Chapter 16
Remember to take a look at my new partner work GODDESS, too.

Everything that I am is build on a foundation of lies and deception.

Every smile, a trick. Every word, a carefully strung web of deceit.

There is no such feeling as failure. Failure ricochets around in the emptiness of your hollowed heart and when it bursts free, you break.

Standing at the grave of Irene Aculiac, I feel like a hollowed out, broken hearted failure. How could I not?

The girl who shared my face, who had sung like an angel and who had always been there.

Irene had always been a rock for everyone around her and in my mind, she had become invincible.

For how could anyone do perfect die? It was unfathomable, but then she did die. Then she died and then I had to ask myself why?

Why did I, the cruel, broken, shadow of a girl get to live when my sister was kind hearted, beautiful, angel of salvation?

It simply wasn't fair. Why must I be forced to live while my sister, the good sister, was forced to drown in her own blood?

On my knees, the ground having scraped them raw, the rain pouring down in heavy falls, I pray. Pray for her, the little girl who turned into a woman. The girl that I watched grow, that I grew with, the girl that had patiently taught me how to sing soprano, the girl who I had given piano lessons to.

I pray on every star, every flame, every traitorous God in existence. I pray as tears fall down my face, the droplets wetting my cheeks, those tears reminding me that I am nothing but a failure.

I failed Irene and Bex, Scarlet and Lyra Wright.

I press my hand to the dirt, my hair falling over my shoulder. I turn to the puddle that's formed and I stare at my reflection.

I don't look evil or infallible and I hate it. I can't even get cruel right, which makes me less than nothing.

I curl my fingers up and I continue to stare at my pale, porcelain, fragile looking features. I look so girlish, so young. I scream, ripping dirt up from the ground as the ground shifts uneasily underneath me, a bolt of light streaking down and burning a tree right next me to nothing but a small stump and ash.

A fire dances in the distance, the flames writhing and swirling, a reflection of them in my eyes.

As soon as rain and earthquakes, and lightning came, they were all gone, a dark tinned figure stepping out for between two other trees.

I shift up, immediately snapping my fingers up. And just like that I look like same old, same old, Evelyn Aculiac.

"You're mother showed me this spot. I think she was besotted with once upon a time, but I guess I made it a little to clear that I wasn't interested in any sort of relationship, much less with a queen. I suppose in some twisted way, I'm responsible fir Aries."

"I've heard that story a thousand times from a thousand different meaningless faces." I trace my fingers over Irenes engraving in the stone.

"I guess I kicked it for you. Hear that, I died for you, by the flame, I died for you."

She had always joked that she was going to die at the top of her game as a top class hero. She had said that when she kicked it she wanted me to be constantly reminded that she died for me.

Trust me, it was funny, somehow, at the time. Now it just makes me want to weep, then die.

"That's Irene's grave, right?"

"Yes." My words are simple and flat.

"And the one beside hers?"

"Myra Ashton."

"It really is a death sentence to love an Aculiac."

"Yeah."

We lapse into a moment of silence and it swallows me whole. Myra Ashton had been the band of my existence, with the acception of Aries Aculiac, of course.

The whore had come into my families home and taken advantage of my sister, but Irene had loved the selfish bitch. I couldn't deny her burial wishes.

"I will confess that I need to grab you for a minute. Miriam is at it again."

I smile slightly at that, my lips curving up into something absolutely wicked and a little bitter, "Miri is a deluded Temes girl with dreams too big. What did she do?"

Aaliyah rolls her eyes, she forehead wrinkling in disgust, her caramel skin bunching up, "had a crying fit about Evander, the proceeded to fall to her knees in a fit of rage, lashing out, getting a few servants in the crossfire of her fit."

"Great."

I start to walk out of the small grove of trees, but Aaliyah grabs my arm, her hand reaching out to touch the skin right below my eye, "have you been crying?"

"Is your sister dead?"

"Fair."

"Bloods about to stain these lands, Aculiac. I need you to clean up your act and get it together. Since when does your type cry?" Aaliyah says with snark, completely insensitive as always. Is her sister dead? No. Is her wife dead? No. Good for her, but she doesn't get it. You can't just turn everything off.

I lean into her ear, whispering as I yank my arm out of her fairly tight grip, "you get yourself together. Have you even fought in a real war?"

"Not between Varkeshians."

I turn my face into a mask of cruelty as I smooth out my evening gown, "then it's you who needs to be prepared. You have weaknesses, morals, flaws that are easy to exploit."

"And you don't?" She challenges with a fierce look overtaking her.

"What more could they possibly do to me. Is a dead daughter, rape, a wrecked family, a life in tatters not enough."

She laughs lightly, her face easing, "you're one of those then. Broken so badly that you just don't care anymore."

"Now you're getting it."

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