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CHAPTER SIXTEEN ʙᴇᴛᴛᴇʀ
They looked like phantoms floating through a misty graveyard, dark cloaks of black like their spectral tails. In and out of view, they came, the fog growing thicker as if it spurted from beneath their spindly fingers. Coldness radiated from them like ice, tainting the air with their unhuman ghostly-ness. The Volturi did not shuffle. Their walk was slow but purposeful, each step sending a harrowing murmur through the air, holding the elegance that came with the afterlife. Their faces were washed with the colours of death, as beautiful as the first time I'd seen them in Volterra.
Jane led them in front, her elongated gait making her appear feline, like a cat stalking Its prey. As she grew closer, the hood of her swathing cloak fell from her thin face, revealing the crimson stare that pierced through the obscurity of the low, dark skies. It was that interchanging appearance of a child and a woman that I clung to. In one instance, her face was soft and rounded against the thinness, and the next she was sharp, cracked by the shadows that stretched across her pallid complexion. Felix and two others stopped just behind her.
"Welcome, Jane," Edward said, moving to be the first to greet them, using her name collectively.
With a gentle incline of her head, Jane let her eyes move over our group, beginning with Edward, then sticking to Bella before she glazed over Esme, landing lastly on Jasper. Behind him, the newborn, flinched, no doubt rattled by the silence of their nerving appearance, her eyes reflecting the bloodlust that shone in theirs. Jane's head tilted as her vision rested upon the girl, arched eyebrow lifting further.
"I don't understand," she said slowly, meaningfully. Anyone else would have been insecure by such blatant words of confusion, but not Jane.
Again, Edward spoke for us. "She has surrendered."
"Surrendered?"
"Carlisle gave her the option."
For the first time, emotion tinted her words, evidence of their annoyance. "There are no options for those who break the rules."
Bree flinched again, her small shoulders wrenching in massive heaves, as if she missed the sensation of breathing, of smelling without lusting for the scent of blood. As the Volturi looked at her, Bree's gaze never once lifted to Bella, as it once would have done. She tried to keep her dark eyes level to that of Jane's, but as her red eyes stared her down, the newborn was forced to look away.
There was something pitiful about the way she held herself: so folded in within herself that she appeared almost half her own size. Once, I may have thought she was drawing us in with her smallness, her fragility, but Bree looked nothing but terrified.
"This wasn't the child's fault," I said, watching as Felix's eyes moved to glare at me, but Jane remained focused on the young one.
After a moment, Carlisle spoke. "It's in your hands. As long as she was willing to halt her attack on us, I saw no need to destroy her. She was never taught."
