Page 71 of Spring Guardians & Songbirds

Blood dripped with every step I took, and weariness began setting at the loss of it, but Aryan didn't stop. Not till we reached his side of the castle. I normally never fought against being taken or hurt, it usually never worked and then I just didn’t care.

He pushed me into one of his rooms, my feet wobbled, and I landed on the ground with a thud. My palms left bloody prints when I attempted to help myself up and the motion made my back burn, too, the scars chaffing to my shirt.

“You will want to see this,” he said, kicking me hard in the stomach. “Stand.”

His hit never scared me, but the way my mind commanded me to be still and expect the pain made me afraid that father was perhaps getting what he wanted.

My limbs shook as I attempted to stand again. Barely, I managed to straighten and level a bored look at him and his usually twisted plays. I’d seen enough to get used to them.

He returned with a woman from the conjoined chamber—she had bruised legs, a torn shift and a bag thrown over her face. Had he beaten her too?

Aryan knelt before me, a grin spread wide and vile in his twisted mouth with half chipped teeth. “I’ve got a little surprise for you and you will love it.” With that ominous promise, he stood and removed the sack from the woman’s head.

Shivers ran through my body and my stomach sank when I saw the face of the beaten woman. She wore the face of my mother. “Ma?”

“Shhh,” Aryan said, putting a finger to his lips. “Listen to this.” His laugh was odious as he kicked her—as he kicked my mother. “Speak.”

“I…I don’t know what to say,” the woman stuttered out.

She sounded like mother. It was her. I reached forward, clutching her hand in mine, the touch felt unfamiliar but I hadn't seen her in months. Last I saw her, she didn’t even want to get anywhere near us—near me because she had held Thora. “Ma, you’re supposed to be going with father up north. Why are you with him? Why are you like this? Ma, please, tell me what is wrong?”

Mother‘s face twisted in confusion before she glanced at Aryan who was red from holding in his laugh. “I am not—”

A hard slap silenced her. Aryan breathed furiously as he grabbed my mother’s hair and pulled her head back. “What did I tell you?!”

Mother trembled and cried in his grip and my whole body tensed as I reached for the fire poker beside me and struck Aryan with all my might on his knee.

The impact must have been grave because he dropped down with a cry, clutching his limb.

Quickly, I grabbed mother’s hand and pulled us away from the room.

She stopped the two of us, shaking her head and going back to Aryan’s side, helping him up. My heart charred and splintered in two. She never chose us. She never chose me. Always someone else. Her kingdom, her secrets, our powers. Why was I never the one to be chosen first before all that? And now…now, him? “Please, ma.” Traitorous tears threatened to leave my eyes, but I’d rather have burned before Celesteel himself than cry before Aryan.

“Tell her to come here,” he ordered her, pointing to me.

My mother lowered to her knees and opened her arms. “Come here, child.”

Mother wanted to embrace me. She wanted to hold me. I wanted to hold her too. Her embrace was not warm though. It was like the taste of porridge—bland.

I startled when Aryan cuffed a chain to my wrist and pulled me to the wall where he placed the chain against a tall hook. “Make sure to keep those pretty yellow eyes wide open, Snowlin.”

He grabbed the fire poker, and before I could grasp what he was about to do, he struck down on my mother.

“No!” I screamed and thrashed, the chains holding me back. Electricity bubbling beneath my fingertips and it took all of my sheer will to hold it back. To hide it. “Stop!”

He stopped and turned to me. “Say please.”

Never. Never. Never. Mother herself had told us that nothing mattered more to the world than protecting the world. Nothing should matter to me more than not letting father have his victory. To never let him break us, bend us and use us.

He knew that without even me speaking. “I’ll still enjoy this regardless.” Again and again he hit her and I crumbled to the ground, sentenced to watch my mother being beaten to her death. He hit and hit her till blood was pooling and separating on the tiles, leaking down under the door and onto the corridor.

I didn’t scream or cry. It was how father had told me—it was how mother had told me, too.

It was dark outside when he had finished. It was dark and I was afraid that it had become darker inside me.

Aryan kneeled before me. “Silas will be proud,” he said, untying me. “Raised a good soldier. If only you could bloom your damned blessing, you’d serve the goddamn purpose you were born for.”

There. That new sense of numbness I’d grown used to settled in me. “Is mother dead?”