Edwina Sheffield knew her grandparents were awful people and she did hear the awful thing that they just said but she couldn't believe that the woman who she considered as her sister, who was always so good and kind to her is capable of killing these people so ruthlessly.
She didn't show them any mercy when she delivered the final blow and even now her eyes held no remorse as she cleaned her sword and instructed in an emotionless voice. "Someone should clean this mess."
Edwina watches horrified as her butler snapped his fingers and a few men came inside and started unchaining the dead bodies from the chairs.
"What should we do with them?" One of the men asked.
"Throw their bodies in the forest." She said while placing her sword on the table. "Let those hungry animals feast on their worthless bodies."
Edwina gasp horrified at this height of cruelty and the sad part is not one person in this room found this horrifying except for her and Frederick who looked quite disturbed as his eyes kept falling on his injured uncle and then those bodies.
She turned to stare at her mother but she had the same satisfied look on her face as her sister and she could not believe she shared blood with these heartless woman.
"You are not going to give them proper burial?!" Edwina finally dared to question her sister, something no one is able to do.
Kathani didn't even register her sister anger as she replied. "Burials are for humans, these monsters on the other hand did not deserve one."
"And who gave you the right to decide who deserves what! Is killing them was not enough!? Are you truly going to condemn their souls by not allowing them proper burial!"
"Edwina!" Mary tried to warn her younger daughter because it was clear she is still not understanding this situation one bit as she angrily stepped forward and raised her voice against her sister. "I understand they were bad people who did bad things to you and our families but you should remember that they let you live wherever they kept you when they easily could kill you whenever they wanted!"
It was in that moment a eerier storm ranged in Kathani's eyes as she asked in a hard voice. "What are you trying to say sister?"
"Edwina, please stop talking." Anthony pleaded as he clearly detected the upcoming storm in his wife but apparently her sister was unable to see that as she stepped closer. "You are so gone in your hatred that you couldn't see the monster you had become! You couldn't show them a little bit of mercy they had bestowed upon you for keeping you alive all these years ?!"
In that moment everyone saw something broken inside Kathani as her face contorted in rage, her body shaking in anger as she began to scream in anguish. "Mercy! Mercy! You think these! These monsters bestowed Mercy on me by keeping me alive in that hell!?"
Edwina and the others flinched but while they looked weary, Edwina was not going to cower as she said in a defiant tone. "They showed you more Mercy than what you showed them!"
"That's enough Edwina!" Mary suddenly intervened as she glared at her daughter. "You need to go from here if is this is how you are going to repay your sister for saving your ungrateful life from these monsters!"
"Will you stop calling my grandparents monsters! What is wrong with you people! How can you still bad mouth the dead!? How am I wrong when she is the one blinded by her revenge to leave her humanity behind!" She angrily pointed at Kathani who finally snapped as she screamed. "Shut your bloody mouth!"
She was heaving as she glared at her sister, no at this moment she was granddaughter of those monsters. "You want to know what kind of Mercy they bestowed on me in that hell?! You want to see the living prove of their mercy I have been carrying with me all this time!?"
At once Penelope, Sophie and Genevieve gasp while Jacopo, Brimsily, Philip and Michael shake their heads as they knew a second before what is going to happen and then to their and everyone horror Kathani grabbed the collar of her shirt as she heaved angrily. "You want to see their Mercy! Let me show you what their Mercy looked like!"
In front of everyone eyes Kathani used every bit of her strength and ripped her shirt straight of her body.
Seeing things getting out of control once again, Genevieve quickly led Bridgerton ladies, Portia Featherington, lady Sarah and youngest brother Gregory in closest room Meanwhile Kathani then took her dagger from her pocket and sliced her corset off in the middle.
Edwina couldn't believe her eyes and Anthony couldn't bare what his wife was going to do as he reached out to her. "Kathani please stop!"
But it was too late as she took her corset off and the upper half was bare in front of every eyes. "Here's what Mercy looks like."
She then turned around and everyone in the room gasped in terror as they watched the most horrifying and gruesome sight in front of them.
