The Grey Blood #2

Her Sins

She stares at the blood on her hands. Stares at the blood pooling around her knees where she straddles Warren. Stares until she's numb and cold and doesn't know where she is anymore.

She killed. She killed someone.

Alicia's hands don't shake, they're steady, and that makes her want to vomit.

Warren's eyes are sightless, blood dribbling from his mouth and down his cheeks. He's dead.

She killed someone.

The knife seems to sear through her palm, branding her and she tosses it away, everything rushing to the surface and her breaths are ragged, broken as she begins to fall.

Alicia lurches to her feet as that blood threatens to drown her, choke her, rising and rising until she fears she'll never be free of it. She runs, nearly tripping over herself in an attempt to get away from the cooling body.

Something is withering inside her, dying like a flower in the snow, a flower that she's spent so long tending to, nurturing, caring for. It was the only piece of her old soul that she managed to recover, before the killing, before the Reaper and his whispered words in her ear. And now it's dying and she doesn't know if she'll ever have the energy to revive it.

She's gone too far this time. It wasn't self-defense. She wasn't attacked. She wasn't saving anyone. She can tell herself that this was to protect Samantha all she likes, but Sam has her Ghuls for that.

Warren was continuing east, he had no intention of going after Sam anymore.

This was revenge. Pure and simple revenge.

Except it's not simple, not to her ravaged heart.

Alicia stumbles through the silent camp, quiet like the grave she's turned it into. She sprints away as though their ghosts chase her, and perhaps they do. She runs into the trees, the cold embrace of the shadows enveloping her as the Reaper once did with his obsidian wings.

She's drenched in blood. Her tears track through it and there's blood in her mouth.

She staggers, a sob shaking her shoulders as she clutches a tree, realising how alone and lost she is.

Alicia lifts her head and for a moment she considers staying here, waiting until the Grey Bloods arrive, drawn by the noise, and consume her. It's what she deserves. For a glimmer of a moment, she imagines what the world would look like without her, if the grand duke had succeeded in executing her. She's sure a lot of things would be different. She's sure a lot of people would be alive if it hadn't been for her. Her pa, her aunt, her brother, all those innocents she sent the grand duke to murder just so she could keep Oliver.

But the moment passes and she's running again, disappearing into the night.

Alicia staggers into the shallow stream, morning light breaking through the trees to make the water's surface sparkle. She doesn't notice the cold as she splashes into the water, stripping away her stained coat.

Alicia is shivering, her teeth chattering by the time she removes the rest of her clothes and delves into the icy water, washing the blood from her, rinsing out her mouth, and crying as she does it.

She's breaking apart and she can't seem to hold herself together as she kneels in the water and wraps her arms around herself.

Who is she? How did she become this person?

She remembers her childhood. Always hungry, always prying a bottle from her pa's fingers as he snored in a drunken stupor, always trying to avoid her ma's scolding gaze, always clinging to her brothers' hands. She shouldn't remember such a childhood with fondness, but everything after that was so, so much worse.

She gasps, lifting her head, blinking tears from her eyes. Until Oliver. Until the Commons. Until she got her simplicity back and her smile returned to her. Not the fake smile she plastered on her face to please the prince she was supposed to marry, but a real smile, one that warmed her chest and made her fingertips tingle.

But she can never keep anything good and Oliver is better off without her.

She cups water into her hands and scrubs at her skin until it's red and raw, crimson flowing down her skin and dripping into the stream. She presses her fingers to her lips and remembers the taste of blood on them. Warren's blood. His blood that was on those rags in his hand that he coughed into.

Alicia's eyes widen as she remembers his words. At least I didn't die from the Ruga flu. Breaths quickening, she presses her hands to her chest.

No, she can't accept that, she won't. But it makes sense, a cruel twist of fate for both her and Warren. She enacts revenge, and he gives her the Ruga flu, something she barely escaped when she was a child, before her soul was drenched in blood. She was innocent then, but she's not now and the Reaper is demanding recompense.

Alicia tilts her face to the lightening sky and closes her eyes, a cool wind sliding over her wet body, making her skin prickle and her muscles ache with the cold.

She sits for a long time, punishing herself in the harsh temperature for what she's done, knowing she's going to be punished more.

Alicia has been running for too long. It's finally time to face her sins.