Page 53 of A Broken Promise

“I didn’t feel anything.” The truth came rushing out faster than I could think of it.

“What do you mean?” Priya murmured, eating that apple so loudly.

“I just didn’t feel anything.” Idon’tfeel anything, would have been more correct.

“I heard what you said. I just don’t understand,” Priya annoyingly replied.

“I took a man’s life in cold blood, and I feltnothing. I should have felt bad, terrible, maybe even scared or at least overwhelmed, but I didn’t feel any of it. I felt nothing at all. Like an empty pickle jar.”

Priya just kept on chewing. Minutes after minutes of us just walking, that truth hanging up in the air. She finally paused.

“And this is a problem because…?”

“Something is wrong with me. I killed a man, Priya. I ended someone’s life for no other reason than you said so. A stranger to me that lived his life and I cut it short for no reason. I should feel something. Why am I not feeling anything?” That question nagged on me ever since I walked away from that cabin two days ago. My feelings were so quiet, as if veiled; still there, but now I only saw them through a fog.

Priya halted our walk; I stopped a few steps away from her.

“First of all, that man thatjustlived his life was a complete piece of trash, so believe me when I say the world is not going to miss him. Second, I have no clue why you are so screwed up like that?”

I slightly frowned. The familiar feeling of loneliness was waking up in me. Alone. I was in this alone, then.

“Oh, get over yourself.” Priya scowled at me. “You make such a big deal of it. So big whoop, turns out you are more of a sociopath than I am. Whooptee-doopty-fucking-doo. You learn new things about yourself every day, things that you like and things that you might not like. If you are going to let one little fucking detail derail you like that than what is the point of you trying something new?” Priya’s angry voice rumbled. She was clearly disappointed I didn’t share the same feeling she had during our kill, but she still added, “So, you’ve never killed a man, and now you have. And nothing has changed for you? Take a win when you can, damn it, Finn.”

“I guess you are right. It was just not what I expected. I was hoping to feel something grand. Something powerful. And all I have felt is just the calmness of a machine. Like a stupid steamboat.” I agreed with her, easing the tension between us.

Priya chucked the left-over apple core far into the field, her thick braid swaying with the motion.

“At least you are a steamboat and not a fucking dryer fan.” We both smiled at the idea of that. Priya threw another apple in my hands.

“Eat something first, miss bloody pants. Steamboats don’t run on empty fuel.” She winked and we continued walking.

28

Ithrew the pen and paper on the bed, rustling the sheets as I got out of the bed. Hours. At this point it had been days. I spent too many days working on it. The still empty paper glared back at me. Making fun of me.

The loud drops of rain knocked on my window relentlessly. Already in my comfy pajamas, I opened the window just enough to smell the rain mixed air, inhale the smell of wet stone, to feel a few droplets of the cold rain against my skin. It felt so refreshing.

It’d been more than a month now since my first kill, and just a couple of weeks since my second. The calmness and the numbness were now more like an emotional support pet. Most of the time, playful and laid back, but always there when it mattered the most.

I turned back, staring at my bed. The stupid paper looked so big. Gods, why didn’t I grab a smaller piece? I rubbed my small golden studs in the new ear piercings that I got. They were still slightly sore, but now felt a part of me just as much as my own freckles.

I was surprised when Priya brought me to the piercing parlor, just a week after we came back to Svitar. It was her version of making mefeelsomething after the kill, though quite manually. But I didn’t mind it. I never had my ears pierced. Always wanted it, yet Tulumasaid there was no point since we could never afford any jewelry anyway.

But unlike my elven maid, Priya declared that I would be getting piercings after every kill I do, so I “could feel the pain and remorse I was so desperate to find.” To my reply that eventually I’d run out of places to pierce, she laughed saying, “I didn’t know little Freckles over here had such a long murdering list.”

But truthfully, I had the skills and resources now, and there were enough bad people in the world, so I wasn’t planning on stopping now.

She gasped then. Loud enough that people turned and glared at us as Priya flipped them off.

“Write a hit list. I want you to go kill off your people. Maybe you are not feeling the satisfaction because you are killing for sport, but you need to do it for retribution first. Revenge is always the best feeling,” she said, licking off a drip of French pastry cream on her palm.

So here I was, making a list. Priya gave me today as a deadline, otherwise she promised to make me kill every single day until I gave her the names. And as much as I had come to accept the feeling of numbness within me, the clear calm taking over me each time I pulled the trigger or slid my knife across someone’s throat, I had no desire to go on a murdering rampage in the city I lived in.

I sat back down on the bed. Priya was many things, but she always did what she put her mind to. So, it had to be a name on this paper or a death of some innocent person tonight.

I tapped the pen against the paper anxiously. I didn’t know that many people, and the ones I knew were already dead. Having no friends had its perks. It meant I had no enemies either.

There was that one merchant who kicked Tuluma and I out of the village once. Maybe him? Or there were those girls that threw swine food at me once for speaking elvish, but that seemed so trivial and pitiful. I felt sorry for them, not angry so as to avenge it in death.

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