Guns, Love And War

Chapter 2

The girl gazed into the fire, at the dancing flames, at the wood turning into black ashes and evaporating into the air.

She found it better than addressing the eyes boring into the good side of her face.

Arista was sitting in clean clothes, without blood soaked in it, a blanket around her pale shoulders, her bruised cheek covered in some ointment that Agatha had insisted on applying.

"Young miss?" Agatha kneeled beside the young girl looking into her ocean eyes. "Can you tell us what happened at the mansion?"

"We know this may be difficult but-" Frank began.

"Whatever happened in the mansion," Arista suddenly stood up drawing herself to her full height as she looked at the eyes around her. "Stays with me and that's how I intend to keep it."

Everyone blinked surprised by the girl's words.

"But-" Agatha began as soon as she found her voice again but Arista didn't let her say another word.

"I need to leave." She said with finality in her tone. She turned to Nicholas.

She trusted him.

"Do you know a hotel we could stay in?"

Nicholas opened his mouth but words failed to come out.

His brain ceased to understand exactly how this teenage girl whose eyes had been dull all this time turned so domineering all of a sudden.

It felt as though he was speaking to someone completely different.

"What do you mean you need to leave?" Agatha stood up her voice fearful. "You can't go miss!"

Arista looked at the woman her lips pressing in a thin line.

She knew this would happen.

"You served my mother for many years." She announced quietly. "Are you still loyal to her? Even though she isn't alive."

"Of course I am!" The Elder woman insisted. "I will stay loyal to her for life."

"Then will you be loyal to me? Assist me as you assisted her?"

The family fell silent surprised by what the girl said.

She wasn't talking like a fifteen-year-old. She wasn't talking like the little girl they were used to.

"I swore to your mother that I will look after you till the day I die." The woman mumbled heartbrokenly. "My only regret is that I couldn't protect you from this."

"Then you still have time," Arista replied as she looked into the older women's eyes. "I need to leave. I have nothing left here anymore."

"Arista please," Agatha begged for the little girl to heed her words as she grabbed her delicate shoulders. "Don't leave! We will protect you. We will hide you."

"And die trying to do so." The girl finished for the woman making everyone wince.

Arista exhaled.

She trusted this family. They had been kind, caring and loyal to her mother and her since and before the day she took her first breath into this world but she would never let them lay their lives down for her.

She knew her and their fate if she stayed here.

"I will not allow anyone to stake their lives for me." Arista asserted as she gently but firmly pushed the older woman's hands off her arms. "I need to leave. If you can't help me, so be it. I will go by myself."