Little Saint Bride [Death and the Maiden, #1]

Chapter Thirty Eight: Nathaniel [Full]

Have you ever had a moment when the world feels like it's crumbling beneath your feet?

To an outsider, you're just taking a long pause. But internally, you're dissolving, drowning in news that has changed your life forever, an irreversible alteration that will play on your mind, repeating this moment, until the end of your days.

I don't remember coming out of my world-altering phase. Actually, I don't even remember being in it. All I see is Nate's lips, mouthing those fatal words, over and over.

She killed Nate, she killed Nate, she killed Nate—

And I remember the blood on my fists as I hit her, in the good old traditional way.

But that's when I wake up. She's on the ground, I'm pinning her, beating the living shit out of her— and she doesn't fight back. She just lies there and cries.

What kind of heartless murderer cries? How can I feel hatred over someone so pathetic? I grimace. Her face is a mess; I think I've broken her nose. There's blood staining her teeth, and there's a bruise across her cheek.

As for me, I'm unharmed. She hasn't fought back. She didn't even put up her hands to shield her face. Nate's voice has gone, and it's me, making all the decisions, my mother's life in my hands.

And I realise— I don't know what to do. My previous five years has bubbled down to finding who was responsible for killing my twin— a case the detectives had washed their hands clean of only weeks after it happened. All that effort, all the agony, the lying awake and plotting...

And I've found that person I've hated so easily without knowing who they are. It is so easy to hate when there's no emotion to see, no sobbing to tune out.

But my next question comes from the heart, after five years of waiting.

I ask, in a very tiny voice, 'Why?'

My knees come off her chest, and she heaves a breath. Coughing and rolling into a sitting positon, she keeps her eyes on me, as if sure I'll attack again.

Maybe, if her answer isn't satisfactory, I will.

If she's scared, my mother doesn't show it. She leans against Nate's gravestone, her fingers reaching for it in a trembling way. After they find it, she shuts her eyes and lets out a long, slow breath.

'Why...' she repeats, knitting her eyebrows in pain. 'Why did I kill Nathaniel? Sweet, innocent Nathaniel? Why did I leave him for you to find? Why did I take you two in? Why did I leave? Where do I start for the wrongs I have caused you?'

My knuckles twitch, my fingers curling into a fist. 'All of it,' I say through clenched teeth.

'Then, from the beginning then,' she sighs, opening her eyes once more. When she does, there's a lost, haunted look in them. 'With feeling...'

In the distance, a bird calls.

'It was the morning of my wedding day that I first met her. I was nervous; I was marrying young, and I was marrying because I thought I was pregnant.

'I was seventeen. I'd met Danny— your father— a few months before, and it was near to the choosing ceremony of the Bride. I slept with him out of necessity and fear rather than love, but to my terror, the contraceptive tonic my friend gave me the next morning failed— or so I thought. Our parents thought it would be proper if we married.

'So, the day of the ceremony dawned. It was to be a small party, at a nearby temple to the Goddess of Love, but I was nervous. As I said before, I married your father out of necessity, not love...and back then, I was in love— but with a girl who had no idea how I really felt.'