Page 8 of Tainted Serenity

“Naya!” I call her name, but she still does not hear me, and panic fills every feature within.

The man is right behind her now, his three-piece suit so out of place on this cold winter evening. An object in his hand makes my heart drop to the pit of my stomach.

A knife.

My legs carry me forward, despite exhaustion wearing like a heavy blanket over me, but no matter how fast I run, it is as if I’m not moving at all. As if I’m running in the same place.

“I won’t let you escape again, my dear.”

The man’s voice is cold like an iceberg in the Antarctic, freezing anything warm left inside me, and it’s as if he has stolen the color from my face. It isn’t until now that the terror in her becomes evident, her spellbinding, mismatched eyes darkening.

Now, she finally sees me, her eyes softening in my presence, a sigh of relief slipping from her thick lips. I watch the calm spread over her body as her muscles relax, but I keep screaming at her.

The man is behind her, knife in hand while he raises it higher up, but all she sees is me.

And then blood gushes out of her mouth, soaking her dress as she stares at me with horror. Her eyes are no longer calm; they are full of hatred. Hatred for me.

It feels as if someone is twisting that knife inside me, too, as I struggle to reach her. I have to fucking save her life. She can’t die; just the thought of it makes nausea spread through me like a noxious tide.

I promised her an eternity together, never to let each other go, and I tend to keep that promise with all that I am.

But when she falls to the ground, covered in the macabre shade of crimson red and the whiteness of the winter snow, that is when I see who actually stabbed her. He stares directly at me, and it’s not the man standing next to Emilio Ricci who found us out in the woods, fuck knows how.

It’s my brother.

He killed the love of my life.

He betrayed me once again.

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I STARTLE AWAKE WITHa jolt, my head hitting something hard and causing a throbbing sensation in my scalp. Opening my eyes, dizziness and disorientation overwhelm me. I hover momentarily before freezing, the room spinning violently and threatening to take over completely. I cannot recognize anything inside the space I’m in, but there is not much to recognize. A thin mattress is underneath me; the material sinks to the ground until I feel the hard surface of the floor. Nothing else exists in here, and fear wreaks havoc within me, uncertainty filling every feature as I don’t know where I am.

The throbbing pain in my scalp doesn’t subside, and I drag my hands through my face in frustration while my chest heaves.

Where the fuck am I?

As the dream I had comes washing over my mind in deadly tsunami waves, it drowns me in its despair as I fight for breath, looking around panicked.

Naya. She is gone.

“Fuck!”

My feet find their way forward as rage and frustration come raining over me in brutal masses, making my vision hazy until I no longer can control myself or my actions. I’m seething through my teeth, despair is a heavy emotion for my heart to carry, and I hate that I care so deeply for her. Caring makes me vulnerable, but she’s the goddamn drug I need to survive.

My fist meets the stone wall in front of me. Once, twice, three times before the immediate pain in my knuckles is enough to make me drop to my bare knees, and it feels as if a boa snake lives inside me, squeezing my heart in a vile grip.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

A devastated roar leaves my mouth as I scramble to my feet once more, hitting the fucking wall because there are so many chaotic emotions within me that I cannot control. She’s gone, stabbed the moment I was dragged away from her. I could have saved or helped her had I fought harder.

I failed her, and now she has slipped from me.

“It’s all my fucking fault,” I mutter while pacing the room back and forth, unable to stand still for even a second.

There are too many pent-up emotions inside me—a dangerous mix of rage, sadness, despair, and anxiety.

I fucking failed her.

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