warning: scenes of violence

• [ t h e   q u e e n ' s   r e v e n g e ] •

♥ louisa ♥

"OH, SCREW YOURSELF, Logan."

I immediately regretted going so close to him when I felt a hard blow to my cheek. My head snapped to the side, a sharp sting pulsating on my cheek. I didn't know if it was the adrenaline or the fact that I was completely and utterly done but I felt nothing. Deliriously, I jeered at him with laughter.

"Of course, that's your response. I should have seen that coming," My two palms connected as I slowly applauded him, turning a blind eye to the biting twinge on the side of my face. When I stopped, not a sound passed through the heavy air between us. "But what you haven't got through your thick skull is the fact your words mean nothing to me anymore."

"We'll see about that. My fists seem to think differently, Louisa," He shoved me to the floor, body shaking as he completely lost control.

My body physically hurts but it was if my brain had turned off all the sensors it had for pain.

"I hate you. Goddamnit. Everyone does. Who would give a damn about somebody like you? People don't even know what you've done and dislike you. Imagine what they'll say when they do find out."

Not a word he was saying mattered anymore. It just didn't.

Finding his attempts so pointless, I collapsed into a burst of crazy laughter again which irritated him more. "Stop fucking laughing! This isn't funny. Unless it's a stupid attempt of yours to prevent yourself from bawling your eyes out because then it's hilarious."

When he hit me again, another howl of chuckles escaped me. I crumpled to the floor. "You're parents wishing they aborted you is only the start! You've got nothing, you bitch."

All his words could only affect me if I cared. I no longer did.

A loud shriek left me when I felt a hand grab a fistful of my hand and yanked me up from the floor using it. Logan snarled at me as my eyes full of loathing battled with his. "Your damn loverboy seems to have boosted your ego too much. Maybe it's time to pay him a visit in the hospital. This time he won't step foot out."

My fists clenched as the low drumming of pain from my body began to strengthen. "The only reason why you dislike him is that you're bloody insecure of your masculinity."

"I am not insecure!" He bellowed, smacking me with the back of his hand. Due to the intensity of the gesture, I felt the rings on his finger imprint on my face.

Hissing out, I snapped my head towards him, my coffee eyes burning him. "Hit me if you want but that won't change anything. The truth is that you leech off me and would be forgettable without me!"

An image of an unconscious Gabe lying in the hospital room on the hinge of life and death appeared in my mind; blood oozing through the white bandages that covered his stitches and numerous machines hooked onto him. I climbed off the ground.

I had to do this. If not for myself, then for him.

"Don't make me angrier, Louisa or you'll regret it. You know I hate being treated disrespectfully."

"Your threats don't scare me anymore," I sneered, forcefully pushing him backwards. My hair, that had crumbs of dirt from being thrown about - slipped through his fingers as his grasp slackened. A glimpse of surprise passed on his face but was immediately overcome with anger. "I pity you for the creature you are, Logan. I pity you."

"Pity? You don't pity me. I pity you!" he shouted in frustration, whilst his fist came plummeting towards my face teeth. I caught a mere glance of his teeth harshly grinding together before I was thrown against the bannister separating the sidewalk from the water. Everything went blurry for a minute as tears swam in my eyes.

I laughed as I stood back up, ignoring the pain on my face when the skin had already begun to swell. When my hand left my cheek, it was covered in a sticky maroon liquid.

Thank God you now love red.

"Someone with no real goal in life apart from tormenting other people in hope that it will get you somewhere and give you something aside from a twisted little kick," I thundered the unbearable truth at him. "Envying other people's cheer but too afraid to step back and evaluate your excuse of a life-"

The sentence leaving my mouth stopped midway when Logan yelled at me, "Close your mouth! You don't know what you're talking about. Ugly bitch, go an-"

"The truth is that you have no life, Logan. Nothing," I continued watching as he struggled to process the fact he'd known but suppressed. Logan let out a roar of fury, kicking the railing centimetres away from my head. A punch in the face broke off part of my tooth meanwhile a knee in the stomach made me let out a pained grunt and slide down the metal barrier that I was leaning.

The cool material against my arm felt comforting against my hot skin.

My head rested against the barrier as I smiled at him, red liquid that tasted metallic dripping down my bloody white front teeth. "No soul, no passion and worst of all," I shook my head at him as our eyes connected. "No purpose."

