Page 30 of Cardinal House

It’s the final nail in the cavity of my chest where my heart has withered and died. I lock it away, ready to bury it with her.

I want to climb inside this box. Curl my body into hers, join us both together in the fire that’s to come next. I thought about putting her in the ground, but laying her in the earth, the weight of it atop her. Letting her rot, worms and insects eating their way through her like a delicacy. I can’t do it.

A cry bursts from my trembling lips and my curled fists come down over the end of the coffin. I don’t feel anything as I bleed, my bones aching, grinding, the skin of my knuckles splitting, spilling, oozing.

It feels as though my heart is weeping as blood dribbles from my abused fists. Crying out for what it didn’t even have.

Thorne has always been my anchor, I his, but then he met Haisley, and she became that for him. It left me floating, far out at sea, no anchor, no tether, no line to draw me back in.

Nothing until her.

Instantaneous.

That’s how it felt when I stopped being angry at the world and let myself see her for the first time.

How delicate and gentle and quiet she was.

Was.

Sickness churns in my stomach, but there’s nothing left inside of me but acid now. Bile choking its way up the back of my throat as my fists continue to smash through wood.

I stumble back, my arse hitting the floor, chest heaving and heaving as I look up at the mess I’ve made.

It’s supposed to be perfect.

She is so perfect.

This needed to be done right.

I should have been the last thing she saw. I would have held her and comforted her and let her know it was okay to go. To pass on, even without me. I would have made her feel safe.

‘Because I’m not free.’

My heart bleeds black and my soul cries blood, but there’s nothing I can do.

As a Blackwell, we deal in death. Create it, clean up after it, bury it eight feet deep.

But we don’t feel it.

We hardly blink, collecting body parts and bones, soaking up blood, and discarding human tissue like it’s everyday trash.

But this…

Staring at the broken coffin of a beautiful girl I could see myself one day marrying, it doesn’t feel like only her death. It feels like my own.

Tears slide down my cheeks, my jaw clenched tight, heat swells across my eyelids and I can’t bear to sit and stare at this fucking box any longer.

There’s nothing left for either of us here.

Not tonight.

Rain.

Blood.

Coffin.

Images of her standing there, trembling, candlelight casting her in an eerie glow. Blood and scrapes and slices all over her naked body. Her knuckles broken, fingernails snapped too low, blood curling around her wrists, forearms, dripping from her fingertips.

---