He also shook his head, using his free hand to still hers. “That doesn’t mean you had to suffer alone. Your problems were never too much for me, and they still aren’t.”
If only Edgar knew how close he had been to seeing Felicia again, if he hadn’t ran from his home in the city in fear and disgust after brutally slaying his servants. It would have broken him completely. To know fate had yet another means of being so cruel to them.
He held onto her as if she were a life line. And perhaps she was. Finally, an anchor in a world that left him feeling as though he were floating in darkness.
“Together. Like we always said,” he chokes out between silent sobs. “I’ve missed you Felicia. I’ve missed you so much.”
He pulls away from the embrace, brows furrowed at his dear friend admitting to not being truthful. A lump formed in his throat at her confession, mind reeling. “Did….did they deserve it?”
It wasn’t his place to judge. Edgar had killed a great many himself, albeit unintentionally. Hell, he even purposefully targeted criminals as a blood source, if only to lighten the burden it placed on his heart in harming others.
x
*~*
Fee reached up to wipe at his tears again, sighing gently. “Did they deserve it,” she echoed, softly. All terseness and prickles dropped from her tone and she lowered her head. It was not often that Felicia told the truth of what had happened, if she told the story at all. Her hands began to shake and she closed her eyes to steady herself in order to tell a story from long before they had met.
“I was eleven years old.” Suddenly, there was a hint of a German accent as she spoke, an undercurrent. “I was eleven years old when I was named the heir of Der Bertrachter Des Verfalls.” She paused, and then turned so that her bare back was facing Edgar - showing off the burn scar that began at the nape of her neck and ran down her back, down to the backs of her ankles. She took a shaking breath to steel herself for what came next.
“It was in the nights following the fire. The mansion, the only home I’d ever known had caught fire. I’ve long known who had started it and long forgiven him for it, though I’m not sure he has it in him to ever forgive himself now. My blood, my brother. He stole the library and the books The Beholders had built their cult upon and then set the house on fire to burn away any remnant of sacrament that could be left. I don’t think he knew I was home.”
Suddenly, she was wiping tears from her own eyes and she shook her head. “I was still being treated for the burns - lucky to have lived, but still, they named me Heir. But it was during the fire that I realized the cult itself had no care for me outside of what I could do for it. But I was far to frail to run myself and scared they would come for me if I tried. So I waited. I played their games and waited until I was certain.”
She turned to face Edgar again, finally meeting his gaze. “At fifteen, I left - escaped into a carriage for a traveling circus during the night, and stayed with them until they had reached a port and slipped onto a ship bound for England as soon as I could. There, I found a vampire by the name of Caleb who taught me how to fight, to use knives and weapons. Taught me to coat my blades in poisons. And at the first breath I heard of any sects of Beholders, I would cut off the heads of the adult leadership, the adults that groomed children into monsters, willing to use them as sacrificial lambs. We were worthless if not talented or skilled in witchcraft and worse off if we were ever turned. Never again. Not one more child.”
She sighed. “Typically it was me hunting them - but sometimes they would appear in London and I wouldn’t have to go hunting across Europe. By the time you and I met, I was older and experienced and still trying to find a path that was mine. In some ways, I think I’m still looking for that.”