Breathe

Chapter 47 - They Died For a Second Time

 Knowing the pain that she was going through, I laid her down on the floor. She coughed and finally let the wrinkles on her face show. She moved her head just enough that she was looking into my eyes and softly, she smiled.

"Now, I can finally stop playing this role. I can stop pretending to be Princess Evangeline," she whispered in a tone softer than before.

She lifted her hand and tried to touch my face. I backed away. Again, she laughed. "To be expected. I didn't expect you to let me touch you after all the things that I've done to you." Looking at the ceiling, she started:

"Wynn, I'm sure you know a little about your life, but you don't know everything about it. I'm sure that you know about me and your father and all the sins that I've committed. I'm sure that you hate me, taking away any hope of you having a normal life and then even taking away the things that you've done just to scrape by. For that, I'm sorry. But I'm also sorry for more than that—I'm sorry for giving birth to you so that you can fix my selfish mistake."

"Selfish mistake?" I repeated. "What are you talking about?"

She looked me in the eye and laughed. "I suppose you don't know the half of it. Newton didn't tell you much, did he?" Her laughter died. "When I was young—less than your age—I was obsessed with making my family love me. At that point, I had been abandoned by not only my father but my mother, too. Or at least, who I thought was my mother. See, it was revealed that I was the daughter of my father's mistress. My mother...my real mother randomly barged in during dinner and revealed that. She was dressed in rags—likely due to her having lived on the streets—and was blaming my father for all the crimes he had allegedly committed against her. And though there were reasons to be suspicious of her, especially since my mother swore that I was hers, I was shunned out of the royal family and forced to live in a tower...which up until now, I have been living in.

"So, in an attempt for my family to accept me again, I desperately tried to create something that they would be proud of. While I was reading a book, I was struck with an epiphany: to create an elixir of immortality. It seemed possible to me at the time. After all, I already had advanced knowledge in herbology and although I was shunned, my father was still willing to provide me with whatsoever I wished and needed as long as I never left my tower. Thus, I started studying books and experimenting with herbs in search of the elixir. After many trials and errors, I finally succeeded: I made my first batch. I tested it on several lab rats and then people, and it proved to be a success. After they drank it, they appeared younger, healthier, stronger. I was sure it had worked. My father was sure, too, so he drank one.

"However, in the coming days, we realized something wasn't right. The rats began to lose color in their coat. Then, their eyes began to turn into a bloodshot red. They became overtly weak and within weeks of drinking it, they died. As for the human subjects, they began to experience those symptoms over a longer period of weeks—months, rather—until like the other subjects, they succumbed to the potion of death. And just like the rest... my father, too, passed.

"As expected, I was blamed for his death and shunned even more. However, I had already developed something to counteract that and using my brother as a catalyst, I brought him—my father—back.

"Unexpectedly, despite his more-than-near-death experience, my father was overjoyed with my invention. He began claiming that it was what Libentina has been looking for: a death machine and a means to live forever. Immediately, he told scientists to start mass-producing the potion and to turn it into a more deadly weapon: change its liquid state to gas. Additionally, he began to gather orphaned children and raise them as soldiers, training their bodies to be fit enough so that when someone of the royal family died, they would have a strong catalyst to be reborn in.