Edwina felt she was going to get sick, her eyes widened in terror as she stumbled back covering her mouth as tears started to fall from her eyes.
Mary couldn't bare this sight but she couldn't look away from the proof of these horrors her daughter ensured all this time.
Frederick and George were dumbstruck by what they witnessed while King swayed in shock as his wife and Lady Danbury supported him while their tears fall for this poor girl.
Brimsily and Timothy burst into tears feeling sad for this child who is like their daughter.
Benedict, Colin, Simon, Will and Thomas turned away hoping beyond anything to forget what they just saw as they trembled in anger, wanting to raise these monsters from dead so that Kathani could kill them again.
Anthony could feel his heart burning with hatred, a scream rising in his throat as he finally saw his wife's entire back scarred with whiplash, cut open with a knife to mark her years in imprisonment and burned at various places.
The most horrifying part in all this was not whip lashes, burned or knife wounds but what was branded on his wife's skin with hot poker all over her scars in both French and English.
Putain de désespoir ! Whore of Désespoir!
"Mercy! Mercy! Mercy!" Kathani's voice shook in anger as she turned around to face everyone.
She pointed at her back as she cried out! "Look what they did to me! Fifteen years! Fifteen years of Mercy these people bestowed upon me by violating me! By scarring me! By turning me into whore of Désespoir!"
Edwina burst into tears as she tried to reach her sister. "I am so sorry Didi!"
"No!" Kathani angrily pointed her finger, stopping Edwina as she tried to come closer. "Do not dare to pity me after pitying these monsters!"
She reached out and grabbed Edwina's arms as she shook her in her anger. "Do you want to know what else they did to me aside from torturing my body?!"
Her sister fearfully shook her head but Kathani was past caring. She removed her potato peel and showed everyone scars of her belly.
"Do you know how a woman came to be with a child?!" She asked, her voice growing higher with each word.
Edwina, who only got a brief explanation from her grandmother last night, was unable to move a muscle as her sister continued. "I was not even a woman! I was just a child when the warden and his men molested me!"
Anthony quiver as he closes his eyes but he could imagine young Kathani going through that horror. "Then one year later I started bleeding and unlike you I did not know what was happening to me! I prayed I got sick so I could finally die but the warden was quite happy with this new outcome."
Kathani's eyes turned into horror just like they did when she was hallucinating.
Anthony tried to touch his wife but she squirmed away as she screamed. "Then he came! His fucking stepfather!" Kathani yells while pointing at Frederick who flinched away in terror.
King George felt revulsion as he heard what his villainous brother did to this child. "He brought those fucking flowers! He told me that Uncle Edmund and Anthony sent him to get me! He told me he was my friend and that if I listened to him then he would take me back to my family!"
Kathani moved back as she stumbled on her knees as she cried harder. "He told me to take my rags off and when I refused he!"
Mary burst into tears as she fell on her knees to embrace her daughter who latched onto her mother's arms as she poured her heart out. "I never knew until much later what he did to me Mama! That day he brutally took my innocence on that prison floor! He violated me again and again and then threw me in front of the warden and said enjoy this whore! I was eleven and he turned me into a whore!"
"No Kathani! No!" Mary cried as she held her daughter closer to her heart. "You are not a whore! You are pure and innocent!"
"No mama! No!" Kathani sobbed harder than ever as she let her mother touch her belly scar. "Warden said whore is a woman who laid with so many men that she couldn't tell whose seed taken root in her body and I didn't know who was the father of my first baby! I didn't even know I was with a child until the pain started and the warden and his men brought that woman to deliver my baby!"
Edwina felt beyond horrified as she imagined her young sister's swollen body and she was not aware what was happening to her until it was too late.
Kathani suddenly looked up and her eyes became vacant as she asked her. "Do you want to know what happened to my first baby?"
Edwina shakes her head because she cannot hear her sister's trauma anymore but it seems like a dam of pain is burst open inside her sister and now they are all going to be flooded by her pain.
(Flashback )
Kathani couldn't believe when that woman told her she was about to give birth.
How is it possible when she was just a young girl of eleven almost twelve years? The pain was excruciating and what was worse she feared Warden and his men were going to hurt her more for having a baby.
