CHAPTER TWENTY
I crashed to the ground, knees barking in pain. And immediately I realized my mistake. Another scream left me as blood seeped into the material of my dress, turning the burgundy into a bruised purple. I knelt in an entire puddle of it.
A mutilated corpse lay before me, still bleeding from the deep gashes carved into his skin.
“Father,” I whimpered. So much blood. How could there be this much blood?
Most would barely recognize him. There wasn’t a single inch of his skin that hadn’t been cut open.
But I knew. His hair was matted with blood, though the chestnut fighting to break through the crimson was unmistakeable.
And those unblinking eyes… those were the same eyes that had read me stories when I couldn’t sleep.
Eyes that had shown me relentless love and compassion.
A wet noise behind me raised goosebumps along my arms. Turning my head slowly, I beheld my mother, equally mutilated.
“Help!” I managed to scream through the short gasps of breath fighting escape my lungs. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe. “Someone, help!”
There was no use. This building—this entire neighborhood, was abandoned. Abandoned, save for whoever had butchered my parents and left them here to rot.
I had to do something, I had to get help—
My eyes landed on a hooded figure standing at the opposite end of the room. Their outline wavered in the faint light.
“You did this!” I shouted, rage coating the accusation with venom and hatred. “You killed them!”
I didn’t care if I had no magic. That I would be entirely powerless in any kind of fight. But whoever this bastard was, they deserved to burn in the fiery depths of the Underworld for what they’d done.
Careful not to slip in the growing puddle at my feet, I stood on shaky legs, dread churning the contents of my stomach. “Who are you? Why did you do this?”
Before I could move, the hooded figure crossed the room in mere seconds, faster than physically possible. Their grating voice turned my blood to ice. “I didn’t kill them, Eloise. You did.”
Tears blurred my vision. They fell like steady rivers down my cheeks. “That’s not true!”
“You sliced them up like cattle with nothing more than a hunting knife.” They gestured widely to a knife on the ground that I hadn’t noticed before, laying inches away from my father’s body.
“How are you—” I went to point a finger at them, but somehow the tip of a blade pointed at them instead. My fingers clenched around the hilt of the knife. “How did—I didn’t…” I sputtered profusely. When had I picked up the knife?
Gasping, my fingers spasmed as if to let go of the knife, but it was like the hilt was coated in adhesive. I couldn’t let go. Blood—their blood—coated the entirety of the blade, dripping steadily down my fingers.
A whimper crept past my lips. What was happening?
Another hooded figure appeared beside the first. “Admit what you’ve done.”
I swiped wildly with the blade. “Get away from me! I didn’t kill them!”
My heart beat unevenly as one of the figures lifted their hoods, revealing my father’s clean, untouched face. “Oh, Eloise. How could you?”
The other figure lifted theirs, too. Mother. “We loved you. Why would you do this to us?”
This had to be another night terror. Nothing made any sense. They couldn’t be standing before me when I’d just found them dead. The Veil had failed us. That was the only justifiable excuse. And now skin-wearing monsters stood before me, accusing me of an act I never committed.
I didn’t kill them.
“Liar.” My mother leaned forward, stopping inches from my face. I could count the crinkles around her eyes. She looked so real. Too perfect to be anything but herself—not some twisted copy.
Then she shoved me, sending me flying backwards, only to collapse into a wooden chair that groaned and wobbled under my weight. The knife finally clattered to the floor.
“I always knew you were as evil as everyone claimed,” my father sneered. “You are nothing but an abomination.”
“You don’t mean that,” I cried.
My mother paced in a slow circle around me, bending to whisper into my ear.
“Useless. You have brought us nothing but shame.” Her hands snapped out, holding my wrists down onto the arms of the chair.
“I’ve always wondered what I’d done wrong to have you as a child.
I won the Starlight Trials. Always obeyed the king.
Prayed to all the right gods. And still, they gave me you. ”
Her breath cooled the wetness trailing down my cheeks as she spoke.
“Powerless. A cursed monster.” My father crept closer, and it was then that I noticed the knife in his hand. “And now you will pay.”
