The Beast

Chapter Twenty-Seven

(A/N) A thousand reads?! Wow. Check me out. 😎

But it's all thanks to you guys. I couldn't be more grateful for all of your support. It means the world to me.

Anyways, I'm back now, and a teensy bit more prepared. I hope you'll continue to support me through these next chapters, and maybe even until the end. 😊

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Hemorra looked at the small glittering ruby in her hand through watery eyes, obscuring it into a smudge of red in her blurry hands. Red like blood.

Their blood was on her hands.

His blood was on her hands.

A cold tear trailed its way down her rosy cheek as she recalled the past days with bitterness and guilt.

She had returned home safely, though timidly as she thought she would be questioned. However, her father and sister hadn't even noticed her arrival, being engrossed in their own conversation. She had been relieved, initially. That is, until she silently listened to what it was they were discussing.

An attack, they called it. No one even remembered her. She would have been grateful that she could fade back to her place before the revolt, if not for the fact that the as the attention shifted away from her, he took her place, and the events that unfolded thereafter twisted her gut still.

They had talked of him like he was an animal. Then he slowly became less even than that--a thing, a monster. Hemorra admitted that he'd been gruesome that night, but hardly any more so than many other people of the city. Yet they felt themselves superior to him merely because they didn't look the part. Because they could walk about shamelessly, and no one suspect them for what they truly were. Because they could disguise their monstrosities.

And just to show how monstrous they were, they had conspired together, plotting things of such vileness, it shamed Hemorra to share even a city with them. It was horrifyingly fascinating to her when every class of the city found themselves in agreement for the first time, each talking of purging the monsters from the Cursed Castle once and for all.

It shamed Hemorra even further in the knowledge that if not for her rescue that night, she might have found herself in agreement with the rest of the port city. She had grown up with the same terrifying tales as the rest of them, listening to various accounts of the monstroties that lived there, shadowing the city for years in silent menace--a constant looming threat. She knew better now. That the monsters there were people, too, no matter what anyone else regarded them as. That it would have been wiser to pay closer attention to the hidden monstroties surrounding her.

She wiped the tear on her cheek away, only for another to replace it as visions of the night before assuaged her. She had been in the same place she was now--her hiding place--looking up at the great castle and wondering what things the monsters really did behind those stone walls, when she saw the trail of fire leading up to it. It was then that she knew the rumors were no longer rumors. The people really were attacking. They were truly out for revenge.

Guilt burned through her at her cowardice. She had wanted to be brave--wanted to go out and stop them. But her fear held her back. Fear of being alone in her conviction. Fear of confronting so many, when not so long ago, having their attention was what brought them there in the first place. Fear of being attacked herself.

So instead she watched, and she listened. She sat by in her own little derelict house as the shouts and cries of the monsters in the castle reached her ears from so far away, attacked in their own home.