Choose Wisely

Chapter Twenty: Chasing Truth, Finding Lies

We were swept up in the fever of the crowd: maddened, afraid, worried, insane. Something like this hadn't happened in a hundred years and no one knew why the balance was going to be broken. West's hand slipped out of mine as the crowd surged and I turned to him desperately and tried to form words but they were snatched up by the volume of the crowd's fervour.

I lost him completely, only glimpsing one last flicker of his brown hair before he was forced into another direction. Then, it all stopped. The crowd started to still though the flurried movements of the wait still writhed through everyone. A raised platform was in direct view and I realised that this was what everyone was waiting for.

A figure flickered into view as it climbed jutting steps to the platform. As the figure reached the centre of the platform, they raised their hands and silence fell upon us all: cloaking, subduing and smothering us. The figure spoke and the words danced around me as the horror of what they were saying crashed down upon me.

The one pledged to death climbed the stage, half-dragged by two others. There was a cloth bag over their head, hiding the struggling person's features. The first figure quieted the crowd.

They walked over to the weakened one. Ripped the cloth bag off their head.

I screamed without making a sound as I realised I knew who the imprisoned was and realised what their fate would be.

And then I screamed for real, when they slashed the throat of the person I had known for years.

Five Hours Before

I was waiting for him before he arrived, my back leaning against the doors, the rigid wood not inflicting any pain. Or maybe it was.

I just couldn't feel it.

"Natalia?" West was hesitant as he asked and I raised my head slowly, trying to hold myself together in front of him. Be strong. Be brave. Never show your weaknesses. Like my father had taught me. Except when I met his eyes, I failed my father and I failed myself because I crumbled, collapsing into grieving as if I'd never left.

I remembered how I had tried to hold his hand and how he'd flinched away from me. But in my need and in my loss, West knew that searing grief and he knew exactly how it felt.

He sat down beside me and held me, my head on his shoulder and his arms keeping me together as everything inside of me threatened to break apart. I lost my sister once. Seeing her yesterday once more in that foul mockery of what she had been was enough to rip open the wound.

Afterwards, when my head leaned on his shoulder not out of need but now of that crushing sense of being tired, West asked me what had happened.

"They'd erased her," I said, hollow and broken. It felt like there was nothing left inside of me to give- just like the shadow of my sister that lived on today. "I knew my sister and I loved her- so when I saw her like that, I knew she had died years ago. There was nothing left of her."

"What do you want to do?" A simple question but so many dangerous answers. I sat up, eyes weary from crying. The determination to find Charlotte still pressed me but at the same time, I wanted to surrender finally and stop fighting.

"I want to see her again," I confessed. "And if the only way I could meant dying, I would want to die a thousand painful deaths so I could see her again."

"But you can't."

"But I can't."

"So what are you going to do?"

I waited for a few moments, thinking about what needed to be done.

"I'm going to go to a brunch where everyone around me has more money than they know what to do with and I'm going to sit there and wish I was somewhere else," I replied, standing up. The muscles in my body hurt as if the act of grieving was physical, not just mental. It made sense that the bruises left on my soul marked my skin as well. "I'm going to do that because I need my father not to be suspicious later when I leave to visit an old friend in the delictums."