“Then let me wife and son go. Ye can have me.”
“Nay,” his ma gasped.
“Shut up, ye whore!”
“Please,” Torcall had heard his Faither beg. “Let her go, please.”
“Throw yer sword to the ground,” the killer ordered.
Torcall watched his Faither throw away his sword to the ground and slide it away from himself.
“Now get on yer knees.”
Hs Faither, who had never succumbed to anything, had gotten down on his knees.
The next thing that happened hadn’t been anticipated. From a hidden pocket, they retrieved a dagger and with a move so swift that Torcall didn’t see, he launched the dagger straight for his Faither’s head. The dagger had dug into his eyes, coming out through the back of his head and killed him instantly.
Torcall had blanked out then while his mother screamed as hard as she could. The scream had been so piercing that Torcall had known even at that moment that he would never forget it. The killer had pushed her to the ground, and rather than try to fight or escape, she had crawled for her husband, wailing loud enough to block anyone’s ears. She managed to pull Torcall’s dead body into her arms and cradle it before the killer grabbed her by the neck and pulled her back to himself.
Torcall had seen his mum with a look in her eyes that he had never seen. She had grabbed the killer’s neck and pulled him to the ground with her. She had clawed at him even as he had rained blows on her. She had clung on tight, like a leach, while he brought his large fists down on her. Torcall heard each blow, but he had stayed and done nothing. He had been frozen, unable to move. When a drop of blood had flowed from his mother’s body and landed on his arm, the trance was broken. He crept behind the man and brought his knife down on him as hard as he could on his back but just as the last minutes, the man had turned around, and the knife had landed on his shoulders instead.
The man had roared in pain. He had clawed for Torcall, who stepped back and tripped. He hadn’t stepped back out of fright for what the man would do to him but out of fright for what his beautiful mother’s face had become. His mother, whose eyes were closed almost totally, had used what was left of her strength to clinch onto the man once more and yelled.
“Torcall, run!”
The killer continued to rain blows on his mother. “Why won’t ye die, bitch!” he reached for a knife. At that moment, Torcall ran as fast as he could to his uncle’s house, screaming at the top of his lungs.
Ceana stared at Torcall. Her eyes were filled with horror. How had a young boy experienced something so horrific?
“Me uncle had awoken as had half of the clan by the time I got to his gates. He picked up his sword and ran to our house alone while me aunt cradled me in her arms and rocked me while we both cried,” Torcall laughed. “By the time my uncle arrived, me ma was dead. He’d stabbed her too. There was a trail of blood leading to the exit, but after a while, it disappeared. She had obviously delivered an injury to her assailant. And the killer--”
“—Was ne’er found,” Ceana completed.
“They do nae ken the whole story or what I saw. This is the first day that I am narrating what occurred that day because I felt—”
“—ashamed that ye hadn’t been able to save yer parents.”
Torcall looked up at her. “Ye understand?”
“I understand that Torcall as a little boy is just as hard on himself as Torcall as a grown man. I understand that he somehow thinks that a ten-year-old boy was supposed to do more than what he had done. It would have taken a blow—just one blow to kill ye,” Ceana said to him.
“‘Twould have been better to have died than to have run away like a coward, which is what I did.”
“Nay, ye silly man.”Silly man that I love. “The killer’s aim wasnae achieved that night because ye fled. He wanted to end yer da’s bloodline, and he didnae get to do that. If he survived, the knowledge that ye live still will choke him e’ry night.”
“I wish,” Torcall said, “that he would come back to finish his task.”
Ceana gasped.
“Aye, I would kill him, and I would make it slow and painful. I would decimate every part of his body with my bare hands while there is life in him yet.”
Ceana was silent.
“For the longest time, that was me fantasy. When I got into any fights, I would slip into another zone. It would be me and the killer. I would—”
The large jingle of the bell brought them back to reality. Without a word, Ceana leaped off the bed, as did Torcall. She snatched the small bag off from the bed and reached for the door. Without a word said, they worked quickly to chain the door. Torcall helped her from behind bars, and then finally, she padlocked it.
Just before she raced out of the prisons, she and Torcall exchanged a glance. She would be back.