The woman continued telling her to push and all she did was cry for her mama, her Appa, her Anthony.
Finally after life time of pain she finally heard a shrill cry of a baby. She couldn't help but smile tearfully because the baby, her baby cries reminds her of Dina and Eloise when they were born.
She tiredly raised her head to see her baby but all she saw was a tuft of black hair in warden arm as he walked away near the door.
Once that woman finished taking something out of her and then cleaning her.
One of the men gave that woman a pouch full of gold coins as he took her away. Kathani tiredly tried to sit up as she implored for Mercy. "Please let me see my baby? Is it a boy or a girl?"
The warden didn't say anything as he stood in the corner but then to her horror his men put her back in chains they used whenever they come to hurt her.
She tried to fight the man off her but he slapped her hard as she then began pleading to the warden. "Please let me see my baby! Please let me hold my baby once! My baby is innocent! You can send him to my family. I am sure uncle Edmund and Anthony will take care of my baby. Please just let me hold my child once!"
The warden and his men start laughing and Kathani felt a terror rising inside her chest as warden stared at her crying child whose face she still cannot see in this dark cell. "We don't care about your bastard and I am sure your uncle and Anthony will also never except a bastard in their home."
"No! Please do not hurt my baby! Please let me hold my child! Please let me see my child!" Kathani begged and cried and after a few minutes they opened her cell door and she feared that they were going to take her child away from her.
In desperation she begged once again. "Mercy! Please in God's name show me some Mercy!"
The warden was the only one left as he gave her a sinister look. "Do not worry my whore. Showing you Mercy is what makes me rich."
She never realized what he meant until she saw him putting her baby on the prison floor way out of her reach where she was chained up to the wall.
He then turned her baby body over and with one last cruel smile he left locking her and her baby behind.
Her baby was right there on the floor of this dark prison, wailing and moving and no matter how much she tried she couldn't move away from her wall to reach her child.
In her struggle she noticed wetness around her chest and a memory came into her mind when she saw Mary feeding Edwina off her chest.
It was then the most painful truth dawned on her. Warden left her baby in the corner and chained her up so she could see her dying with starvation. "Baby!" Kathani screamed even harder as she tried to break her chain while her baby kept wailing in that dark corner.
"No! No! Please God help me! My baby will die! Please someone help me!" But no matter how much she screamed or tried to break her chains Kathani knew in her heart that she could never reach to her baby.
And as tears leaked from her eyes and milk leaked from her breast Kathani heard her hungry baby wails echoing in that dark prison walls that will haunt her forever."
( End of Flashback)
"My baby was born in dark night but he was stubborn like me, you know he cried in hunger and cold for entire night and then at sunrise his cries slows down. I cannot see my baby face but I knew this in my heart that my child lived long enough to saw that first and last sunshine from window before taking the last breath."
Kathani breath hitches, her eyes far away trapped in that prison that Anthony was unable to rescue her.
Like auntie Mary, he wanted to comfort his wife but her pain had frozen his feet. He was unable to move, unable to stare away from his wife crying form as she kept telling her tragic tale. "I kept watching my baby's dead body for the entire day, until two of the warden's men came, one used sweep to push my baby corpse inside the sack and took it away. As soon he left another man unchained me and I was too shocked to do anything."
Mary cried for that faceless grandchild, Edwina felt her heart-breaking for that innocent life.
Anthony, on the other hand, knows his wife's tragic tale still didn't end as she continued. "I tried to kill myself for the first time that night." Kathani confessed and Anthony felt dread rising inside his heart when he heard his wife had suicidal thoughts, not that he blamed her for wishing death.
"That night Francesco saved my life, he was trying to dug his way out but destiny brought him to me. He was the one who told me what had happened to me, he became my father, my teacher, my healer but most importantly he became my comfort as they continued torturing me."
Kathani then finally stared at Anthony as she said. "My second child was born on the morning of my Appa's birthday and once again warden did the same thing with my baby but this time they manipulated me for having hope."
