Exquisite Poison (Original Draft)

Chapter 72 - All in the Family

Netta could not shake off the will that had possessed her. She looked down, could see her dominant hand grasping the knife, her feet moving.   She had begun to walk towards the shivering mass of the two bound Witches on the ground.

 Netta could hear their cries, their muffled pleas.

The yelling was overpowered by a soothing, authoritative voice.  "Neith, bend down and with that knife, make an incision on first the girl's arm and then cut that traitor's throat."

Amidst their screaming and thrashing, Netta bent down and made an incision on first the Ophelia's arm.

Her screaming rang in Netta's hollowed mind.

Next, she watched as her hands forced Erwinnia's head back, wielding a blade that had a small smear of the girl's blood still on the edge of it.

"Daughter, stop."

The sound of her mother's voice made Netta stop. She was holding the hyperventilating Witch's hair in her hand, was about to press the woman's neck to the blade.

"Drop her."

Netta did as she was told, the solid sound of Erwinnia's head smacking against the ground ringing, for a moment stifling Erwinnia's cries.

"Walk back to the table and sit."

Netta did it and as soon as she sat, she felt as though a fog that had been clouding her mind had lifted.

She gasped and dropped the knife onto the table.  "Goddess, no, oh, no -"

Sia said then, "Is this really a reason for dramatics? It would have been patently obvious to anyone with the ability to keep a coherent thought in her mind that you were born to obey Mother."

"What? What does that mean?"

Netta's trembling increased as she ran her hands up and down her pants, trying to rub off an evil influence as though she had touched something rotten.

"Now, Saorise," Hera said, smiling gently at her eldest daughter almost indulgently, but with her eyes dark. "was it your place to broach that subject?"

Sia looked down at her plate. "I apologize, Mother."

The sound of the two on the floor crying into each other, with the girl's cries muffled against Erwinnia's neck in an armless attempt at comfort, almost drove Netta mad.

Netta turned back to her Mother, almost wishing for sanity, for hope. When she looked in her mother's face, she found that Hera was smiling in a way that did not quite reach her eyes, an almost indulgent smile on her lips.

"Seeing as how my willful eldest has decided to tell you, then I must confess something to you. You were an experiment, in a sense. One that I was wracked with the guilt of watching become botched before my very eyes."

Hera raised her hands up to her head, despair for a moment written on her face. "I had invested much in your birth, then watched as all of your potential seemed to wither in front of me." Slowly, Hera smiled. "But now I see that out of all of the stimulation we subjected you to, we failed to give you something to care about, or any pride to draw from. Look at you now!" She laughed, a warmth in her eyes then almost motherly in its pride, its hint at unconditional love. "You're all I ever wanted in a daughter - powerful, unusual - broken to my will."

"I am not broken."

"What was that?"

Netta clenched her teeth together. "I am not broken."

"Ah, that's sweet." Hera tut-tutted. "Dear, pick up that knife and go cut the throat of the one that you care the most for."

"NO!" Netta shouted it, even as she felt her hands scrabbling for the knife.