Page 26 of A Broken Promise (the Freckled Fate #1)

26

T he moldy tavern was now long gone, replaced by never ending horizons of ripe fields. Priya was already in a foul mood, and I stayed quiet, though a list of unanswered questions knocked in my mind wanting to barge in.

There were only two things Priya told me before setting off on this journey.

One, the person I was about to kill was a man, and two, he very well deserved to be dead.

The rocks on the gravel path were thinning out, turning our walk even more silent than before. Dust covered our boots all the way to our knees. The occasional breeze and shimmering of cottonwood trees breaking up the fields were the only source of relief against the warm fall sun and heated dark leathers we wore.

The small, nondescript cabin stood at the end of the straight path. Unobtrusively, we approached the crooked door.

This was it. Though my palms were sweaty, my heart beat strong.

I had never killed a man.

Especially not in cold blood.

I wasn’t worried that I wouldn’t be able to do it.

Because I would .

But I was anxious about the life after. Would his face forever stay in my mind? Would I enjoy it or hate it?

The unknown scared me. I willed myself to stay still, to relax my muscles. I was ready. I had lived long enough as a victim; now it was time to learn to be the executioner too.

My thoughts were abruptly interrupted when Priya knocked very loudly on the door. A coarse male voice sounded deep in the cabin.

“Comin’.”

My heightened senses could hear each step of the man approaching the door, each step like thunder. Did he ever think today would be his last day? Did he realize these were the last steps he’d take? Last breaths to breathe?

Priya didn’t seem to care.

A man in his early fifties opened the door. He was average build; his clothes worn out and a few days-old gray stubble on his pale face.

His eyes widened with fear, yet there was no shock or surprise. Only acceptance of defeat.

“Priya.” He recognized her.

“Hello, baker,” she purred, slipping into a hungry predator voice.

He didn’t have a chance to blink as she blew the dark purple powder she was holding in her fist straight into his face.

Our faces were already wrapped with bandanas.

The purple powder covered his entire face. A single cough. Priya stood still, carefully waiting until his body hit the floor a second later.

I knew the powder. It came from the Bellaroot mushrooms, usually used in sleeping tonics, yet in this form mixed with Ionna flower pollen, it worked like a sleeping charm. A little could distract, but if the person inhaled enough of it, it sent them off to a deep sleep.

We acted fast and yet I could feel each minute lasting too long. Each second, as we dragged his body to one of the chairs in his two-bedroom log cabin; each second, we took to tie him up, his legs, his wrinkled arms.

I was waiting for the cue. An order from Priya to take his life. But she just watched him cautiously, as if he was a prized statue in one of the Svitar’s museums. Something inside of me stirred anxiously, almost craving the destruction, the power—yet another part of me stilled and hesitated.

A life would be lost today because of me, by me . A red line for me to cross and never come back.

“I want him to be awake for this,” Priya said, her face full of power and high on excitement.

She pulled another chair away from the round table. Turning it around, she sat across it, resting her arms on the back of the chair, twisting a long, curved dagger in her hand.

I leaned against the wall, occasionally glancing out the window. There was nothing but nature. The birds were singing their cheerful melody, so unaware of the death settling around them.

Priya growled, the only sign that she’d just ran out of patience. It’d been less than ten minutes since we knocked. She lasted longer than I expected.

Impatiently, she kicked his leg without getting up from her chair.

Groaning, a few minutes later, he finally opened his heavy eyelids. Bright green eyes shone through them. He didn’t tug at the ropes, just looked at us, at me. I saw the dread in those eyes, the defeat and the silent request.

“Long time no see, Jonah. Missed me?” Priya purred at him while picking her nails with her dagger. “I must admit, you were quite a hassle to locate, so I have to give you credit for that.”

“I knew it was always going to be you, wasn't it? Mel, sent me a letter saying you were gone, and I’ve been waiting since then.” His voice was full of regret. A voice of a person who had given up.

“Oh, sweet old Mel. She was so quick to send out warnings and yet so slow to die.” Priya rolled her eyes dramatically.

This was a show for her. A performance.

That unquenchable monster within her was out, yet so casually dressed in cheerful tone and movements so human, except for those eyes. Her copper eyes were like windows to hell—open and ready to devour him.

“It was a different life, Priya, you must understand that. I wish…I wish I could change things. ”

“Oh Jonah... But I don’t.” Priya paused picking her nails and finally she looked at him. “See, I don’t wish to change a single thing.” A verdict.

He didn’t cry, he didn’t beg. She ran the dagger across his chest, pausing occasionally. I watched them silently, unable to put the pieces together. Priya never mentioned him or Mel. She never mentioned her past or who she was. In that moment, I realized I knew more of Nadine the Butcher than of her. But just a few glances at them and an undeniable past was laid in front of me, though completely unreadable.

