Page 7 of Caroline the Cruel
She looked up and met the horrified gaze of her original captor.
It couldn’t be. The man before her struggled to escape the force pinning him to the spot. She glanced down at the body in front of her, then back up at the man. And grinned.
Experimentally, she imagined him raising the weapon just a little. His jerky hand elevated. Caroline surveyed the cuts and scrapes across her tattered body, and reached a hand up, touching the torn skin at her neck. Her hand came away red.
The sour smell of piss brought her attention back to the first assassin. A dark stain covered the front of his pants, and he was visibly seething between bouts of shaking.
“If it makes you feel any better, I don’t think either of us expected today to end this way.” Caroline huffed a laugh, which grew in strength as she pushed herself up the wall and onto unsteady feet.
This time, when she imagined what she did with the knife, she did not close her eyes.
The assassin let out a forced breath as he pressed the blade deep into his belly. Caroline stepped out of the way, around the dead body to allow the man to climb up on the window ledge. He stole one last glance at her, fear blazing in his blue eyes, before he threw himself over.
Caroline reached a shaky hand down and picked up Servius’s dagger, forcing her damaged palm around it. She clenched it to her breast as she made her way down the winding steps.
If this power had passed to her instead of Emmy, what did it mean? Was her sister still alive? Were there other assassins?
An emptiness, like hunger but far more corroding, pulsed at the space above her navel. Only a few steps taken, and she was out of breath. After she’d tripped for a third time, Caroline decided it would be safest to sit on the steps for a moment to make sense of what had happened and wait for her energy to renew. Just for a moment, she told herself.
Chapter 3
Carolinewincedassheblinked her eyes open. Blinding white light shone down upon her, and she raised her hand to shield her eyes while they adjusted.
“The new heir,” an ethereal voice whispered.
“Indeed,” another answered.
Caroline dusted herself off as she scrambled to her feet, assessing her gore covered body. Her silver dress was soiled with dirt, blood, and little tears from the rose thorns. And she was still oozing in places, which opened as she moved.
Wrinkling her brow, she touched the wound at her neck, then glanced up to the five figures sitting on simple stone benches in a semicircle around her. Could there have been something on Servius’s metal teeth, a poison? Was that why she’d gotten so tired after she’d killed them both?
Her eyes peeled back as realization struck and she stumbled a few steps away from them. She surveyed the Gods, for that was surely who was before her. “Am I dead?”
They were eerily similar in appearance and appeared neither male nor female. All clad in white draping robes, pale ivory hair pulled back from their alabaster faces. Gaunt cheeks, pale pink lips, and small straight noses. The strangest thing was their eyes. Five pairs of the palest platinum pupiless eyes stared back at her, the irises so faint they almost blended in with the whites. Long ivory eyelashes surrounded them and fluttered as they blinked.
The only apparent difference between them was the amulet that hung on the silver chain around each of their necks, though she wasn’t near enough to get a glimpse of the symbols on each. She had learned enough about the Gods to understand that they must represent the five orders: Life, Death, Justice, Pain, and Love.
One by one, they cocked their heads to the side, then glanced between themselves as if they did not understand her.
“Am I dead?” she repeated, a little more firmly.
The first one huffed a laugh under its breath. Another mimicked the sound, then a cacophony of flittering laughter filled the nearly vacant, colorless space.
Caroline narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms across her chest, not understanding what was so funny with her assumption. She was in an empty white space, like the center of a cloud—if a stone platform sat in the center of one, surrounded by deities. That seemed to her like what one might expect in the afterlife.
Was this the time for her judgement? As the thought occurred to her, she uncrossed her arms, and clasped them innocently in front of her stomach instead. If she was to be judged, there was no sense in angering the Gods.
Their laughter had her thoughts in motion, and she winced as they took flight. Images of Cook retching and the two murders she’d just committed flickered in her mind. Well, they weren’t really murders and, they had killed her family as well, so surely the Gods wouldn’t condemn her for that.
What happens next?Her hand slipped out of the other because of the sweat now coating her palms. Caroline raised a reluctant hand, intending to get the attention of the Gods. The whimsical sounds emanating from the beings stopped abruptly before she could pose her question again.
One cleared its throat. The God in the middle who she assumed was Death. “No, daughter, you live still.”
“Then, where am I?” she asked, shifting between feet, allowing herself to survey the space. Her eyes strained to find the edges of the endless platform.
“Did your father teach you nothing of the Gift?” The God’s eyes seemed to glow from within when it saidthe Gift.
“No,” Caroline breathed. “I shouldn’t have received it. My birth was not legitimate. It should have gone to my sister, Princess Emmaline.” She didn’t know why she was telling them this. Surely, they knew—they were Gods.