"Shut up!" An animalistic sound left him as he grabbed my head and smashed it against the hard material to emphasise his every word, "Shut up! Shut the hell up right now, Louisa! Imbecile. Bloody waste of space!"

My head fell limply against my neck once he'd finally dropped it, weak from exhaustion.

For a couple of moments everything went black until slowly, my vision returned. It seemed like even fate thought it was time for this. He ran a hand through his mousy brown hair as I caught my breath, suddenly aware of the blood and tears on my cheeks. The sound of him sending vile curses at me encapsulated my ears as I grit my teeth and leant against the railing.

"I'm not done, Logan." His head snapped towards me when he realised I wasn't knocked out yet.

"Deep down you know that you're a mere corpse of a person so you cling to the one thing that defines you," I tore into him. "Your reputation. You allow the hollowness in your chest to be filled up with the admiration of others who are outside the window and don't know the real you."

The quiver in my body got even worse. "Fuck. Stop right no-"

"The King of Forteaux Academy. Forbe's most eligible eighteen-year-old. The gorgeous heir to the Thornton Business," I mocked with my hands lifted. "I used to be the same until somebody made me realise that all these things mean nothing."

Laughter was the sole thing in the world that mattered and within the expanse of a few months, I'd laughed more with Gabriel than I had in the entire year. That had to count for something.

"If you don't stop rig-"

"They're temporary and fill you up with false self-beliefs, making you so mentally unstable that you seek happiness in other people's pain since you cannot find your own."

Logan murderously examined me before picking up the alcohol bottle and continuing to violently swear and stumble towards me. His foot connected with bones when he began aggressively kicking me, foot after foot, numerous loud cracks filling my ears.

I was a piled mess of blood, vengeance and wilted roses. Sweat dripped down my back, my mascara was smudged and my hair hung in knots. I looked like I'd just faced an apocalypse.

Letting out a shudder, something within me gave me a push to continue. "I hope you enjoyed seeing me squirm at every hidden dig you made at me and had fun knowing that you pulled the strings of my every limb because it's not going to happen again," I hoarsely said, choking up a sprinkle of ichor.

He had savoured his power for far too long. I wasn't going to stop until he had seen the queen's revenge and combusted under the weight of his sin.

My dress was drenched with specks of red as I lifted my head and shouted at him, "And that's why I pity you, Logan Thornton. That's why I fucking pity you!"

As soon as I finished speaking, the sound of shattering glass echoed around the bare streets. It took me a couple of moments to piece together that it came from a bottle being powerfully smashed on my head.

The sensation and sting of alcohol running into cuts formed by the glass piercing my skin was torture. My worst cry of agony left me as I convulsed on the grey ground that I'd fallen back onto at the impact.

"Why don't you pity that, you bimbo?" Logan spat as I squeezed my eyes shut, finally crying in pain when he dropped the neck of the bottle on me too. It felt as if the green fragments had sliced open my skull with the ease of a feather floating in the air.

The silence that followed got more worrying when I heard his panicked footsteps as if he'd just noticed something. From in between my watery lashed, I saw him lift my phone with dread clawing at his face. "Oh shit."

In my head, the thumping got worse as I kept slipping between staying awake and unconsciousness.

Come on, Louisa. You need to see his ruination.

"Wait. W-What is this, Louisa?" he asked, eyes wide as he deciphered what it was. Part of me wished I was strong enough to see how many people had tuned in and what their comments had been. I wouldn't have been surprised to hear if it were the entirety of Forteaux.

Cursing loudly, Logan ended the stream and desperately lobbed the phone onto the floor, smashing it.

It was too late.

Our conversation was already out there for the world to see and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

"Fuck! This can't be happening!" His hands shook as he crouched down to hurriedly picked up the piece of the phone before dropping it in the river. "No, no, no, no, no. God, please no."

As if suddenly processing that I was the cause of this, he snarled at me before showering me with reasons why I was manipulative and didn't deserve to be breathing. I was too satisfied with listening to his reaction as the only thing he cared about being snatched away from him.

His status.

"No!" He screamed in frustration, stamping his foot on the floor and rubbing his forehead. To another individual, it must have been quite terrifying to watch but to me, it was the closest I'd ever been to heaven.

Payment for over twelve months of abuse was being transacted and I drunk in ever seconds as much as I could in my given state.

Logan fell to his knees as his hands weaved into his light brown hair in torment. His face had turned pale with anxiety and stress and for once in my life, Thornton looked close to defeat. I could tell he was searching for a way out of this situation.

