☔︎︎Chapter 36: Open Wounds ☔︎︎

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The first hour: 1:32 AM

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The first hour: 1:32 AM

It had been an hour since Niklaus had fallen asleep, Rune was watching him now, he'd carried him to the bedroom to keep an eye on him. I was in the shower as Martina read a book on the toilet seat behind the curtain, she was watching me as if I were the injured one.

That's the thing I loved about Marx house, it's that when it came down to it they stayed- I couldn't say the same about most of the other people in my life.

I felt this infinity of emotion drowning me in its cruel embrace, I felt the guilt like anchors to my already bruised and battered feet for shooting that arrow into him. I felt the pain he went through every time he cried out and every time he didn't- trying to be strong for me. I felt like an imposter in my own skin for lying to everyone, these amazing human beings who'd done nothing but love me and here I was the daughter of their worst enemy.

I do not hate my father, I do not hate my country. I only hate what my homeland has become, this power-hungry nation willing to do anything for more land and more influence. You'd probably want to hear about how I hate papa now and how he's an awful man, but I do not, he has been a good father to us- perhaps not the most emotionally attached but always dutifully. I only wish that things could have been different.

Perhaps if I'd met Niklaus and our friends under different circumstances; maybe at a café somewhere in Moscow where Sade worked, maybe at the beach on a summer day, but no- I met them clouded by my father's judgement, hungry for vengeance in the frigid winter.

I wanted to cry, I wanted to burst forth like a dam, I wanted to fall to the floor of the tub and let my tears spill. But I was still unable to do so, I was so psychologically damaged from the way my mother raised me that I couldn't even bring myself to partake in a normal human emotion. I still felt her claws through my hair, gripping at the nerves of my mind like I was a puppet and she was the master.

It pains me to think that even after all these years of thinking I had finally been freed, that she was still controlling me.

"Nadya are you okay?" Martina asks flipping a page, "it's nearly been an hour, I'm sure the waters run cold by now."

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