From Grief to Colour| ✓

XXIII- Endings Are Another Beginning

My hands drop their spells as my disbelief makes me step away from her, Trevor's footsteps echoing underneath the carpet below me, clutching my hand for support. I shake my head, "No, no it can't be. You're dead. You're dead."

    "But I'm not." Delaney replies like a ghost.

    Her very presence, here in this room flesh and all, shocks me but it's not the most surprising thing of all. Her eyes. They're purple. Not her matching cocoa eyes like mine. What's going on?

    My brows knit together as I continue shaking in my distrust. How can she be alive? I saw her die at the Everfield, shot....shot right through her armor, underneath her right shoulder blade.

    The CrystalCloud ball.

    "You were there." I whisper.

    Delaney nods. "Yes, yes I was." She says, like she had been reading my mind, her hands knitted into tight balls.

    "And you're poisoned. With the Otrava plant. 'Nature's liquid manic in leaves of the dead.'" I realised.

    "And I'm fine, as you can see."

   "But...h-how did you get poisoned?"

"A Northern stabbed me with me when I was on the field, shortly before I had collapsed."

"Before you had apparently came back to life." I spat. "All those months...all those words...it was you?"

"Yes," she says through gritted teeth, "but I have been assuming you would've figured out why I was able to know all those secrets."

    But I killed you. You evaporated into dust. And I saw you die at one of the hands of the Northern.

    She seems to sense my thoughts, her brows twitching, answering "I used magic. To create an illusion of a dead body. Of me, dying. Twice." Her face remains deadly solemn at her answer.

    "As well as to mask my identity to the person you were told as 'Dahlia'", she adds.

    "With a name that bears the same with your favorite flower, I knew something was up. Especially with all your 'secrets' that you as the Omissionary knew." I spat.

    I let distrust run through my veins as I continued on, "You...what you said at the Everfields- was that all true? You tried to hide yourself and suppress our family's darkest secret and you hated yourself?! Did you lie us?! Whatever it was, you broke Grandma's heart! Look at you right now; you are strong enough to fight the effects of the Otrava yet you let yourself run rampant in our kingdom?

    "All the secrets that arise yet one of them goes against you as my family! Why is that? Everything you said there, the entire time you were acting as the Omissionary, why? Why? Why try to break my spirit and my trust, on my friends, on my family, on you!"

    Delaney hardens at my tone of voice, which is starting to crack by forthcoming tears.  She replies to my question, "I needed you to grow stronger. To be stronger. You were naïve as a new queen. But I supported-"

    "And what for?" I grin confusingly in anger, tears streaming now, leaving me to see a shattered sight of blurry images and broken walls. "If you were here the entire time instead of pretending to die and play dress up as the big bad for months, I would have been fine! You broke me; drop the act already, Delaney! For a long time, I saw you as the honorable and brave sister, the General who has pure intentions, to protect everyone she loves and who they love. Protect the innocent that never got involved in the horrors of war. That is why we fought for them, Delaney. That's what we promised to each other.