Sin of the Saint

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: IN THE SECONDS BETWEEN

WARNING: CRUDE LANGUAGE AND VIOLENCE.

The next three weeks had passed by in what seemed to be ignorant bliss for Liv (lucky her—this quarantine about killed me) as her absence in the last bout put a large gap between her last encounters with the veil...and her encounters with Axel became a daily occurrence.

It even seemed that her concerns with Rose Mendez and Axel's own cousin Nathan faded into background noise as Axel walked her to the gymnasium multiple times a week after school for her private sessions with Coach Luther. Typically, these were walks through the school hallways hand-in-hand or strolls while exchanging witty teasing sentiments.

And this day was just like any other, though when Axel cracked a particularly funny and inappropriate joke, she doubled over laughing and instantly breathed in a whole mouthful of thick, white mist.

Her eyes flew open just after her heart began a mad pounding she could feel in her ears. Instead of seeing the mist of the veil, she found herself gazing upon the serpentine pattern of a Sin's garb.

Her heart stopped. Cupid's garb.

"Head up in the clouds there, Caritas?" he seethed.

She moved to ready herself, but just as she flinched to move, the back of his fist collided with her cheekbone and sent her flying across the space of the veil. She landed crudely on one shoulder and rolled a few times to a stop. She wanted to nurse her sore shoulder but knew Cupid would be on her in only a moment, so she reached for her weapon instead.

His hand clenched her wrist from behind and she felt his knee at her back, pinning her to the ground and forcing the air from her lungs. She wheezed against the ground and tried to buy herself some room by resisting against the ground with her free hand.

"You were warned...by multiple people now, I believe, Caritas," Cupid said, his furious tone ominously even, "that you shouldn't be so distracted by another."

She noticed her head must have been bleeding when she blinked blood from one eye. She took a harder tumble than she initially thought—her crunched shoulder masked the pain of many other injuries she'd sustained. She quickly took stock of her pain and decided not to reply to Cupid, knowing he would probably fill the silence with his own voice anyway.

And she was right.

Cupid continued his berating. "Unbelievable. You went and got in a relationship...in the middle of our war for the fate of the world. Whoever your mortal self is...she's got some serious stones either between her legs or in her head, because I don't know whether to call you brave or stupid."

Caritas turned her head as far as she could to look at Cupid. She could see his amethyst eyes, though rather than shining, they looked glazed over...matte. Before she could stop herself, her eyebrows closed in as she looked at him in clear bewilderment.

"Of course I know you're in a relationship..." he said quietly but still angrily. "You...are not my Caritas. Rather...you're my Caritas with a big chunk of herself missing."

Her jaw tensed at that. She hadn't given any part of her to Axel...what was he talking about?

He began to shake his head slowly, and a chuckle escaped him, "Your lover even took that from you too, huh?"

"What?"

In one swift motion, he drew his weapon and held it poised above her, one of the blades on the end of his bo aiming straight towards her pulsating jugular vein.

"I don't want to spend another minute here...not with who you've become," he said in disgust. "It's...truly nauseating...and after I worked so hard to bring you so far."

She'd grown tired of his riddles by their second bout, but this time, it wasn't boredom, but anger that flared in her chest. "You did nothing...to make me stronger."

He laughed, "Oh yeah? And how's that?"

She knew that she couldn't move from under him, not without sloppily losing her life. She knew by the weight and severity of his hold on her, she would lose this bout, yet again. She cleared her throat, "I'll begin by saying...you don't know who I am...what I've had to overcome to get to this point..." Who I've lost... "You had absolutely nothing to do with any of that. You're merely the incarnation of something that people come in contact with every day."

"Something that people choose everyday."

"That is just as easily dismissed everyday," she growled. "By good people."

This time, his jaw tensed and he narrowed his eyes at her.

"You can't take credit for anything I am. As much as you would like to think it was you, I'm afraid that it was me who brought me this far...and I'm sorry, really...but you don't get to have me. I'm choosing to be with a person who I deserve."

After a brief moment of meeting her eyes, he glanced at an imaginary watch on his wrist and said, "You know I'm not a patient man, and I said I didn't want to spend another minute here with this shell of you. Well, Caritas...it's been a pretty long minute."

Before he glanced down from his imaginary watch, the blade of his bo had already slid into her neck, bleeding her out in mere moments.

These moments she spent in sputtering, gasping flinches beneath his iron grasp until her eyes became as glazed and dark as his.

Liv, still doubled over from her laughing fit with Axel, coughed a few wretched times until her chest was cleared.

"Yikes Liv it was a joke," Axel said through his own chuckling, his tender hand at her back, patting it gently.

"Sorry, I—" she glanced up to see that she'd returned to the crowded commons of St. John's Private High School. She smiled at her boyfriend, "I'm fine. Let's go."

Though the sight of Cupid's almost dead-like eyes made her shudder as she stood up straight, resuming her life as she'd left it—like she'd never been stolen away into the veil. Not like she'd suffered the most humiliating loss since her first encounter with Cupid.

Author's Note: I am officially off my hiatus! It's been a rough time with the quarantine interfering with my daily routine and especially with my mental health. To be honest guys, when you're stuck inside (pregnant after loss), it is incredibly difficult to find any kind of motivation anywhere. I couldn't write a single word when my depression reared its ugly head. But I actually had a really good day today, and was hit with a lot of inspiration just this evening, so I was able to get something down, and I'm very happy about that! It's not much...but I hope you like it!

Fun fact: During the quarantine, I've taught myself to cook a lot of French dishes! A mean shrimp scampi being my favorite so far!

XOXO//: CRII