Page 64 of To Free a Soul
With hurried movements, she ghosted her way through the front door. Once tangible, she headed down the hallway. Each of her thudding footsteps seemed to make her heart race faster. Anxiety shimmered in her veins, as did anger, confusion, and so many emotions she was struggling to swallow down.
With her throat thick, she entered what must have been Katerina’s room... and knelt. Cupping her hand around the bottom of the first stack of journals, she yanked them out from underneath the bed. Then she hoisted them up, placed them on the bed, and grabbed the first leatherbound book.
Lindiwe no longer cared about Katerina’s privacy, not with the motherly rage coursing through her. She wanted answers.
The book creaked as she opened the half-filled journal. And with each line she read, her hands shook, her nails dug into the leather, and her eyes scanned each word faster and faster until she was heaving through panted, near-hysterical breaths.
Words jumped from the page, and each one had her stomach tightening with disgust.
Monster. Beast. Ugly. Repulsive. Stupid.It was like Katerina had tried to use every word in the English language to describe her beautiful skull-headed child as repugnant.Evil. Demonic. Vile.And if she couldn’t find one, she’d use a string of carefully – almost artistically – crafted insults.
An affront to nature. A desecration of the purity of the mortal realm. A grisly eyesore.
The sound of each page turning scraped against her ears, and the feel of them grew coarser as her blood pounded in her fingertips.
She called him a fucking animal and then went on to say that he was as useful as a well-trained mutt.
She never saw him as a person. A being who had thoughts and feelings that were kind. No, she always considered him a deplorable monster, a being of destructive death, even as Lindiwe read throughyearsof foul days transcribed.
Her eyes welled with tears at the depth of hate written down.
The journals started not long after he went to the Demon Village for the first time, and they grew more chaotic as time passed.
And it wasn’t just hate.
Somehow, Katerina was disgusted by his very presence, the air he breathed out, and even the ground he walked upon. She despised... everything.
She detailed all this fear, all this terror. How she was afraid he’d eat her in the middle of the night or drag her to the pits of damnation.
How her soul, as much as her body, was tainted by just being here.
She lied to him. Manipulated him. The only joyful words were about how she was the master of a Duskwalker that knew how tocome, sit, and stay like a rotten pet. Then she detailed how much she despised him for making her do anything positive, as if it washisfault that she’d made those decisions.
Every time she patted him? She was disgusted with herself, feeling the need to scrub her hands. Every cuddle she gave him, she did so spitefully. And sex... everything written about it was horribly skewed towards a woman who used it as a form of control and then utterly blamed him for it.
When the weight of the words became too much, her legs grew weak, and Lindiwe ended up seated on the side of the bed. No matter how much she wanted to stop reading, she found herself incapable of doing so. She was so absorbed in learning Katerina’s innermost thoughts that page after page turned as if by their own will.
“He never had a chance,” Lindiwe whispered as she looked over Katerina’s recounts of conversations. “She thought he killed her brother. Someone named Blakely.”
“But we know he didn’t,”Weldir answered.
“I know. And he knew that,” Lindiwe said, shaking her head. “He tried to tell her, but he just... he didn’t have the capability at the time to properly explain it.”
And from what Lindiwe read, it wouldn’t have mattered. Katerina refused to believe him, instead calling him a liar. Because why would a vile monster tell her the truth? She remembered what she wanted from their meeting because it aided her hatred and discredited his truth.
When Lindiwe finally couldn’t take any more, she threw the journal she’d been reading to the side and drew her legs up, placing the heels of her feet on the edge of the bed. She wrapped her arms around her knees, and a sob broke from her.
“I shouldn’t have intervened,” Lindiwe said, pressing her face against her bent knees. “I shouldn’t have tried to help.”
If she’d just stayed out of it and let nature run its course, Katerina wouldn’t have survived as long as she had. She would have died either by Orpheus’ fangs or a Demon’s. Perhaps even sickness would have gotten her.
Katerina wouldn’t have ‘suffered’ for the last five years, and Orpheus wouldn’t be running through the Veil with his heart gutted. Lindiwe wouldn’t have to bear any of this guilt.
If I’d known that Katerina was so hateful, I would have taken her away long ago. There was never any room for Orpheus in her heart.
Any recounts of Lindiwe in those journals were just as horrible.
She didn’t mind those insults; she could bear them. She may even think she deserved a few, but so much of it was twisted by the perspective of someone who hated her just as much, if not more, than Orpheus.
