A Broken Inheritance

Chapter 39: The Tale of Alice Todd

Then she met Alice's gaze.

Anastasia had endured the looks of victims before—the raw agony, the helpless terror, the vacant, broken emptiness that came after. She knew how to push it away, how to retreat into herself until it became nothing but another moment to survive.

But this? This quiet, knowing gaze?

It was unbearable.

Her grip on her wand tightened.

Somewhere to her left, she could feel Tom watching, waiting. He was patient—always patient—but his patience was a razor's edge, sharp and absolute. The others, draped in darkness, remained silent, their anticipation a heavy weight against her spine.

She could hear the clock ticking on the far wall.

She could hear Alice's breathing, shallow and strained.

She could hear her own pulse, thundering in her ears like the crashing of distant waves.

Alice blinked slowly, as if memorising her face.

Acknowledgement.

That was what she wanted.

Not mercy. Not salvation. Just the simple, undeniable truth that this was wrong.

Anastasia swallowed, the movement small, barely visible.

Alice looked at her with understanding.

And Anastasia froze.

A single second passed.

Then another.

Tom's expression darkened.

And in that moment, with the slow, inevitable finality of a clock striking midnight, he raised his wand instead.

There was no hesitation.

No warning.

"Avada Kedavra."

A flash of green light filled the room, brilliant and blinding.

The sound of Alice's body hitting the table was deafening in the silence that followed.

The breath finally escaped Anastasia's lungs, slow and shuddering.

Tom turned to her, and in the dim candlelight, his smirk was sharp as a blade.

"Sentimental indeed."

The scent of death lingered in the air.

It was different from blood—sharper, colder, something that clung to the back of her throat and settled in the hollows of her lungs. Anastasia did not move. She did not shift, did not blink, did not breathe—as if any movement, any sign of weakness, would break whatever fragile thread was keeping her upright.

Alice Todd's body lay still upon the table, her limbs unnaturally twisted, her once-steady hands curled mid-thought, mid-life, as though she had been reaching for something that would never come. Her lips were slightly parted, as if her last breath had been stolen too soon.

Anastasia could still see it—the flicker of light in Alice's eyes, the slow, shuddering collapse of her body as the green light swallowed her whole. The way her head struck the mahogany table with a sickening, final thud.

A dull ringing filled Anastasia's ears.

Tom had not hesitated.

And now Alice was gone.

The air in the study was thick, suffocating, charged with magic that crackled just beneath the surface. Anastasia remained still, her hands curled into fists at her sides, her heartbeat slow, measured. But inside—inside, something was fracturing.