Page 2 of Eternal Captive

Why is no one coming?!

Tears started blurring my vision, and it wasn’t long before they started running down my cheeks. I felt bad for the way they fell onto my mother’s face and quickly tried to wipe them away so as not to sully her.

“Father will be here soon,” I said, looking back to the entrance, but no one had shown up. The doors were wide open and empty even after screaming so hard my voice became hoarse. “Someone, please help! The queen has been attacked!”

There’s no other explanation for it. Of course there was an attack. Someone had snuck in—someone who hated the queen and decided to punish her.

Why? Why her? Why us?

What did Mother need to be punished for?

“Aurelia.” The voice that left her throat didn’t sound like hers at all. It was hoarse, crackly, unrecognizable.

I turned my attention back to her.

“Please,” I begged her. “Please don’t leave me, not yet.”

Anything but this. I knew nothing besides her. I didn’t know how to stand in for her. I couldn’t nurture the love of the vampires in our family like she could.

I was nothing and more like my father than I ever was her. She used to say it like it was a good thing. Like it meant that I had potential and wasn’t the slap to the face it truly was.

“Stay…fierce.”

I forced out a smile for her. It’d been her favorite saying for me. Father didn’t like when I talked back and often tried to punish me for it. Mother said it was because I reminded him too much of himself in those moments. But she was always there, by my side, reminding me that this fierceness was a strength.

It was the last word she would ever say to me. Not that she loved me. But to remind me that I am just like the man who refused to come save her. I watched helplessly as the last bit of breath was squeezed from her lungs.

Seeing the light die in her eyes was even worse. She was trying to fight it. She was trying to stay for me. She realized that she was on the brink of the inevitable andstilltried to rip her own soul from death’s grip.

But she lost her battle.

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. Grief, sorrow, anger—all of it crashed over me, filling my little body to the brink until I was about to explode with it. I didn’t know how to separate it all.I didn’t know what to do.

I wanted to explode, even if for just a mere chance that it would inconvenience Father. I wanted it to take me with her while at the same time ripping the foundation from under the building and causing everyone who couldn’t help to crumble with it.

How could this happen to her? Someone so loved and adored?

I didn’t want to believe it. Not even when her eyes glazed over. Not when my vampire hearing could hear the sound of her body giving up on her.

I leaned against her, selfishly taking one last sniff of her scent. Even after her body became cold, she still managed to smell like sunshine and honey.

The sound of my father’s boots squeaking against the floor as he entered the cathedral interrupted my moment with her. There were people behind him, three from the sounds of their footsteps.

I took a deep breath and sat up, but I was unable to turn my eyes away from Mother. I knew I should have stood in his presence, I just couldn’t find the strength to. I didn’t want to be taken from my mother so soon.

A foolish part of me thought that she might come back to life in the minutes that passed, but of course that wish never came true.

“Pity,” he said, though there was no grief in his voice. No hoarseness. No strain. Like commenting on the weather. “I never thought the witches would’ve found a way in here. I guess it’s time to update our security. Take the body, search for the witches.”

That’s it?

I sat there, numb, as two of his servants lifted my mother’s body. I squashed my urge to reach for her as her lifeless form dangled in front of me. They were gentle with her, gentler than my father ever was.

I turned to him, rage simmering inside me. He was dressed in his usual extravagant king’s clothing. Covered in furs and jewels and looking as calm as he did that morning when he held court.

His dark hair was too much like my own. The shape of his eyes. The shape of his lips.

Is this what Mother saw when she looked at me?Did she just see a replica of the person who abandoned her?

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