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“You’re useless to me, Rhia.” He dragged me out of the house by my wrist to a man waiting outside of our small cottage. “Apparently this man wants you, and that’s more than I can say. You will listen to what he tells you to do.”
He—he didn’t want me anymore?
Tears started to fill my eyes as I asked, “When will you come back for me?” He looked at me as if I wasn’t his child, but rather something else.
I was confused when he responded, “I needed the money, Rhia.”
The man outside snatched me from my father and placed me in the carriage. I watched my house grow smaller and smaller through the window of the carriage.
He never came back for me.
“Please.” I was struggling to hold back the tears. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you don’t know me.”
“Probably because I don’t!” Miles yelled.
I took a few steps closer to him, trying to close the distance that kept growing between us. “I’m the same person as I was yesterday. This doesn’t have to change anything between us.”
“You’re shitting yourself if you think this doesn’t change anything.” He stroked his hands through his hair and said softly, “I thought I was your best friend.”
“You are,” I choked.
He shook his head, his eyes aimed at the sky above. “Clearly, I’m not. Was our whole friendship built on a lie?”
I stepped closer, reaching out a hand to provide comfort in an attempt to calm him. “Everything was real, Miles, I promise! You’re my best friend and I love you so much, I just had to follow the king’s orders—”
He jerked his arm back from my touch. “Well, clearly you chose not to follow them with Amica.”
A bit of anger started to swirl with the guilt now. Miles refused to listen to any of my explanations. I knew what I did was wrong, but that didn’t mean I did it without reason. “You don’t know what I’ve been through, I need her to—”
“Whatever.” Miles’ tongue was like venom. “Not only are you a fake, but you’re a liar, too.” He shook his head and looked up to the stars, as if he couldn’t even bear the sight of me. “You’re a fraud. At least now I know who you really are.” The words stabbed me in the heart and Miles twisted the knife. Fake. It was true. I was a fraud. Even though I didn’t know who I really was, what I really wanted. His words just confirmed what I was afraid of all along.
Tears slid down both sides of my cheeks as I watched the rope of our friendship snap between us. We stood in silence by the lake, the place where we made so many memories. The place where we laughed and forgot about the worries of the world. We stood there on the dock for what felt like an eternity, but I couldn’t say anything. The words wouldn’t form, and my throat was closed shut. What was I supposed to say when he was right? I deserved this.
Before I could muster up the strength to say I was sorry, he turned on his heels and walked away from me. I was left alone again, and the feelings of my childhood rushed back through me.
Useless.
Unworthy.
Nothing.
Fraud.
I sank to the ground, feeling my knees hit the wooden dock hard as I sobbed.
Everything that had built up in me that I repressed for so long came out and I just couldn’t stop it. I cried for the five-year-old girl whose own father didn’t want her, for the seven-year-old who was whipped until her skin shed, for the eight-year-old who fell into flames that left a permanent reminder on her back of the abuse she endured, for the twelve-year-old who lost the only mother she knew, for the sixteen-year-old who made her first kill and hated it, for the seventeen-year-old who had what she wanted to save for one person stolen from her, for the eighteen-year-old who became numb to the assassinations, as if each kill hid what was festering underneath her, and finally for the twenty-year-old who surely just lost her best friend, and for his brother, who made me bring all of these emotions to the surface.
I sat there and cried until my soul was dry. Until every tear that needed to be shed over the past twenty years had dried on my cheeks.
I rolled onto my back, looking up at the stars I once wished upon to find a best friend. As I lay there, I wished again to get mine back.
The sound of footsteps caught my attention and I sat up, hoping that Miles had come back to give me a second chance. When I looked over my shoulder, I found the last person I needed to see me like this.
His smile quickly faded as I gave him a look as sharp as knives. One filled with so much pure hatred I hoped he could feel it twist in his stomach.
