My father struck Lydia over and over again, the sound of the cane colliding with her flesh echoing through the open chasm of the church. Her screams and whimpered pleas filled the space, following the arc of the wood each time it cut through the air. Surrounded by blood and death, by the waste of life the people surrounding me had been even before their deaths, all I could do was wait for it to end.
I’d wanted my revenge, but that didn’t mean I needed to reduce myself to their level. “Enough,” I said, the quiet whisper of the word sounding like a lash in itself. My father ignored it as he always had, continuing gleefully in the torment that so pleased him. But Calix stilled, his fingers tightening on my waist as he pulled me closer.
With the next crack of the cane against Lydia’s spine, Calix’s voice rang out through the space. “She said enough.”
My father turned, dropping the cane as he stumbled and clutched his side in pain. “You always were a little bitch for her,” he snarled, his lips peeling back from his teeth in something that looked more animal than man. I wanted nothing more than to watch Calix wipe the look off his face, to remind him that all semblance of control he’d thought he possessed had been erased in one day.
Within a few moments, Calix had stripped him of everything he valued, and soon enough, he’d take the very last thing that mattered to him.
His life.
Calix released me, unwinding his arms from where they’d fallen around me while I’d fought back the memories of those first times I’d felt the fire of Lydia’s cane. I immediately felt bereft, the absence of him like a cold splash of loneliness sinking into my heart.
His few steps toward my father were painfully languid as his long legs ate up the distance between them. He strolled straight past my father, ignoring him entirely in favor of Lydia. She stared at the wall, her face blank as tears streamed down her face. “You genuinely thought he cared for you?” Calix asked her, commanding her attention as she turned pale eyes up to my new husband. I swallowed with that realization, the term sounding far too foreign, considering I’d known I would have one soon enough.
I just hadn’t in my wildest dreams imagined a massacre like this at my wedding.
“You were nothing but a tool, just like the wife he murdered in cold blood. I hope you die knowing that you sacrificed your humanity for nothing.” He pulled his knife from his pocket, the blade already covered in the dark, inky stain of blood. He wiped it clean on the folds of her dress that hung around her, placing the edge to her throat as she swallowed against it. Her throat bobbed with the motion, a plea rising to her lips as Calix stared down at her thoughtfully. “There was a time when I thought I wouldn’t be able to kill a woman,” he said, shrugging his shoulders as he pressed the tip of the knife into her skin. Blood welled, dripping down as he grasped her by the hair and pulled her head back to get a better angle. “There really is a first time for everything.”
He dragged the knife across her throat, releasing her as soon as he was done. She collapsed to the floor, her mouth moving as she gasped for breath. My eyes tracked down to the wound at her throat and the way her flesh parted, revealing the dark mess of muscle and gore inside. She gurgled, the sound erupting from her mouth something that would haunt my worst nightmares. Her body twitched as she raised her hands to her throat, slowly covering the wound as if her body had already started to cease functioning. Her fingers pressed into the wound as her blood soaked them, pumping out of her body in violent waves.
Calix stepped over her body as she bled out, her eyes clouding as she fought for her final breaths. Making his way toward where my father waited under the supervision of the other man, Calix shoved the knife back into his pocket. Placing a hand on top of my father’s shoulder, Calix pushed him down to his knees. He knelt in the pool of blood, the black blending in with the pants of his tux as he turned a sneer up at Calix.
“Do you see her now?” Calix asked, his eyes falling on me. He shoved a hand into my father’s hair, grasping the graying strands in harsh fingers as he turned his face to look at me. It took me that moment to realize he spoke of seeing me, not his dead wife on the floor of the church. “Does she look like the broken doll you were so determined to turn her into?”
I lifted my chin, refusing to wipe away the stain of tears on my cheeks. My father spit at Calix, narrowly missing the lapels of his suit in a move that made Calix sneer in disgust.
“She’ll be the last of the Karras family after you’re gone,” Calix said, his lips curving into a cruel smirk.
“The Karras family dies with me and Malva. That traitor is no daughter of mine,” my father said, his face twisting as his glare finally met mine.
“Betraying you would imply that you were ever on my side in the first place. Call me opportunistic, but you are nothing to me. I cannot betray a man who has always been my enemy,” I said, fighting back the urge to flinch away from the venom in his glare.
“You saw her as weak all her life, faulty and broken, but she brought you to your knees,” Calix said, wrenching my father’s head back for good measure. “Thalia is the reason you will die alone, with only the bodies of your family to keep you company as you make your way to the afterlife. She was never weak. She terrified you, because you saw what she could become.”
Calix pulled the gun from his holster, cocking it for good measure. “Calix,” I said, unsure why I stepped forward. My father was far from my family, far from anything I cared enough to save.
“This is the part where Rafael can take you to the car, λουλούδι μου. Otherwise you’ll find out what your father’s brains look like splattered across the altar,” Calix said, pressing the barrel against my father’s forehead.
“Wait,” I said, uncertain why my voice seemed to have a mind of its own. I couldn’t process what I was doing, my body moving as if in a daze as I closed the remaining gap between us. I squatted down, wrapping a trembling hand around the cane that my father had used to beat Lydia. The same one that had tormented me for years, breaking my skin open at his order. The wood was slick with blood, forcing me to wrap a second hand around the base as I spun on my heel back to face my father.
Calix’s eyes tracked over me as I spread my legs to shoulder-width, raising the cane over my right shoulder like a baseball bat. The breath wheezed in my lungs, torn from the darkest part of me that wanted my father—no, Origen’s—blood as payment.
It might have been Lydia who’d wielded the cane in more recent years, but my father had been the one to scar me. My father had been the one to order my beatings when he couldn’t be bothered to give them himself.
As much as I hated Lydia, she’d been another victim of the life designed to make us obedient.
I swung the cane, the whistle of air making my father’s head jerk as Calix pulled the gun away in the same moment. The wood clapped against the back of my father’s neck, his entire body sprawling forward as the wood vibrated in my hands. They throbbed in tune with the vibrations, an ache spreading up my wrists and to my elbows as I raised it again.
Calix raised a brow at me as my father fell forward, landing face-first on the floor slickened by blood. He pushed up to his hands and knees in a daze, his body as I raised the cane over my head.
I brought it down over and over again with a shrill scream, all the force in my body going into the movements. The wood split as it crashed against his spine a final time, splintering down the center as he flopped onto his stomach and didn’t move.
I panted for breath as I stared down at his unmoving body, wondering if I’d killed him or only knocked him out. I didn’t know which I preferred, thinking I’d been the one to end him, or that I’d be able to move forward without that stain on my conscience.
My fingers shook as I gripped the cane tighter, the hand that came down on my shoulder startling me into motion. I spun, swinging what remained of the cane through the air. Calix caught it a breath from the side of his neck, gripping it tightly as he raised an eyebrow at me in question.
“Don’t touch me,” I hissed. My breath continued to come in wheezes, hard fought and hard won as I tried to pull the cane free from his grip.
He raised his other hand slowly, grasping my fingers and peeling them off the wooden shaft one by one. “Let it go, λουλούδι μου,” he murmured, his voice soft despite the fact that I’d nearly struck him with enough force to truly harm him.
I couldn’t decide if I would have regretted it.
When he’d finally pulled all my fingers off the cane, he took it from my hand, twisting it around so that the sharp, broken point pointed down. He never took his eyes off of mine as he drove it down into my father’s back, the thick squelching sound filling the room as he twisted it in the older man’s body.
The space where my father’s heart might have been, had he possessed one, was nothing but a gaping hole by the time Calix pulled the broken cane free and tossed it to the side.
“Time to go home, Little One,” he said.
