Cinders [Completed]

Chapter 27: The Trial

Lucy once asked me why Dad punishes us like he did. It was when she was seven, so I must have been fifteen. When bringing in the groceries from the car, I had tripped and shattered two jars of olive oil, and the next day my back was covered with three new scars that shone red and raw against my pale skin. In those beginning years, he punished for the smallest things. It got better.

Lucy watched me wince into a shirt the next morning.

"Why does he use fire?" She said, biting back tears. Her crutches were on the shortest level, but they were still too tall on her. She was like a skeleton.

I successfully pulled my shirt down, swallowing the pain.

"It's clean, Lucy. There's no blood. It's controlled."

"Does it hurt?"

Lucy has never had a cinder touch her body. I refuse to let it happen.

"Yeah," I said gently, like it would have lightened the blow, "it hurts."

The first time Dad ever used them, it was against Mom. I was so young. At eight years old, I held a silent 7 month old Lucy to my chest, watching my parents from the living room door.

Dad and Mom had talked in rushed, worried undertones. They didn't fight or scream. I don't even know how it happened, or what she did wrong. But, suddenly, she was kneeling on the ground, looking up at Dad, and the smell of burning flesh was filling the air. She was holding out her hands to him, cupped together. I didn't realize until afterwards that she was holding fiery coals in her palms.

Lucy began to cry, her tiny hands clinging to me, but I just stood there in frozen horror, watching Mom look up at Dad, tears streaming down her cheeks. The light of the fire shone in her eyes, and I tried to understand the expression in her face. I remember being so confused. Why does she look like that? Why doesn't she look afraid?

It took me years to realize that she looked reverent. She had the ecstasy of revelation in her eyes, the indescribable relief of allowing the ocean to pull you away from the shore. A drowned victim, singing in the water.

Her hands did not bleed. But they scarred. Not messy. Just permanent.

I look at her hands now, still scarred, folded together in her lap. I look at her eyes now, and I find that, finally, staring at my father, they are afraid. Not afraid of him, but afraid for him.

The trial begins in 15 minutes.

The Justice Court is in the center of the city. It's too fancy, done up in the same style as the Palace. The room is huge and vaulted and as I sit in a chair, all alone, I feel like it is as unbearably empty as an open grave.

Lucy couldn't come. I couldn't ask her to come. And I couldn't have Jonah here, either. They are still the kids, and I am still the older sibling. I can protect them from this, at least.

I wish I could've kept Mom away.

She sits in a separate section of the court, where the general public is allowed. Her face is tight and she looks even worse than the last time I saw her. Her gaze is directed at Dad, rage and fury and horror mingling together.

Dad.

Dad sits at the front of the court. There are three vaulted platforms at various heights on the far wall, and he sits in the lowest, in the middle, a chain tightly secured around his hands. Maybe he is afraid. Maybe he is repentant.

I'm not looking at him, so I don't know. Maybe he doesn't feel anything at all.

I am alone. There are no other witnesses. I wish, desperately, stupidly, that Orion was sitting next to me. But to the world, he is not my mate. To the world, I am alone.