(Flashback)
Kathani was crying praying that Francesco, whom she now calls Priest, would hear her cries and come soon so that he could save her baby like they planned.
She heard a voice and knew that the priest was crawling faster in the tunnel to reach her. The stone pushed and the moment Priest fingers came into view they heard the door opening again.
"Hide!" Kathani whispered in panic and the stone was closed and she knew the priest was crawling back towards his cell and a few seconds later the door opened again to reveal the warden's men.
Kathani couldn't understand as one man picked up her baby gently in his arms while another man reached her and start unchaining her as he began to say. "We cannot do this anymore. Warden cruelty has no bounds and we decided to rescue you and your baby from this prison."
Kathani couldn't believe her ears but before she could understand anything both men were leading her out of her prison.
She looked around and for one second she thought about telling these people about the Priest but before she could make any decision and ask them to rescue him too, they were walking outside and for the first time in almost five years she was seeing the open sky again.
She then tried to see her baby's face in another's man's arms. "Please, let me hold my baby."
"Only if you catch him first!"
Kathani gasped and turned around and saw warden sitting on the rock and then to her horror his men started laughing with him.
Fear started rising in her heart as Warden's mocking words reached her ears. "Go on whore! Go save your bastard and if you reach it then I swear I will let you both go."
The man holding her baby start running towards cliff and Kathani screamed as she finally figured out their sick game.
"No!"
With all her strength she pushed the man beside her and began to run but she only reached a few steps when a whip lash hit her back making her fall down.
"Splash!"
Kathani looked up and saw a man holding her baby standing alone on the edge.
She was then pulled by her hair as the Warden dragged her towards the edge and all she saw was the treacherous cold water of the sea where now her baby resides.
She once again tried to kill herself by jumping into the sea but Warden yanked her back as he promised in her ear. "I cannot wait to get another bastard inside you and this time I will throw it in the boiling water in front of your eyes and there will be nothing you can do."
( End of Flashback)
"Few years later I found out how much Warden meant those words."
(Flashback)
She was between fifteen and sixteen years of age when once again she started living that same nightmare once again.
The sun had just set as the warden and his men along with that same woman stepped inside her cell.
"Tell cook to prepare boiling water." Warden ordered as he stared evilly at her. "Today we will feast on her bastard stew."
At that moment she didn't question this monster's threat and even though she knew she could never protect her baby, she knew one thing that she wouldn't let them take this child's life."
(End of Flashback)
Kathani touched her belly scars as everyone heard her broken cries. "I killed my baby with my own hands! I snatched one of his men dagger and stabbed my belly repeatedly."
Bile rises as Edwina lurched near potted plant and empties her stomach but even then she could hear her sister's cries clearly.
"There was blood everywhere and I didn't even know if it was my blood or my baby's but that day for the first time I took a life and it was my child."
Kathani stared at everyone as she screamed. "They turned me into a monster like them! They turned me into ruthless murder as I took my child's life in my womb and when I took those bastards life I did it swiftly and that was the Mercy I showed them and these monsters otherwise they deserve to go through everything I have gone through in that Hell!"
After that Kathani burst into inconsolable sobs.
It was not only her but every eye in that room was filled with tears and their heart filled with hatred for Victor and his monstrous minions.
Finally Anthony couldn't take it anymore. Taking his coat off he walked towards his wife and covered her body with his coat.
Kathani finally lifted her face and found Anthony eyes matching her own pain as he gently picked her up and carried her away in security of his arms.
By the time Edwina got her breathing in control she saw her sister carried outside in her husband's arms.
She wanted to go after her sister but found her path blocked by her sister's butler who was pointing his sword against her throat. "I do not care who you are but listen to me carefully! You will never disrespect your sister again! Understand"
Edwina shivered in fear as Frederick tried to intervene angrily. "How dare you threatened my fiancé."
"Shut your mouth boy!" The king's voice snapped like a whiplash as he walked towards Edwina. "This man is right! Next time you even consider disrespecting your sister I will cut your tongue myself before I let this man cut your empty head!"
And as everyone seems to be in agreement with the King's order, Edwina finally understand one thing, that there will be no Mercy for those who hurt her sister.