Red Princess

72. Keep your enemies closer

I didn't realise I could stoop this low. Alice would have detested me.

I noticed the crowd circle around Ariel, and their horror laid faces as they watched her back puzzled me. Her eyes widened for a split second, and her lips parted before a flash of relief flooded across her face. She smiled at me as the light left her eyes before losing her footing, and I knew something was wrong. I reached out to her instinctively to catch her as she fell, which was when I felt the warm liquid sully my hand.

Red.

Blood.

She was... shot?

I fell on my knees to the ground with Ariel in my arms, hugged tight to my chest as my brain tried to process everything that had happened in the last few seconds. The crowd around me faded. The voices sounded like echoes. My team shouted to me on the earpiece, but my mind blocked out their words.

She had the same eyes.

The same smile.

The same expression.

I forgot Ariel existed. I only saw Alice.

It was the same scene that my brain had replayed over and over again in my nightmares. I had watched it too many times that now when it happened, I couldn't discern reality from dreams. I blamed myself for her death, and I would always have a nightmare that she would get shot and die in my arms and never smile at me again.

Why her? Why always her?

Why does she have to be sacrificed in the middle of the mess every single fucking time?

The stone in my earring shattered as reason left me. My breathing escalated, and my heartbeat shot through the roof. I felt like my entire body was on fire as rage seethed within me, ready to explode.

I watched as the crowd grabbed their heads in agony and screamed. Everyone around me fell to the ground. Light bulbs and equipment started malfunctioning before everything shattered.

Kill.

Kill the man who shot her.

Die, everyone, die.

My arms tightened around her body because I couldn't let go of her and watch her dead eyes. I couldn't accept the reality. I couldn't acknowledge the pain. I couldn't become angry. If I did, it would break me all over again, and this time probably with no return. Therefore, I decided to close myself and let the darkness surround me. The hottest flames appear the coldest. The wrath that raged through my veins was burning me cold from the inside. I didn't scream. I didn't cry.

I felt... nothing.

Nothing except the desire to have everything disappear. I felt neither remorse nor happiness as the people around me writhed in pain. One of them was the person who shot her, and they deserved to die. Everyone deserved to die. If she couldn't live, I wouldn't allow anyone else to live either. I would order them to kill themselves.

My will to burn everything down overtook my senses as the radius of my powers increased, putting more people through the mental torture, with death being their only escape through it. I paid no heed to the nerve-wracking pain throbbing in the back of my head or the blood dripping down my eyes and nose. I wanted the world around to end, even if it killed me.

In the middle of my daze and bloodlust, when I thought all was lost and forgotten, I felt a gentle breeze wrap around me. It wasn't cold enough to suspend the fire in my heart, but it was soft enough to drive the darkness away.

It was sufficient to drive me back to my senses. I could see again, hear again, feel again, and that was when I felt the gentle squeeze she gave me with her arms that were draped around my torso. It was weak, but I couldn't miss it.