A/N: Apologies for this short chapter. I'll try harder to make it better next time. I'm a real let-down, aren't I? Sorry. :(
In the distant countryside of Italy.
Leave me alone.Leave me alone.Leave me alone.Leave me alone.Leave...the phrase was repeated over and over throughout an infinite amount of times. Vincent shut his eyes and tried to remember the prayer that Katrinka had thought him.
Katrinka...He pleaded ruthlessly with his mind to forget it. To not think about it. To not think that the love of his life, his shining princess...was dead. Worse than dead.
She'd been torn apart, dismembered. He'd watched. He'd seen the joyous life within her drain out and into that creature's mouth, as it devoured her blood whole. He heard the last mournful, unbearable scream wrenched from her as her breath died.
The creature flung her around as though, she were less than human, something expendable. The most horrible sense of it was that he'd been incapable, powerless. He had promised to protect her with all his being, the core of his soul. To take death for her, if so beckoned.
He was a murderous liar of broken vows. He'd seen it all. And at the last moment, those jade eyes had caught his fleeting, scrambling ones in a cold, death gaze. They spoke the truth: Coward...you left me to this fate. You broke your promise... His pulsing blood had turned frozen as icy rivers.
How could he think of mercy for himself when Katrinka had been spared none? This beast, this...he couldn't find a word which would do this creature justice to what it was.
Justice...justice. There would be no justice for Katrinka. None at all until he suffered the same fate...a thousand-hundred times over. It turned it's sickeningly gleeful expression on it's face towards him. Katrinka...or what was left of her...dropped to the wet grass and in the glint of the moonlight, she looked macabre.
It crouched and sprung, a terrifyingly spine-chilling howl snapped out of it and paralyzed Vincent. It's white razors sharpened by the recent tearing of human flesh and bone flew at his neck. There was a distinct sound. The sound of a head being decapitated. And the night said no more.
Aboard a ship docked into port in France.
I awoke the next morning to bursts of sunlight and the sounds of seagulls overhead. Seagulls...we were here! The ship had docked at the port; I looked out of my circle-shaped window and saw the daily hustle and bustle toil all around: sailors loading and unloading cargo, passengers disembarking from the ship, carriages moving in lines to fetch their ward.
Just watching it all nearly made me forget what had happened last night. The dream I'd dreamed of since forever had become a reality. Unfortunately, in reality nothing was perfect.
I was still engaged to a man I'd never met; I couldn't pull myself away from the responsibility on me. Dropping everything, everyone, all I knew and had been given, for love. I may have been in love but that was such a high price to pay. I didn't know if I could pay the price on having a dream exchanged for reality.
As I dressed absently, my mind wandered over what I should do. Say the truth and risk losing it all? Lie to save it all, but possibly lose it anyway? Or tell the truth and hope for the best? It was all so uncertain; I felt positively mad when I didn't know the guarantee of anything.
The porters for my cabin filed in and promptly carried my trunk and luggage out without a single word nor glance, save for a slight acknowledgment. Their lives were so simple, so planned, so routine.
They didn't have to risk their whole family's reputation, their lives on a daily basis. Not like her. But that's what made the aristocracy separate from the commoners. Well, maybe being a commoner was better.
The ability to lead a happy life without a single disturbance; no one to force you into doing things you wouldn't ever do if you weren't forced to. No need to be fake or poised or demure or all that nonsense about being the perfect lady.
The porters shifted the things I'd brought easily and were gone momentarily. I took one last look around the cabin, taking in the worn wooden floor, the arch of the cabin's roof, the metal of the walls and the steel bolts holding the bed to the floor. Goodbye, life as I know it.