Forgotten

Chapter Twenty Five

“Alright… I don’t know where to start…” He laughed a desperate kind of chuckle, his eyes averted to the ground.

I leaned against my tree, bracing myself for what was to come. How bad could it be? “What about the beginning?”

“I think that would take a bit too long, but thanks for the suggestion… Okay, let me think for a minute.” I nodded and kept quiet.

All kinds of emotions flashed across his face as he stared into the distance. After about five minutes, he finally spoke. “When I was about fifteen, I had an older sister, Beth. She was twenty and dating the duke of Ridgewood, a noble that everyone seemed to look up to.”

He paused, lost in thought once again. This time he recovered faster. “They were engaged by my sixteenth birthday and looked happy as can be. Everyone thought they were meant to be together, that they were the perfect couple. But, later, when I was hanging out with Beth, I saw this huge cut on her arm that she’d been trying to conceal. I had to threaten to tell our parents before she told me where it was from. She tried to lie, but we’d always been close and I saw right through it. I made her tell me.

“It was her fiancé they had done it. He hit her- a lot… When I found out I was furious, I wanted to smash his face in, but Beth stopped me. She said he loved her and it wouldn’t happen again. I wasn’t easily persuaded, but I tried to believe her. I could see how much she loved him.

“One day I decided to surprise her with a visit. No one answered the door though and I started to get worried, because I knew they were there. I barged in. When I found them, I didn’t know what to do. He was… hurting her.” Disgust and pain were obvious on Zane’s face, but I appreciated that he left out the gory details.

“I lost control and the last thing I remember was conjuring fire. Later I woke up in a hospital and was told I’d burned down their house. I tried to explain that I was only defending my sister, but no one believed me. Beth refused to tell them the truth; she wouldn’t even talk to me.

“Most murder suspects go to jail, but I was royalty. I got off the hook. That didn’t stop everyone from regarding me with disgust. And the worst part… Beth killed herself with a note saying all she wanted was a happy life with her fiancé. She blamed me for taking that dream away from her.”

I felt like I’d been punched in the gut; this was much worse than I’d expected. “But you saved her!”

“She didn’t see it that way. She deluded herself into thinking he cared about her... When she died, my parents couldn’t face me for months. They sent me to live with my aunt in the country for a year, thinking that time would help.”

I cut in again, my voice hesitant. I didn’t want to overstep my boundaries or make him feel uncomfortable after he shared all this with me. “Did it help?”

“A little; they started talking to me again, but everyone else still hated me. I was infamous, I mean, how often does a prince kill his soon-to-be brother-in-law? And then people started blaming me for Beth. Even I blamed myself for a while, until I lived with my aunt. I think that was the best thing that ever happened to me. She was the only one who believed me; she had known how cruel the duke could be.”

I sat in shocked silence, trying to think of something- anything- to say. Zane looked over at me and I could’ve sworn his eyes were damp. “So, what do you think? Are you going to treat me like Blake does now? I guess I deserve it for killing him, but I’m not going to say I regret it.”

“No, I understand why you did it. And it’s not like you intended to,” I replied, trying to make sense of my jumbled thoughts.

Zane looked shocked. “But I murdered him!”