She was still screaming when her eyes opened again. Choking on the spittle gathering within her mouth and hacking at her stupidity. It wasn't pain she was grasping and gasping on, but rather the soreness of her soul and frustration of her bones. She knew her eyes were open, yet she saw nothing for a few moments. Aleah knew her ears could hear somehow, but she heard nothing. The view around her was blissfully devoid of light or color, and the space she was in was tranquil and quiet to her ears. For a moment, she wondered if the afterlife would always be so peaceful.
Yet despite the peace, she knew she was screaming, and for whatever reason, she would not, could not stop herself. Perhaps it was the bone-numbing pain she felt within her heart and soul or the overwhelming reality that her head was still attached to her body, and there was, in fact, breath in her lungs. Something within her told her that it was wrong. That she shouldn't be able to do so. In fact, she was sure she had stopped breathing before after all her head had been whacked from her neck. So how was she sitting here in this peaceful place, still able to be screaming in the first place?
Sadly, Aleah did not have time to ponder this or even fully appreciate the first moments of true stillness she had been able to find in so very long. Before she could evaluate anything, doors were slamming, candles being lit. Others' voices filled the night, panicked shouts ringing off the painted walls and running strides slamming the marble floors. Aleah's peaceful darkness was shattered apart by a booming noise within seconds. Faces she recognized but had never thought to see again entered her vision as the light filled the room, and she felt herself stop screaming at once.
"Little Brother?" She whispered to herself.
If this was the afterlife, this brother of hers would not have been the first face she would have expected to see. He was by far the one who had both reason and the level of understanding to blame her the most for what happened. Never in all her dreams after the horror of his death did she dream of him running towards her. In fact, she had supposed that after everything that had happened, Bennett would have run so far by now that she would never see him again. So then why was he here in front of her, his eyes wildly glancing around the room and his hands shaking slightly from the grip he was holding on the small dagger.
She recognized that dagger and something within her heart broke. The last time she saw that dagger, it was thrust between his own ribs. Her feet hit the ground so quickly she didn't even realize when she had sat up or how or even what she was sitting on. Rather, she stumbled, feeling almost as if she was drunk towards her eldest younger brother. Towards the one, she thought hated her perhaps the most for her foolish mistakes. Standing before him, she reached out hesitantly towards him, her fingertips aching to trace the lines on his face, but she stopped herself. That would not be right. She did not deserve that kind of reciliation. Not her, the one complicit in his death. Instead, her fingers darted out, grasping the dagger in his hand. Tracing the lines of metal that she knew all too well. She had held it in her hands so tightly after his death that Brandon had thought she was planning on using it on herself and confiscated it from her. That was the last time she had raged against her captors.
Subconsciously, Aleah was aware of so many other individuals flooding into the room and the words that were obviously passing lips, but they didn't sink in. She couldn't hear a thing. Only the pained cries ringing in her ears of little brother's last breaths. She could only see the dagger in her hands and blood spurting from his lips as he tried so desperately to keep breathing. She would never forget the look of her in the mirror after. She had been covered in his blood, and she had taken baths upon baths filled with scrubbing to wash it off, and she still would see red on her hands every time she looked. It was also the last time she allowed herself to look in the mirror.
A sob escaped her, and she fell to the floor, the dagger now held in her hands, clattering onto the marble floor with her. Her head started to pound, and she wondered if you could die in the afterlife. She could feel her pained sobs wracking her body as she stared at the floor.
What was this? This afterlife? Was it to torment her? To show her all she lost and how she paid for her pathetic attempts to desperately keep the love of a man who had, in fact, never loved her at all? It is no less than what she deserved, but why? Was it because she had embraced death?
Truthfully, dying hadn't been what Aleah had been expecting. Obviously, she had known the moment that she tried to rebel that if she was caught, she would lose her life. If they found out that she was even attempting to go against them, then she would have outlived her usefulness. Still, death itself hadn't been painful, horrifying, or even mournful. Instead, her death had felt bitter and indignant. She had felt no fear and no pain. In fact, death itself seemed like it was taunting her. Aleah may have been nearly unable to feel pain for years now, but that didn't mean her heart didn't ache. That she didn't have emotions. Perhaps this torment, these faces filled with love and concern, were her penance for trusting those she shouldn't have so quickly?
She clutched at the dagger in her hand, which had been the start of her understanding of what was happening, what she had done, her foolishness, and the realization that she could not stop it. The dagger in her hand now that had felled her soul. Would it be right for it to take her life in this place of an afterlife?
Truthfully, Aleah had been ready to die. For a long time, she had begged for death, only surviving out of spite and fear for what would happen to her dear baby brother if she was gone. Yet when her death had come, she had been alone, her only relative left having passed before her, and so Aleah had felt nothing at all. Nothing until her eyes opened once again just moments before, and faces she had almost forgotten flooded into her vision. Each of them was so young, younger than when they died, and so bright as if untouched by what had happened to them as they aged.
Her family's deaths had each taken a burden on her heart, but it was her sibling's deaths that had unraveled her. Cayden's death may have been the most painful, as he was her closest brother. Camden's death may have been the most unnerving because it made hardly any sense at all. Duncan's death may have hit her the hardest, may have left her alone and at her most vulnerable with nothing to contain her despair and fury any longer. Yet, it was Bannon's death that had devastated her. It was his death that had destroyed her entire being and soul. No, not his death, his murder. Her dear brothers and her dear family members had been murdered. Her whole family was slaughtered out of some sick bid for power and feelings of betrayal. As if they, them, he was the one that had any right to feel even a sliver of betrayal when it was her family who had been torn from her and her love that was utilized. Still, it was every last one of her family murdered because of her stupidity, and yet these same but younger hands of those she had failed reached for her, and she flailed, whimpers escaping her lips.
"Stop!" She screamed.
"Don't touch me!" She hadn't even allowed little Duncan to truly touch her in over a year. Not since she figured out what had happened. Not since the owner of this dagger in her hand had died. Not since she had realized how much she didn't deserve love.
"Please. Please." She sobbed out, looking up and into Bannon's dark chocolate eyes.
"I'm sorry. It's all my fault. My fault. It's all my fault. Please." She begged, her panic reaching frantic heights and confusion filling her mind as he looked perhaps even more confused, grasping onto her shaking hands.
"Lea…." He seemed to breathe out and was unable to say anything more. Something hit her head, and she heard nothing else.