The Sharpest Jewel | Alfie Solomons |

~ Chapter 14 ~

Florence had once been an ordinary girl, as ordinary as anyone could be, with a mother who sang to her at night and a father whose laughter filled their small, creaking home. It was a life of simple rhythms: the hum of distant memories, the warmth of summer evenings, the quiet murmur of her friends as they whispered secrets only children could understand. She hadn't had many friends, but enough to make her world feel whole. Her days had been filled with light, a childhood spent beneath the pale, gray skies of London.

She had not been born from darkness. Once, she had been Florence Warden—just a young girl with dark hair, her green eyes wide and bright, full of dreams and untarnished hope. She had played in the streets, raced through the narrow alleys, and spun herself dizzy in the parks until she collapsed in the soft embrace of the grass, laughing until her sides ached. Her laughter—how long had it been since she'd heard it? Since anyone had?

But now, here she was—standing in the middle of a desolate field, a place so alien it felt like a bad dream, the kind you couldn't wake from. The ground beneath her feet wasn't grass anymore but thick with blood, blackened under the suns cold gaze, its metallic stench heavy in the air, suffocating. The sky above her seemed vast and endless, but there were no clouds today, only a crushing, eerie silence that swallowed even the wind. Not a single sound broke through—just the echo of her breath, slow, deliberate, as if the world had forgotten how to move, how to live.

She couldn't remember how she had come to be here. She couldn't recall when her hands had last felt clean, when her heart had last been unburdened. Her clothes clung to her, sticky with sweat and streaked with something darker, something that made her shiver whenever she looked down. What had happened to her? To the girl she had once been? Where had it all gone wrong?

There had been a time, not so long ago, when she had been a child—just a girl from London, with nothing but a normal life ahead of her. But that was a lifetime away now. All that remained of that girl were faint memories, like shadows flickering on the edge of her mind, slowly fading away into something far more sinister. She could barely recognize herself anymore—her reflection distorted in the blood-soaked pools around her, eyes hollow, skin pale and stretched thin over bones that seemed sharper now, as if something inside her was trying to claw its way out. She had once been Florence Warden.

But now, standing in that field of blood, surrounded by death and swallowed by silence, she wasn't sure who—or what—she had become. And the more she tried to remember, the more the memories seemed to slip away, leaving her with nothing but the eerie stillness of the day and the creeping realization that there might be no way back to the girl she used to be.

Something had happened to her. Something terrible, something unspeakable. And now, all that was left was Florence—alone in a sea of blood, the sky forever lost above her, and the weight of whatever had brought her here pressing down on her chest like a cold, merciless hand.

FRANCE, 1915.

The air in the makeshift hospital tent was thick with the smell of blood, antiseptic, and the sour tang of sweat. It clung to everything—Florence's uniform, her skin, her hair—no matter how many times she tried to wash it off. Outside, the sounds of war rumbled on, distant artillery fire shaking the ground as if it were alive, but inside the tent, it was the constant cries of the wounded that tore through her.

Men lay in rows, crammed side by side on stretchers or pallets. Some of them were silent, their faces ashen, eyes staring blankly at nothing. Others were not so lucky—their bodies wracked with pain, wounds too gruesome to comprehend, their voices hoarse from screaming or begging for mercy. Shrapnel wounds, amputations, burns—Florence had seen it all, but nothing could ever prepare her for the relentless suffering she faced here, day after day.