I couldn’t do a single thing as he dragged the blade across my exposed collarbone. My throat was already raw, but somehow it managed to hold the scream that erupted from me.
His lips no longer moved, yet I heard his voice in my mind, over and over.
Your fault.
You did this.
“Stop!” I begged. “Please, Mother, let me go!” She ignored my pleas.
This was all wrong. I’d never done anything to deserve this.
Something beckoned at the edges of my mind, similar to the fog I’d experienced right when I’d woke in the garden. My mind flailed, trying to grab onto whatever it was, but an opposing force slammed against my efforts with the strength of a battering ram, pounding against my temples once again.
Another slice, this time on my left forearm.
My parents leered at me like they were complete strangers.
Like they’d never held my hand as we paraded through the night markets, bellies full and smiles wider than life.
Like we’d never sat by the hearth in our living room, reading stories in hushed voices during rainstorms, a cup of my mother’s favorite tea in hand while mountains of blankets protected us from the rest of the kingdom.
I had to do something—had to escape. I wouldn’t die here.
A pressing urgency nagged at me to move.
Because no matter who—or what—stood before me, they were going to kill me unless I killed them first. The certainty of it reverberated down to my bones. It didn’t matter how I knew. Just that I knew.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, before snapping my head forward, right as my mother bent down again. A crack resounded echoed across the empty space.
I would not allow guilt to suffocate my bravado.
My father’s grip slackened, distracted by my mother’s yelp of pain.
Quickly, I pulled his arm straight out above my shoulder with one hand and slammed into the opposite side of the crook of his elbow, as hard as I could, with the other.
Popping the joint out of its socket. I would not die here, I reminded myself as he cried out, cradling his arm now bent at an odd angle. At least he’d dropped the knife.
Someone spent hours teaching me that maneuver. Someone relentless and headstrong. If only I could remember what they looked like.
“You have to wake up.” A warning, miles away yet intimately close, from a voice that tugged on another brittle strand of memory. Their urgency battled my own.
But it was still the three of us in this building. Dread pooled at the bottom of my stomach. The shadows. They must’ve decided to play, too.
I had to get out.
In one smooth movement, I swooped down to pick up the knife, and slammed its hilt into my father’s temple with a strained grunt. His eyelids fluttered like a hummingbird’s wings before he crumpled to the ground with a thud. I didn’t dare check his pulse.
I then faced my mother, blood spurting down her nose like a faucet.
It coated her lips and teeth as she snarled at me like a rabid beast, and dribbled down her chin when she charged at me.
Her movements were sloppy, tainted with her pain.
Dodging her with practiced speed, I kicked my leg out in a wide arc, taking her feet out from under her.
She collapsed mere feet away from my father’s unmoving body.
I’d practiced that, too. But when? My head swam, bringing with it a wave of nausea so potent that I retched, but nothing came.
Tears kept forming, blurring my vision despite my best efforts to blink them away. I straddled her, pinning her arms down with my knees, and fought against every part of me begging to bolt, to run from this warehouse and never look back. This had to end now.
“I’m so sorry, Mother.”
“Abomination! Monster!” she screamed, kicking and writhing.
Closing my eyes as tightly as I could, I cranked my arm backwards, readying for the final blow. Somehow, I knew exactly where and how hard to swing. But I was too much of a coward to watch the knife sink into its target.
Invisible chains wrapped along the length of my arm, begging me to not follow through.
A roaring battle cry destroyed what was left of my throat.
I swung.
I will not die here.
But it never made contact. Strong fingers grasped my fist, halting my swing half-way.
My eyes flew open. A woman with copper hair, glowing like embers under the faint light of the sconces, knelt beside me, smiling softly.
Her fingers squeezed tightly around my own. She reached with her other hand to brush away a fresh tear that raced down my cheek. “It’s okay, Eloise. You can wake up now.”
Walls collapsed. The ceiling spun.
A final, pounding headache gathered in my temples, and then I began to fall. Aimlessly—limbs flailing, unable to grasp anything but darkness. I couldn’t so much as reach for enough air to scream.
Down the void I fell.
And fell.
And fell.