Adelaide

Epilogue

Emerald Byron
* TW: Blood *

'He'll learn what you hide eventually, you know. You cannot obscure yourself forever,' Ruby warned Adelaide once. I now understand her intense distrust. I should have listened; as a consequence, I've lost not only the blonde but my lover also. Although, I realize that Adelaide was probably never truly mine, anyway. With all that naïveté painted across her pretty face, she thought me a fool. I'd acted one, perhaps, but awareness afflicts me now.

The steel knife I held beneath my cardigan sleeve had pierced the tissue of her back so easily. I knew it would; I spent every minute awaiting her return by sharpening the blade until my ears rang with the metallic sound.

I knew she would die quickly, too. I hit my mark, and I've never been cruel. Adelaide was cruel, though. She was very sick and it wasn't her fault entirely, but someone so messed up could not be left alive to ruin the lives of anyone else as undeserving. Pulling the knife out of her body as she slouched against my chest almost made me gag, and I forced myself to stare straight over her head. She couldn't be human to me anymore.

I've barely processed what happened when the front door slowly creaks open. I think it's the wind, until a familiar head of brunette hair pokes through the narrow crack. Matisse's dark eyes trail from the fresh blood splattered across the floor to the limp girl slumped in my arms. He's so calm.

"Adelaide."

He looks up to me, shoving the door open and stepping inside.

"You killed her."

I barely flinch. I feel beyond that — numb, as I shift the body in my arms to sit her against the wall. Adelaide's shoulders slouch and her head lolls forward, her brunette hair cascading over her expressionless face.

"She's dead," I confirm, straightening to once again face the other male.

Despite the potential horror of his words, Matisse presents himself with nonchalance and logic. This man has seen death before — welcomes it, perhaps, in a way I never could until now. That seems reasonable for the son of a mortician; his cover story boasts much thought. Alas, Matisse never really existed, I now realize. James has been here all along. He stalked and killed Sapphire, just as he did countless other victims, the bodies of whom Adelaide disposed without hesitation again and again. Perhaps she's dealt with her share of momentary guilt, but ultimately she knew of James' schemes and tolerated them with ease. Ruby — the most imperceptive — had been the first to realize her defects, while my own extended blindness likely encouraged her instability.

"How could you love someone like her?" I find myself asking aloud, "In one way or another, she's betrayed you, me, and all of her associates I know. How could you love someone so undependable?"

James leans back on his heels to consider an answer, then paces a few steps closer to me. Adelaide's glazed eyes watch us from the side, while her viscous blood soaks into his shoes and my sweater.

"We perceived her very differently, then. I saw her instabilities and moved past them. You, on the other hand, tried to fix them for her. Could you have sent her away, the way she did to me? She had her doppelgänger; she would've forgotten you. But it's too late, I guess."

I press my lips together against his accusatory words. 'I saw her instabilities and moved past them.' I loved her, too, for coping with the traumas of her past. I could've managed that, but she then stole my present and made it her own. One girl could not be worth the countless lives she ruined without remorse on the way to our relationship. James tolerated her inconsistencies and remained obsessed with her regardless, because he had nothing else to lose. Is that even love? To be so invested in one individual that the rest of life's values leech away? I myself fell into that trap during the past few weeks, I suppose, but not beyond the point of no return.

"I could have been forgotten? Were you? She never hesitated to help you clean up the body of one of her wisest allies, not so long after condemning you to an institution. Even with Julian, she wove her way back to him after a time. She never forgot; she let these affairs warp inside her head, until she corrupted not only herself but everything around her with her mangled idea of love."

I smile wanly.

"Do you believe yourself to have some higher claim on her than any of us? She's been destroying herself and it's got nothing to do with one individual. This end is a relief to her."

He laughs, his navy eyes blazing with gelid hatred.

"What a hero you are. You didn't really think this would be the end, though, did you? You've wasted my time."

James leaps forward before I can react. Impotently, I watch him stab his own brassy knife through my chest and wrench it sideways, jerking my body with it. Excruciating pain rises through my skin as my legs give out beneath me. I clutch at the blade, but my blood spills freely, mingling with Adelaide's across the hardwood floor.

Someone will find us together and assume we died by murder-suicide or some serial hit-and-run sadist. They'll never know the truth: how two people fell into a poisonous love that twisted with tragedy at its close. All that remains is the beginning — a boy with midnight eyes and a sick obsession.

Through blurred vision, I watch James turn away from me and toward Adelaide. He kneels down beside her. Her skin is cold and clammy, but he doesn't mind. He wraps his arms around her and smiles.

"Sweet love — you're mine, Adelaide. You really thought that death would keep us apart?"