Blood & Cinders- Choose your Own Adventure Story

Epilogue Cinders

They buried Adam in a sunny spot. At the end of her family garden, beneath the trees where she had first found him.

Isabelle had laid in bed for a week at a tavern on the edge of the city. Her body weak with fatigue and hunger, whether it was the sadness or that she simply lacked the strength to stand she stayed there staring out a sunny window, looking at the pigment of the blue sky as it changed to brilliant oranges and reds with the setting sun. She cried the first time she saw it.

Danielle doted on her with food and helped wash and cut her hair. It was so matted and unruly that Isabelle had insisted it be chopped above the shoulder for ease of maintenance.

She heard all the- once creatures- were gone and the remaining people had started to clear away and filter through the pile of rubble where a palace once stood.

By the second week she was back on her feet and puttering  about the inn, helping to wash and cook and busing herself with work.  Though most of the bruises had faded and the cuts healed with Anna's magical ointments. The scar where Isabelle had cut herself as a blood-maid still remained on her wrist and she rubbed it frequently.

At the start of the third week they departed for Isabelle's family home, all insisting they come for the funeral. Danielle had preserved Adam's body in those weeks. He was wrapped in white cloth on the back of the cart and though there were no signs of smell or rot his body was cold as ice.

Throughout the journey she was wracked with sickness. Anna told her it was a sign of her pregnancy and John, unaware this whole time, had nearly fallen off the cart at the news.

The carriage clomped along the worn path, the first dustings of early snow starting to fall.

When they arrived at her family's estate the door was unlocked and it creaked on its hinges into the dark dusky space. The curtains drawn and the dim light that filtered through them casting thin lines on the floor highlighting the layer of dust that had settled.

"Anastasia? Drizella?.. Step mother?" Isabelle called into the darkness.

Isabelle walked through the foyer, into the drawing room and up to the bedrooms. The home was empty. Void of the vases and paintings, and most of the furniture too. What little remained looked like it had been sacked, chests riffled through and things turned left out of place on the floors.

"Where did they go?" Danielle followed Isabelle through the hollowed home and John huffed at the mess.

"Looks like they left in a hurry, wherever they went." He kicked at an empty chest the hollow thump echoing though the space. 

"Are you sure you still want to bury him here?"

Isabelle nodded and they made their way to the back. The stables were empty, the chickens, pigs and horse gone, but the garden looked just as it was. A few overgrown weeds by the flowerbeds and the petals gone with the season but the steams still swayed a greeting in their neat row. And the old twisted trees, though their leaves now gone, still stood lining the back of the yard.

Isabelle walked the rows, her hands brushing lightly over them in a greeting.

"Right here she said stopping at the corner of the garden under some trees."

John left to grab his shovel and Danielle stood with Isabelle, her arm looped comforting around her waist.

"That was the rose bush you found me under." She pointed to the brown thorn bush, void of its pink petals to the back door by the house.

"It was, " Isabelle smiled fondly at the memory.

"Did you know, I was stowed away in Adams' cloak the day he tried to escape the palace. Henry and him had one of their fights.  He'd taken Adam's latest blood maid for himself... tortured her just to watch his face. After they fought Adam fled and I stowed away in his hood till he collapsed in your garden. It's hard for the cursed to be out in the sun, they have al tried to escape the palace at some point but  were inevitable drawn back by the curse."