End 2

No new evidence was found. They all began to think she had done it to herself, that she was a witch – a daemon – who took self-harm too far that one night. My heart ached, wondering how unbelievably stupid you would have to be to even consider that someone could do that to themselves. Why was the specialist agreeing to this suggestion? Surely she’d know that no one could survive through all that.

When they went home on New Years Eve, I climbed down from the chimney on top of the factory and sat by her body. Why had they not moved her further into the shadows? I looked at the blood that was not hers and spat at it, knowing that whoever it was that had that blood coursing through their veins would never be found. They just did not exist. The assassin had won.

I held her hand, rocking back and forth in the snow trying to remember how she once looked. Her skin a healthy peach instead of the deathly white; her lips plump and red, not blackened and chipped. Her eyes, oh how I loved her eyes, so deep once you looked past her shield. As the sun rose higher into the sky, I realised the investigators were not coming back – they were not even going to bury her body. I began digging into the snow, ignoring the sharp pains in my fingers, which soon became numb.

I lay the black rose across the centre of the grave before standing and looking towards the setting sun, my hands bleeding and fingers frozen. Akasya, the wind whispered. I smile.