Maskli (Legacy Of Bluebloods 1#)

42

CHAPTER 21

(Matt)

Her anger with a mix of grief coiled over my own emotions. It was a matter of time before I would wish I could repress my gift of mind connection, because right now... I was struggling to organize hers and mine at the same time. However, I didn't want to let go of her hand, no matter if it was the only way to cut off her side of the emotional connection and compose myself.

Foolish, I was aware. Was I wrong in wanting to offer my little to no comfort for her?

Her tall stature was high on alert as we loomed over the shadows of doors and corridors, pressed against the walls as we heard a slight noise. After confirming there was no one near us, we snuck out to my mother's garden, with our heavy coats and hoods shielding us.

I did write a note to Father that I'll be taking Sam outside for better measure, in case Mr. Evan asked him about Sam's whereabouts. The last thing I wanted was a raging father hunting me down for thinking I snatched his daughter away.

I whispered beside her "Keep your head low. Someone was walking past us from behind."

Sam obliged, her other hand securing Meow protectively. Her pace fell into a rhythm with mine and she lowered her head, her thoughts were focused on her pet. I tried to shift my attention to the situation instead of the storm inside her.

I was at a loss for words, truth to be told. If there was a way to rewind, to change these...incidents, anything at all to remove her pain, I was willing to trade myself just to keep her away from this ache.

It was easier said than done. Why was it so complicated? I recalled her words, the exhaustion clouded in her eyes when she confessed her traumas to me at the loo. I told myself I would not intrude on her thoughts, but at that moment, I didn't want to just feel it through her eyes and her words. I wanted to feel her.

When our hands touched that time, it took every one of my willpower not to just...I don't know... pull her into my arms and take her pain away. At that moment, I wished I could gather those barbarians that hurt her physically and mentally alive so I could torture them all to death.

If that were the case, then I would have to torture myself too. My shoulders sagged with guilt. I would never forget that I was too, one of them. After we exited the manor through the secret door, Sam and I strolled around the stone wall surrounding it until we reached its end. It was neither a short nor long journey to walk towards the cemetery, as it was located just behind our manor and near the center of two mountains. After feeling my hands starting to numb, I put on my gloves and Sam followed suit.

The pair of us easily blend into the shadow of Black Forest, further away from prying peeps but nearer to the safe boundaries. Nonetheless, we are aware it would take more than a certain hungry lunatic that resides inside that damned forest to thwart us.

Despite the spiny brisk coated around us, the day cut the bright blend of arctic blue and frost white light glazed high from above. The elegant light somehow added to the beauty of the winter, the natural glitters on the trees, the lampposts, and the path blanketed in white. The irony was how we were off to send Meow to heaven when right now this place resembled one itself, glittering and all.

The magic of Winter Solstice. A shared fact I am proud of is that I am a winter baby. My father used to jest in the past that perhaps the coldness of this season was rubbing off on me. I found cold comforting. It made me more humane than the other seasons as if I was not the worst culprit here.

Shortly after thirty-nine minutes of walking – I asked Sam if she was comfortable enough to take a ride on one of my father's carriages with me. She insisted on walking since it had proven to be less suspicious, and we sort of arrived. We entered on a narrow stony path, with leafless trees lined up on the sides of it. I could vaguely make out two pairs of sparrows circling each other by a boulder, then further hauling my peer there's a huge gate barricaded the path twenty feet apart from us. The left side of the gate was left ajar, indicating either there we had company, or this place was just as abandoned as I remember.