There weren't any.

What was seen, was seen and what was done, was done.

My eyes fluttered shut as the physical suffering I was feeling seemed to get worse. I felt like I was going to throw up. Blood from my head and elsewhere was splattered all around me as I lay collapsed by the barrier.

It looked like a crime scene of gore, hate and brutality.

"No, I'm going to be ruined," he cried out with distant eyes. The next stage was fear. I saw it ensnare him as the shake in his hands got even worse. "I can't let all these years of work go to waste. You've worked so hard for this, Logan! P-People will lose all respect for you. The tabloids will tear you apart. What if you get a record? Logan, come on. Fuck, think!" His hands pulled at his locks of hair as he sat hunched up on the floor, trembling like a mad man.

Never in my life did I think I was going to see him fall apart like this.

It was as if he was being torn apart from the inside as he head lung low, crown knocked off. My eyebrows crinkled. I registered that his reputation meant more to him that I'd ever even imagined. In the past, I'd always been aware of the impact it had on him for I often felt the same way. But this was extreme.

Logan was obsessed.

This was what he was living for.

He quite literally had nothing apart from it.

A surprising fright overcame me when I watched Logan shiver like he was being tortured by an invisible force.

He needs mental help. He really does.

"Think Logan, there must be a damn solution! There's got to be. Please," Logan throatily hyperventilated. "I- I gotta get out of here."

With the snap of a finger, he stood up and dusted himself off the ground. The gaze of his murky eyes turned to me, crumpled up on the floor. Anger, loathing and horror at what he was capable of doing contorted his face.

"You're gonna pay for this someday Louisa Darling. Maybe not now, but I'll make sure of it if it's the last thing I do." Shooting me a final glare with more poison than that present in the entire world, Logan turned his back on me and began running off into the night.

I tried. I genuinely did try to keep my eyes, just in case somebody passed by but the adrenaline rush was fading and being replaced by oceans and oceans of pain. It came in continuous, crashing, relentless waves.

There was no point screaming out for help since I knew everyone was busy inside their home, enjoying the final hours of Christmas Day.

I wasn't sure if I would make it.

My head was spinning from being bashed against the wall and smashed against glass whilst the sickly feeling of red trickling down my forehead wasn't comforting either. Another drop of blood traced the sharp of my cheekbone before sliding over the bump of my lip - some running into my mouth - and ending its journey by falling onto my white dress.

It was no longer white.

It had transformed into a dark splatter as if I were a maniac who thought it fun to colour with blood instead of paint.

With one final glance at the bloodbath around me, my eyes fluttered shut as I welcomed the comforting darkness. It embraced me with open arms. I'd done it. The fact that I'd achieved what I wanted to achieve gave me a warm wholeness, a fullness that made drifting away into nothingness comforting. Drifting about forever in an endless tunnel of black seemed tempting.

There was nothing more for me to do here.

I was done.

Time really was a man-made construct, I thought as I floated away. Hours felt like long days but days felt like mere seconds. Judging how long I'd clawed onto awareness and lied here was a lost mission.

Just when I was about to completely engulf myself in the wedlock of death, I felt two warm hands grasp my ice-cold ones tightly. It was as if I'd been illuminated with the glorious rays of sunlight, golden beams bestowing upon me and awakening me from within.

"Come on, Darling! Please keep breathing."

My eyes felt too heavy to open but that didn't stop a hushed whispering from floating into my ear. I felt my head being gently pulled into someone's lap and shaky hands cupping my face.

"You gotta stay with me a little longer. J-Just hold on. God, you can't leave me, Lou. Please," A pair of full lips pressed against my forehead as tears of relief, pain and fatigue escaped me.

"Shh, don't cry. It's alright, Lou. I've got you."

ADBANBDJANDHA! IT'S THE CLIMAX WE'VE BEEN WAITING FOR! (Well, I've been anyway hahaha). This is officially my favourite chapter of The Price of Gold! What's yours?

Please tell me your thoughts on this chapter! I really can't wait to hear what you all thought so feel free to write me an essay, lol! Go, go, go.

I've got too much energy to say anymore so I'll leave the talking to you (:

Kiwi x

PS: If you've got time, read the poem attached

♥ 𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐯𝐨𝐭𝐞 𝐢𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐞𝐧𝐣𝐨𝐲𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫! ♥