remains for all to see, as the tenth little lily ran from the screams

I crammed my eyelids closed, already feeling the cut of the words like a rose’s thorn.

I sighed, then opened my eyes, vowing to get through these pages tonight no matter what it took me. It felt like the key to unlocking this weird representation of my future.

I read until my eyes hurt, until tears streamed down my face, until I read about a fifteen-year-old boy that was stolen.

Not by thugs, but by Usher.

By the time I’d finished reading the first one-hundred pages, I didn’t need to read more.

I knew why she’d bothered to lock it up, demanded we not read the words it contained, the accusations it leveled, and horrors it justified.

The governess was a murderer.

According to these pages, and as long as Nate was the teen boy she wrote about in the book, his ending had been violent and disruptive, in many ways just like his life was meant to be. He’d crashed into my life briefly and left a lasting imprint, and now his unmarked grave lay buried somewhere under these hedges and rose bushes, the House of Usher forever looming.

“Oh! Yara, what are you doing out here so late? And barefoot? You know better than that.” The governess’s grave reprimand sliced through my skin like barbed wire.

“You have no right to—to—anything!”

Her face twisted, malice settling in every wrinkle and crack. “Pardon me?”

“You’re a monster!” I threw the stupid paperback at her. Her elegant demeanor cracked and her eyes registered the cover. “You’re a monster and you found a way to monetize the horror you inflicted on every kid you met!”

“You’re out of line,” she sneered, breaking a nearby thorn branch.

I knew she was preparing to whip me, she’d done it more times than I could count with a yardstick or belt when we lived at the library.

“How long have you been killing the kids?”

“Killing them? How could you say that? I’ve been saving them from their miserable lives. I’ve given them a chance here, playmates, and fame, what more could a child want?”

“A life,” I whispered, fighting back angry tears.

“I was just telling Walton that the head nurse asked me to stop by the orphanage and take a few more young ones off of her hands, but if you care that much about it, I won’t.