Page 113 of Depravity

“Sedate her.”

I don’t know who yells it. But the needle jabs me, it pierces my skin and despite the sharpness a calm seems to wash over me.

“I’m good now.” I whisper as my head drops. “I’m fixed.”

The acrid stench of smoke fills my throat, fills my lungs.

I walk through the ruins of what had been our home, and I see nothing but charred bodies and charred furniture.

They killed them. They killed my damned servants. My guards, and then they took my wife before they tried to burn the place to the ground.

I can’t help seeing the irony in the fact that I was there, at an Esau’s stronghold while they were here, in mine. Both of us landing blows. Both of us making moves.

Did they hide and wait for me to leave? Were they watching us the entire time?

I want my wife back. I want Brynn in my arms.

My hands clench into fists and I slam them into the crumbling remains of a wall. It shatters on impact, and I stare at the small piece of destruction I’ve made, feeling like it isn’t enough.

My wife is out there, with them. Are they hurting her? Are they touching her?

At least her brain is so muddled now she can’t give them any useful information, but that doesn’t ease my concern. She is mine. Mine.

And they took her from me.

My phone rings in my pocket. I pull it out, narrowing my eyes when I see who it is.

“What the fuck do you want?”

This is his fault. All of this. He picked a fight when we could have just carried on as we were.

But that there is what a loser would say, that there is what a defeatist would argue. And we are not that. We are Blakes. We were born to rule, destined for it. It is our God given right to be where we are, to strive for more.

“There’s been a development…”

Too damn right there has.

I’m barely listening to his words. I’m storming through the house, searching for what, I don’t know but when I come to a stop I’m in our room, our bedroom. Where I first brought her before she became too difficult to handle.

The fire hasn’t done as much damage here. The rug is ruined, the walls are covered in smoke damage, but the bed is barely affected.

I sink down, sitting on the very end of it, thinking about her, about us. About that bloody timeline that Magnus gave me. I guess that’s out the window now that my wife is gone. They can hardly call that in, when she’s MIA.

Magnus is still talking away. I grunt and make the appropriate noises, but I don’t give a fuck what he has to say.

As my eyes drop, I spot something sticking out from under the mattress. It’s small. A book, or a diary perhaps.

What the fuck?

I flick through the pages, seeing the scrawl, and come to a stop on what looks to be an entry with a date over twenty years ago. My eyes scan the page, then I flick to another, and another.

Is this for real? Where the fuck did Brynn get this from?

If you didn’t know any better you’d think this was real, you’d think that this was an account of what happened all those years ago, why she fled. It reads like a love story, exactly like those forbidden books Brynn used to sneak out of her grandfather’s library.

Two star-crossed lovers who weren’t allowed to be together.

But I know that’s bollocks. I know all of this is bullshit.

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