A past. This was as close as Priya would let me be a part of her life.

Priya pulled out a hair-thin pin, longer than a needle. He flinched as she stabbed him in his neck, precisely in the large vein pumping his blood tirelessly.

“I do have my procedure to follow, as you might have heard. This will paralyze you to the point that you won’t be able to even blink or scream. A luxury I wish I had so many years ago. But don’t worry, I will keep you alive until I am done. But she—” Priya pointed at me with her dagger, grinning in satisfaction. “She will do the killing for me today.”

Molten adrenaline caressed my veins as if lava, yet my body was still, my mind was perfectly clear.

“You are going to be her first kill, you know. I hope you appreciate that. You never got to be first.” His eyes widened a little, and Priya’s smile got bigger. “Oh yes, I remember. Take it as my gift to you. After all, we are friends, aren’t we?” She patted his cheek.

Priya’s face lit up with a deathly thrill as she ripped the buttons off his shirt, exposing his chest wide.

“To remember me by even after you die,” she whispered into his ear. His eyes still wide open, unable to blink, were tearing up with large, murky tears dripping down his cheeks.

Small strips of skin fell off as Priya fileted his chest until a large S appeared. Blood trickled down his stomach, catching in between his gray body hair.

The image of the similar scar flashed in my mind. Priya’s. Her burned scar in the shape of an S on her stomach. It was the only connection I could make from all of this.

She pointed her dagger up, holding up a freshly sliced piece of his skin. Priya looked at it with the same devouring look, as if she craved it; as if she would eat it right now to satisfy that hunger that ran wild through her. The drops of blood ran down the blade in slow motion.

“You know what comes next now, don’t you?” She heinously smiled at him. Her eyes filled with wicked happiness. I wasn’t shocked or scared, no, what I felt was more a feeling of reverence. Priya was a force of nature. A tsunami wave; powerful, wild and so free. A shiver went through my body. Destructive. Yet each of her movements were filled with a hunter’s thrill and determination.

She slowly unbuckled his belt and tugged his pants down just low enough to fully expose his manhood.

“You know, years after years, and I have yet to find one that looks decent or even remotely appealing. I seriously don’t know what women find attractive about this ?” Priya spoke to me, as her dagger sliced through that most sacred part of a man in one fluid motion.

There was no screaming, no twitching or twisting. Even his breath now slowed down to almost nonexistent. Blood pooled quickly under him, dripping down to the worn-out rug.

Priya turned to me with a satisfactory grin on her face.

“Your turn, Freckles.”

Every night I’d been thinking of this moment; since my training began, since Priya told me she was taking me on my first kill. I spent hours pondering what I would feel, what it would be like to take someone’s life. Would I take it slow or be one and done? Would I want to say a few words or just be silent?

I thought about this pristine moment so many times before.

And yet now, my mind was empty. The ever-flowing sea of thoughts dried up. The room was quiet. There was no chirping from the previously loud birds, no heavy breaths shared. There was just deep, utter calmness. The depth of it felt so unfamiliar, and yet so welcoming.

I didn’t say anything as I pulled my crossbow, loading it with a short arrow. My mind and body turned into a well-oiled machine, precise and careless.

His heart or his head? That was the only question that mattered to me then.

Arrow to the head was the most practical, I decided. I wanted to see the strength of my crossbow; the quickness of the arrow’s blade as it pierced through the bone and flesh deep into his gray matter.

I didn’t take a pause to breathe as I pulled the trigger.

His eyes finally blinked from the impact as my arrow sunk deep into his head, leaving just the metal tip poking through the other side.

I lowered my empty crossbow. My eyes trailed the dark red stream of blood running down his face.

A line crossed. A life gone. Taken by me. His blood to forever stain my soul.

But the truth was, my soul was ruined long before this click of the trigger. It was born tarnished. Created by Death. It was stained with my very first breath. With my utter existence, I brought death.

The line might have been crossed today. But his blood? That was just a drop in the ocean.

“Nice shot, Freckles!” Priya smiled as she took a closer look at the arrow. His head now slumped back, exposing his neck. “Here.” She handed me her bloodied dagger. “You should try to cut his skin too. With a good knife it feels just like slicing warmed butter.”

I set my crossbow down on the table and took her blade into my hands. The handle felt so warm from her hands against my cool skin. Without blinking, I ran the blade against his opened chest. Small trickles of blood came out one by one. His skin turned ghost pale as more blood pooled underneath his chair.

I twisted the dagger deeper. The blade went through with no hesitation, no resistance. It was too easy. The human flesh was so vulnerable, so defenseless against the sharp blade.

Priya observed each move, each blink and breath.

“Good,” was all she repeatedly said as I dug her dagger deeper and deeper until it pierced his heart completely. “You feel that?” she asked with anticipation and ecstasy in her voice .

