42. Hope
42
Hope
T all trees surrounded the small clearing where Ciaran had moured Hope to. She would have stopped to marvel at the red-tinged night sky above her, should the corpse of her mother not have been laying at her feet. She had been staring at it blankly for seconds, minutes, or hours.
What had she done.
What had she done, forcing her mother to come here. Who had she thought she was, confronting the Organ Mandor with nothing but her human force and the stupid blood that only could fuel vehicles? Why did she ever think such a being would be compassionate and explain himself? How had she never considered that he would kill her mother when he saw her after over twenty years?
Hope had believed that somewhere inside her father, he would remember what he had felt for her mother. That the love that had destroyed her mother so devastatingly would have been reprocicated, and that it would have affected him as well. That the fact that he discarded them instead of killing them, somehow meant that Rhei Coralt had indeed loved her mother.
In front of Hope was his love. His redemption.
Dead.
Hope let her tears flow freely, painfully, as she cried on her mother’s chest. Exactly how she used to cry when she was little. Except Aurora’s chest was cold as the cruel heart of her killer, and she would never hold Hope’s body tight again.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice cutting between devastated sobs. It didn’t even matter if her words were intelligible. Aurora would not listen to her ever again. “I never meant for this to happen.”
A shadow moved in the clearing, and Hope remembered Ciaran was here. He had taken her here. She didn’t even know where exactly she was, or if it was safe, or if that man was reliable to be around, or if the night would swallow her whole and take her to the deep pit of pain that her whole soul now was.
None of that mattered.
This woman she was crying on had been all that had ever mattered. The woman who had been with her every single day since she was born. The woman who had died internally all those years ago, but had managed to re-flourish from her damage. The woman who had taught her to be resilient. Who had taught her how to defend herself, how to fight and how to kill. Who had been her sole companion all her life. Who had loved her and helped her grow.
The woman Hope had never given up on. Who she had always fought for.
But there was nothing else to fight for.
All that remained were endless tears and pain. So much pain and so many tears. And her mother’s dead body.