As We Fall (Blaise Zabini Fanfiction)

Chapter 43

Blaise

Zoe's scream rips through the air the moment we materialize in the physical world again.

It's as loud as a banshee and carries the agony of all the broken hearts in hell. Somehow, I feel like anyone in the world who's felt this kind of grief before can feel her pain resonating in their soul right now, plucking at their heart strings like a morbid harp.

She screams for hours and hours -- screams until there's no voice left in her, and all that's left is the hoarse rasp of mangled vocal cords.

She pounds her fists against my chest, howling at me, asking me why, why did I take her away from her grandpa, because maybe she could have saved him if she'd been given the chance, and what will they do with his body now that he's dead?

I know that in this moment, and just in this moment, she hates me.

She hates me for following her, for finding my way into the cave and whisking her away the very moment her grandpa was slaughtered. She can't yet see I was saving her from a similar fate -- one that would've befallen her in minutes.

Her rage soon turns into tormented misery, and she's sobbing into my chest, crumpling against me in utter defeat.

I hold her body to mine, stroking her hair as we melt to the ground, because I have no idea what the fuck else to do. It's not long before I feel tears of my own sliding down my cheeks.

I try to comprehend what I'd just witnessed back in the cave.

Yes, I know what I'd seen -- Julian, slicing Zoe's grandpa's throat open.

But why?

I'm guessing he was the one to lure her out to the cave, but for what reason? And who were the other two in the room -- the older man and the woman? I'd only had a moment to look, but I know I'd seen them there.

My mind spins like a top, churning up nausea in my stomach.

I have questions -- so many that it would take a lifetime to answer them all. But Zoe is in no condition to explain things to me. All I can do is be grateful that she's safe -- alive -- in my arms right now.

Her agony grows progressively quieter as the sun rises. She's silent, barely moving. Several times, I go very still, straining my ears to make sure she's still breathing.

The place I've brought her to is one in which I know we won't be found.

It's a small log cabin, perched on top of a stone ledge overlooking a valley flush with green wilderness. It's completely secluded, and void of any noise other than that generated by the wildlife.

It's my mother's -- or at least, I'm pretty sure it is.

She'd brought me here once, maybe eight years ago, for reasons she neglected to tell me. We didn't do much during our stay. She was unusually quiet and practiced no magic, as if trying to blend in with the buzz of the nature surrounding us.

She was hiding, my young mind had concluded. From someone, or something, I didn't know. But she didn't want to be seen, and that was unusual for her.

I knew this because I'd spent years studying my mother as a child, trying desperately to figure her out, and had concluded several things:

First, she has an innate thirst to bask in the spotlight. She feels good when she has eyes on her. But she doesn't need attention to thrive -- she can work in the dark just as well. Sometimes, she prefers too.

Second, she cares about her own success more than anything else in the world. It didn't take a genius to figure this one out -- she'd been abusing me for her own gain for years by that point. She tends to her personal goals and objectives like beloved children, while neglecting her actual child like an afterthought.