But I didn’t feel anything at all, except calmness like the dark, still waters in the midst of a moon eclipse.

I didn’t reply to Priya. She was ecstatic, full of energy and life.

“This is what it’s like to feel powerful. To run the course of other people’s lives. To decide who lives and who dies. To deliver justice. To be vengeance. No other feeling in the world feels like that. Their fear, their pure terror; no drug in the world could replace that.”

I pulled the dagger out and handed it back to her, my eyes still on the limp body of the unfamiliar middle-aged man. Priya wiped the blood off her dagger against his ripped shirt.

“So, what do you do next?” I asked her.

“I find myself a trophy. Something to remember this by.”

“A trophy?”

“Well usually, I take all their gold and jewelry, but I also like to take something personal of theirs.” Priya glanced around the small cabin. “But since this guy was as poor as the church rat, I doubt we will find anything of value.”

I had no desire for a trophy, no desire for someone’s possessions. I stayed by the body still, while Priya made her way to his bedroom, rustling his sheets and his dressers looking for something of value to her. A souvenir.

Even with the sheer calmness, my stomach ached. Pain seemed to worsen since this morning. Nausea and the headache were to be expected, as I skipped breakfast today, but the pain seemed to now distract me.

I felt it then. Like a bucket of ice water, the sticky wetness and the feeling of a slithering blob landing between my legs, washing away any calmness I had felt.

“I need a washroom,” I yelled to Priya.

“What?” she yelled back at me, through the loud screeching of the moving furniture against the wooden floor.

“I need to use the bathroom.”

“Well hell, go then.”

The crooked outhouse, filled with buzzing flies and mosquitoes, stood not too far from the house. The definitive stench didn’t help my now panicking thoughts.

Please don’t be it. Please not now . I opened the door to a hole in the dirt, filled with shit and piss, and gagged. The hot, burning sun was not helping today. With the stench burning my lungs, I rushed away from the hole. The outside would do.

“Oh, please not it,” I begged out with my closed eyes, pleading the gods and spirits above to have mercy on me. But deep inside I already knew the answer. My underwear was soaked with blood as I pulled the leather pants down.

“Oh, fuck fuck fuck, utter holy fuck,” I muttered under my breath, with my butt exposed to the world as the realization of what was happening to me came.

It’d been years since I had my period, and even before I was just a child, never steady, never full. But now… I should’ve known. I should’ve guessed. Now that my body was well nourished, the dreadful reminder of womanhood came back with it too.

I hissed. A cruel Fate. Laughing at me. Blood for blood was quite literal to her, it seemed.

Priya finally popped out of the cabin with a satisfactory look on her face. She was carrying a small, carved figurine in her hand. Pausing just a few steps out of the cabin, she bunched her eyebrows in amusement.

“Want to tell me why are you stripping down? Shining your sparkly white ass to the world?” Priya’s lips stretched in a large smile.

“My period came,” I said pulling my pants up.

“Oh fuck. I forgot you could have those.”

“What do you mean you forgot about those? Don’t you have them too?”

“Oh, hell no, Freckles. No offense but fuck no. I cut my birthing machine out a long time ago.”

“Wait what?” I asked, surprised.

“Oh yeah, the moment I found a doctor competent enough to do it. I had them cut it out completely. No mess and pain, just pleasure for my lady parts.” She rubbed the lower bottom of her stomach, smirking .

“But why?” I asked, rubbing my forehead. This day was getting too long.

“Meh, something about blood coming from down there just brought too many unwanted memories. Plus, look at you…it’s such a hassle and inconvenience to deal with it every. Single. Month.”

I agreed with her there. My stomach twisted in pain. I grunted in frustration. At that moment, cutting out my treacherous uterus seemed like a reasonable idea.

Priya was still amused. She chuckled.

“Don’t look so heartbroken, Freckles. Being a woman sucks at times, but would you rather have a dick? Like, heaven’s no. Disgusting,” she said, laughing. I chuckled back. “We will get you supplies before we leave.”

The cold wetness of bloodied underwear against my smooth skin sent an ick down my spine. I was ambushed. Thoroughly ambushed by Fate.

Priya, unlike me, was in a fantastic mood.

“Aww, it’s okay, Freckles. Look at the bright side. At least now we know for sure you are not a boy.” I scowled at her.

We started walking back. Priya played with the small carving of a bear.

“Did you find what you were hoping for?” I asked her.

“Yes, and I got you something too.”

She pulled another carving like hers, but of a bird. Though small, the carving felt heavy in my hand.

“You can fly now on your own, Freckles. You are free .” She smirked.

But I didn’t feel free. In fact, I didn’t know what to feel at all.

All my feelings were still quieted down deep inside of me. Like they were too lost, sunk deep in the ocean. Always so loud, they were now muted, hiding in the darkness, scared to come out.

But the truth was, I didn’t need to feel in order to function.