"Amia? Amia? Come now, you've been locked in the bathroom for an hour. There's some things I need to explain and you need to hear."
Jared's stern voice shakes me out of my trance, and I realize, as I hold the flame to my trembling arm, that this is wrong. Me, the trained assassin, the stable girl who can protect herself... I can't do this to myself. I won't. As much as I need release right now, I'll find other ways. Somehow, I'll make it through whatever this misadventure may hold, but I will not bear a burden I create all on my own. This ISN'T who I am, it can't be. I am many things but I will not become my worst nightmare.
"Amia? Seriously now. I'm going to break down the door."
"I'm sorry, I was just.. thinking," I say as I open the door, "What's the rush?"
His eyes seem to stare right through me, like I am a newly polished window and someone has left a minuscule speck of dirt right in front of his face, hidden but clearly out in the open, an elephant in the room that few dare to even acknowledge.
"When I said explain... I don't really have much to say. Just something to show you. Something that might change everything you ever knew, everything you've been told since before I even met you, and you might be confused and angry. I would say scared but we both know fear isn't good company to keep in times like this."
As Jared speaks, he reaches into his suitcase and produces.... a camera. Just a normal, dime-a-dozen, digital camera. Quite underwhelming, at least at first. Then he reaches, again, into his suitcase. What both surprises and shocks me is a water-damaged photograph of two figures, male and female, dated two days ago. They are a little blurred but it is clear to me who they are- my parents. My dead parents?
I feel my legs tremble, as if an earthquake is rippling through every fragile vein in my body, bursting out from the pressure as my heart caves in from confusion.
Alive.... Alive? How could they be alive?
YOU ARE READING
The Fatal Price
Tajemnica / ThrillerAmia is the picture of perfection- beautiful, intelligent, and successful. To hear her voice is to fall in love with her, and maybe that's why she seemed to so easily adapted to her new life. Forced to leave everything she once knew behind by a dark...
