Page 30 of Divine Violence
“What is she talking about, Alex?” Kairos asked from somewhere behind me, but I had only one goal in my mind.
To reach her and shut her up.
“Alex!” Dominic shouted after me.
“Not now, Dom. Not now.”
“You see,” Echo continued. “The funny thing about grief is that it can hit you out of nowhere, and it hit his mother too. Killing her daughter left an impact, but you know how it goes in royal families—mental illness is not something they wish to discuss. So one beautiful, summer night, she decided that living in the world without her daughter was too much to bear. And poor little, Alex,” she mumbled.
“He found her there, on the perfect, porcelain floor in their bathroom, while crimson colored the tiles. He tried to stop it. Tried to gather her blood, thinking he could give it back to her. But her veins were wide open, her eyes lifeless, and the little boy wept for the mother he never truly knew. Because how could he? Love was not something easily shared in the royal families. Ever since then, he vowed he would find it one day.”
“I’m going to rip her limbs, one by one,” I bit out. “Cut her open.”
“Alex!”
“Don’t try to stop me, Kai. I thought she could be different. I thought that it was just a misunderstanding, but I can see her for what she is now. A wicked witch sent to destroy us all.”
I looked up toward the top of the maze, recognizing the flowers growing there.
“We’re close to the exit.”
“I saved the best for the last,” Echo piped in again, laughing at her own joke. “Dominic Talon.”
All three of us stopped.
We knew it was coming. It was obvious that she wanted to humiliate us all, but Dominic’s story was not something you could joke about. His was the story of betrayal, of the pain so severe that he never truly recovered.
“We all love our mothers. Right?” Echo asked the crowd, and they answered, “Yes!”
“And they love us as well. But Dominic’s, well…” she trailed off. “She loved him a little too much.”
I looked at Dominic, at his rigid shoulders and the slow rising of his chest. All three of us had our demons to battle, but Dominic’s lived inside of him, taking up permanent residence, and he didn’t know how to get rid of them.
He tried, but nothing ever worked, and she was going to tell them all what it was that Dominic hid.
“Once upon a time, there was a seemingly perfect family. Yes, you got it right. Their last name was Talon. They hung out with this other seemingly perfect family, their kids playing together, but both families hid terrible secrets. You see, the father of the Talon family fucked the mother of this other family, while Mommy Talon found her escape in the much smaller body—in her son.”
Gasps could be heard from around us, but none of it mattered.
Dominic was back in that time, back in her arms, and I knew that this would make a bigger impact than anything else did this entire night.
“He fought her at first, ran, tried asking his father for help, but his daddy told him that this was what boys were supposed to do. Even to this day, he can feel her hands on him, caressing him, wrapping around his dick, but he knows now she will never be able to touch him again.”
“Dom,” I approached him. “Dom, come back to us.”
“You see, she would never be able to touch him again because this little boy made sure of it. Dominic Talon killed his own mother, in the middle of the bed she always kept him in.”
Dominic’s lower lip trembled. His entire body shook. I wanted to kill her for what she did to us tonight.
Here, I thought we were saving her from her miserable life, but she was playing us. All this time, the entire night, from the very moment when I introduced myself to her, she was playing a game.
Her voice was grating on my ears, the innocence she portrayed earlier now just another stain she managed to make. I hated that I almost fell for her lies and the fact that she felt like ours. She felt like mine. But I couldn’t allow myself such thoughts.
She didn’t belong to us. She never would, never could. Not after this.
The only place she belonged now was hell, and I was ready to send her there myself.
“Welcome to Tartarus, my boys.” She cackled before the same music came back on.
