GNOSSIENNE

Chapter 26

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26 - In the Bleak of Winter

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WARNING: This chapter will include excessive violence,
gore, and mention of blasphemy, readers' discretion is advised!

Deep within the curtains of cusp ravines and frosted foliages that winter night, stretched a meadow of hellebore blossoms. The velvet petals gleamed in the wintermoon, like a field of black diamonds, bleeding with perfumes that stirred the air. Ringed around it, the trees stood ancient, all dark limbed, and sat in the heart of its sacredness was a house.

The local muggles were not aware of the existence of this house but ruins of a Tudor tower that was long abandoned. Worried parents had kept their children off the property by telling a bedtime story that anyone who went to the ruins would be taken to a different realm and never returned. But beyond this glamour, lay the home to one of the most powerful wizarding families. The Marrionettist witch. The Meadowes.

Evan Rosier stood still before this house like an odd blossom among the hellebores. A withering french rose between flowers of death. His silhouette blurred, nothing but mist in the dark. Midnight had stretched its claws and engulfed him close like a son, like he was made of its essence then grown into shadow and flesh. What distincted him from the night was the mask he wore, pure as snow, a skull, with fissures earned from battles, ripped along the jawline.

"Any last word?" Rosier asked coldly, his voice echoed in the garden, combatting with the sounds of crickets that slowly wallowed by the wind, perhaps, it meant as a funeral song for the elder man on his feet.

The said man opened his mouth but his voice had left him, his greyish hair was barely seen in the starlight dark but a glimpse was enough to reveal his age. His breath was fanning against the assassin's left ankle, short and syncopated, like he'd run a mile or two. It didn't take too much retaliation before he ran out of breath and then knocked down at the assassin's feet.

Evan's lips upturned as he studied the man further, skimming over the bruises that matched the hellebores blossoms, painting over his boney limbs. He caught fatigue in the wizard's dark eyes and the trail of blood, leaking slowly from the cuts he made. The longer Evan stared at the man his eyes twitched. This dying wizard was probably the same age as his uncle, Prometheus, and that possibility laced his tongue with a tinge of irony.

A sentiment, perhaps, the last drop of it, had provoked him to say, "Well?" He swung his right foot, poking at the man's side. "Go on."

Despite what the assassin had done, the man made no sound, no screams or groans bled from his lips only labored breaths that gave away his sordid repentance. He clung to his pride like a spider holding onto its thread against the wind. His gaze held no desperation, fear, or any sense of regret like any other victims who would be begging for his mercy by now. And it intrigued the assassin.