Chapter 8

Don't own 13 Ghosts

He slowly backed away from the bed. "I've brought you some food. When you are finished eating we need to talk." He watched her face closely noticing every nook and cranny. She had an unbelievably smooth face. Her eyes the brightest of colors and her rosy mouth had a natural pout to it. But besides that…beyond the physical, he could tell what was really going on inside her head, more than that, her heart.

She was angry and she was scared. She was very scared. But nothing showed on her face. She tried to be as brave as she could in the face of the person who could solely be her death. He admired her for that. He wasn't the one who thought she should die. But if she betrayed him like his father had and he was still alive at the end of it she would never live again. Not even in another life.

Wishing she could see into his heart as well as he could hers, he leaned out the only window in her room and took a deep breath of the now clean air from the swift rain that had come through no even an hour ago. He sighed and looked back at the woman, so small, lying so still again the bed. "Are you not going to eat?" He asked her softly.

She laughed, albeit a little cynically. "Is there any reason I should? The only two people I have to live for are you and my daughter and you have shunned me and taken my daughter from me. You, sire, wish me to be dead. I am just speeding along the process." She bowed her head mockingly. Then she leaned back on the bed again, already once more tired. She smiled when she thought of her beautiful young daughter and the light in her eyes so much like her mothers.

He sighed a little deeper and turned back to the window. "I wish you to leave." He said it softly but clearly, with a hint of steel behind his words.

"What? Why, sire?" She cried out. That was worse than anything. Then she could no longer even pretend anything was okay. She would be very far away from her daughter and her husband and she did not know this time. She would be on her own in a way that she never had been before. It was betrayal and it cut to the quick.

"I want you to leave and to never come back. I don't want your treachery any where near me or our daughter. You can take your black tricks somewhere else." At this point he began to be angry. "I'll have your hand maid select some things for you to take with you. You will leave in two days time. Be glad I am merciful enough not to kill you where you stand for lying to me." Royce then turned and walked out the door leaving her to ponder what he had said and her options.

Many hours later, Heaven had thought through everything and decided that she had only one choice left. Death! There was no other for her. She had everything taken from her in a short amount of time and apparently there was no way to hope for the future. Death was the only way that she could fix anyone's problems and make the people she cared about happy.

She locked the door and walked to the bed and grabbed a beautiful pink blanket she had created after the birth, hoping her daughter might some day be swathed in it. Then she walked to the window and looked down at the cobblestones below. As she stepped on to the window sill there was a knock at the door. She caught her breath and turned but then she stilled herself and turned back to the view of her death and placed her other foot also on the sill.