This is my fault; I told Thaddeus not to kill her even though he wanted to. That was a mistake; I killed the only sister I ever had because I didn’t want to live with the guilt of taking April away from her. But instead, April took her husband and Lana’s life before taking her own.
I killed her; I set off the chain of events that led to her death. If only I would have listened to them. If only I never went to that house. If only I told Thaddeus to kill her, Lana would still be here.
My breath comes faster in short puffs when the realization dawns on me. I killed her; the closest person to family I ever had, is dead. The person I was willing to kill for died because I wanted to believe April still had good left in her, that her understanding was only tainted, and she wasn’t to blame for her actions.
Thaddeus is right, April deserved death. But Lana didn’t deserve this. This was never meant to affect her; I thought I was protecting her by letting April live because I was afraid she would end up in the system no child wants to be a part of. My idiocy killed her. My failure to see what she was capable of killed Lana. The little girl I fought to protect for an entire year, is now dead. Everything I did is for nothing, but more importantly, my mistake killed her.
Orion
The moment Lana’s picture comes up on the screen, she buckles, her legs go out from underneath her, her nails dig into her palms so hard she is drawing blood. She looks hollow as she stares at the screen, eyes wide and a dead look on her face as the color drains from it.
The emotions coming from the bond tell us how destroyed she is inside, yet she doesn’t say a word and is completely mute, trapped in her thoughts and guilt. She thinks this is her fault. Evelyn shuts down, completely shuts down. She is right in front of me, but with the look on her face, she might as well be a million miles away.
Thaddeus is a raging storm inside, the darkness creeps in. Ryland is the first to move. He hesitantly walks over to her frozen form, crumpled on the floor. We can all hear the erratic beating of her heart as it thumps against her chest, the shallowness of her breathing, like she can’t catch her breath. Her bottom lip trembles as she bites down on it hard enough to draw blood. Evelyn is breaking, and none of us know what to do other than stare at her.
Ryland reaches his hand out to brush her hair from her face, but she moves away and stands up. The remote slips from her hand and breaks apart on the floor, the batteries falling out as she turns almost robotically. She is there right in front of us, but nobody is home. Evelyn moves more on instinct, like a zombie as she walks up the stairs on autopilot. She doesn’t want anyone near her; doesn’t want us to touch her, like she knows she will break if we do.
“I need to go; I can’t be here,” Thaddeus says, as the storm within him rages to magnitude levels. He looks to the stairs, wanting to go to her, but won’t risk exploding near her.
He feels her guilt hitting him, along with his own. He never intended for April to kill Lana, along with Derrick. He wanted her to suffer, but he never imagined that Lana would also pay the price for what he implanted in her head. Not in a million years.
“Go,” I tell him, and within a blink, he is gone. He is a ticking time bomb on the brink of exploding.
Ryland looks to the stairs, Evelyn’s despair hitting us like a tidal wave as it crashes into us. I race upstairs only to see that she has locked the door. I twist the door handle until it snaps, falling apart in my hand, and we find Evelyn on the floor, broken.
She is screaming inside; you can see it on her face as she breaks. Tears roll down her face, her face turning red and blotchy as she wails, her hands rip out her hair as she loses it. She has completely lost the plot.
Ryland grabs her hands, stopping her from pulling chunks of hair out, her nails dig into her delicate skin, leaving scratch marks as she claws at herself, like she thinks she can claw away the pain she is feeling inside.
“Orion, do something!” Ryland yells to me as she loses control.
Ryland pulls her onto his lap, restraining her hands which are now digging into his leg above the knee. He rocks her, trying to soothe her while she weeps. Kneeling beside her, I grip her face, forcing her to look at me. Her eyes are red and puffy, dead, as she stares back at me. She is completely distraught. I let the fog slip over her, her breathing evens out, her tears slow, yet she still tries to fight against it as her body slowly relaxes and her hands unclench. Ryland’s leg is bleeding with the little half-moon shapes of her nails.
“Sleep, Evelyn,” I tell her, as Ryland brushes back the hair sticking to her face from her tears. She shakes her head, trying to fight off the compulsion. “Sleep, Evelyn,” I repeat, and she goes out like a light.
Her eyes shut as I force her to sleep, her body goes limp in Ryland’s arms, and her head rolls back against his arm. He stands, clutching her to his chest and lays on the bed with her. I sit beside him, trying to think, but come up blank. Death is something we are used to; eventually, when you live as long as we do, you lose everyone you have ever known, which is the downside to the curse of immortality.
Everyone you have ever known will eventually die around you, but Evelyn has never experienced that; she never had a family, never stayed any place long enough to grow close to someone, so this is new to her; this is devastating. The closest thing she ever had to family is now gone. Even Derrick couldn’t break her after what he did. Thaddeus couldn’t break her. Lana’s death, however, did. This broke her. I’ve never seen her look so frail. This is going to haunt her even more than that vile man.