In The Dark Of Night

Epilogue

Epilogue

Maybe that's what Hell is. You go mad, and all your demons come and get you just as fast as you can think them up. 

~Anne Rice

Sometimes love just isn't enough.

~Various

Jesebelle's voice filled every free nook and cranny, inescapable and undeniable, as she appeared behind Cale, that all-knowing smile on her face wide and the door to her small, wooden home swung open, the blaze of the fire still evident from the short distance away.

"You have a trying task ahead of you, as I am sure you are aware. Going up against one Damien Alcork... it shall not be easy." She took a pause as the wind shifted through the dead woods, brave enough to interrupt her and swirling her skirts as they went, her long, ebony hair taking flight about her head.

And all at once, the breeze died, and all that remained was Jesebelle, her eyes dark, and her tone even darker. "I can tell you one thing is for sure..." She met every eye, her own glistening with an unspoken knowledge before her lips parted slowly again. "All three of you will not survive..." 

She'd never been beyond the small area of her Gathering; or, at least she hadn't, before that fateful night she'd gone walking through the woods to meet her sibling, only to find her cold and dry on the damp, earthy floor.

And now, looking back, she mused on how normal a night it had seemed - the Queen of Fae was entertaining her guests in the throne room beneath the earth as she often did when she thought no one was paying much attention; Jaden had been shooting her heated glances from across the oak-wood table at the Dinner Feasting, but hadn't built up the nerve to talk to her yet again; the moon was bright and the stars plentiful - and everything was at it should of been.

How could she have known that her life would change forever after she'd snuck out to see Abella? 

How could she have known she'd set into motion events that would never permit her the sweet essence of naivety ever again? 

She had changed - this much she knew.

Lying there in the cotton-white bed, staring at the light brown beams above as the light filtered in through the floor-to-ceiling windows flung open to the bright blue sky, she knew that she was not the same person she had been since the beginning of her journey.

Too many things had happened - too many irreversible, irrevocable, awful things. 

The weakest of the bunch - and the most innocent. A beacon of light; the moral centre; pure and untouched. 

Chaste. 

Tears began to well in her eyes, but she did not move to brush them away - tears were a privilege now; many had thought she would be incapable of normal emotion, after the Ordeal, but she'd soon proved them wrong, when the entirety of the situation had weighed down on her and fresh, salty droplets had spilled from her eyes. 

And there was a mirroring sorrow there too - one not entirely her own, but not entirely prominent too.

And that had made her weep even more - weep for a sister she'd had and lost, and weep for one she'd gotten back, warped and wrong. 

Abella had become a part of her - and she of her. And that could never been undone.

And somehow, she didn't quite want it to be.

Lying there, on the cotton-white bed, after so many things had transpired and so many things had gotten screwed up beyond compare, her mind took her back, back to the near beginning of the journey - to Jesebelle's home, and to her questions.