WALPURGIA ✔️

Chapter 26 - Broken

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"Are you alright?", it was Genevieve's voice I first made out.

I jumped up.

I clutched my whole body.

"I'm alive?!", my hands fell onto Esme. She kicked, weakly, but she still kicked. "But the chandelier had hit me!" I still felt the crush, still felt how I had fallen onto my stomach.
"Those pains are an illusion", Genevieve forced into my mind. She shook my shoulders. "Don't think about it too much or you really might feel them."

Something wasn't right.

Her eyes were red. Whitlock was quiet. Diane was too calm.

"What's wrong? What happened?"
Genevieve's eyes saddened. "Sit down", she advised. "Rest. You need to heal."
"But you told me I had no wounds!"
"You have a few. Look at your wrist."

I gasped out loud. "Our sigil ..."
"You have Baldwin's on your back too, and his initials. Along with a 'dV'. Lilies." Mama's sigil.
"How?", I breathed, my hand reaching out to touch them.

They had been carved into my skin.

I traced the one on my right wrist. It seemed so ... lazily carved in – as if they had been mocking me.

"Sarah!", I jumped up. "It's the same as Sarah's one!"
Genevieve averted herself fully from me, taking a few steps away from us. I saw her pressing her mouth into her hand and closing her eyes.

I had never seen her so broken down before.

Usually she would have been fearsome to me, the stern up-do, the broad dresses always in a darker tone – but not now.

A sob escaped her lips.

A crashing realization hit me.

"No! They chased her too?"

"We wish it stayed at that", Whitlock motioned a pentagram across his chess and prayed to the goddess. He must have once been a religious man.

"Wait – what?"

His words reached me now.
"She's dead", Diane whispered. "Leaning against Madame's office. Her corpse torn apart."
"..."

How? Why?

"We cannot let any children under 13 come back. Those who can't defend themselves need to leave", Genevieve turned around again, her voice firm. "I would have sent you with the others, but you are bound to this place."

"Of course, ..."

"Whitlock, get the guards. They need to dispose of her body. We will give her the funeral she would have wanted. Diane; escort the children. Not the same place as the last time." Both moved out the room.

Jezebel and Delano waited outside, leaning against the wall. Blood was all over their bodies, a chilling smile on their twisted faces. Whitlock and Diane moved by them, unbothered. Genevieve shut the door again, but I couldn't break off the eye contact with them.

"Don't give them any attention. They feed off it." Genevieve stared at me.

Then she pulled me into a tight embrace. "Thank god you are alright. I was so scared I would lose you too." Don't let her read your thoughts. "I'm so glad you survived."

Her hug got tighter. Trust. Discipline. Flight.

Even when I was so scared, I reminded myself of that.