tear you apart, kaz brekker (discon.)

ix. welcome home, katarina

ix. chapter nine!
welcome home, katarina.

trigger warnings:
this is a flashback ch so, manipulation
gaslighting and some mentions of death

The palace looked large as she approached it on horseback, her arms clinging tightly around Kirigan's core. It looked far too big for her, never mind a King and Queen. Then again, the horse seemed far too big for her sixteen year old self; given the chance it would've crushed her entirely.

She stayed on the horse until it came to a stop right outside of the entrance, she watched as The Darkling refused helped off of his stead and held out his hand for her.

Katarina hesitated.

"I don't bite."

When she was younger, Katarina was convinced all boys bit others but not in the literal sense of the word, in the metaphorical. They had never done any right by her, so her youthful fears of grown up men seemed to make sense.

Pushing her anxieties to the side for once, her hand slipped in to, which was much larger than that of her own, and she jumped from the horse. Had he not helped her, she probably would've fallen and hurt her knees like she had as a child. She missed those days, before everything went wrong and red, when she could go out and play with her family or do nothing all day.

"Guards," The General's voice was like a bullet that sliced through the almost eerie silence. "This is Katarina Raya Levitsky. She is very important and therefore must be treated with respect. Have I made myself clear?"

The guards, visibly terrified, did nothing more than a nod each before they moved out of the way. Behind them stood another grand hallway, windows with panes bigger than houses and gold detailing ran up and down the walls.

His hand remained at the small of her back the whole time, although the more she looked up, the further away the door seemed.

When they finally reached it, The Darkling's long fingers wrapped around the handle and pushed it open.

Katarina couldn't help but gasp softly, it was like the stories her mother would read to her and her sisters. A four poster bed with curtains draped on every side, a room big enough to fill with a family, it even had rooms for couch's with a table that was decorated elegantly with fruit.

"T-There must be some sort of mistake." She shook her head.

The general clasped his hands together behind his back. "Is the room not satisfactory?"

She shook her head once more, this time seemingly more enthusiastically than the last.

"No! No, its not that... I–" Katarina sighed, the words blurry in her own head.

He chuckled from behind her, provoking her to turn around.

"This is where you belong, now. Welcome home, Katarina." 

"But I don't like this home!" She didn't mean to shout, but the poor girl was sixteen and had just been dragged away from her real home, that she had destroyed, and she wanted her mother for saints sake. "I- I do not belong here, I'm sorry to say that I have no idea what happened. But it was an accident. And it wasn't me, I'm not like you, I'm not a—"