"Why?"
The word came out of me before I could stop it, raw and broken, stripped of all the anger I had been carrying for weeks.
I had imagined this moment so many times in the past month, pictured myself screaming at her, demanding answers and justice, making her suffer for every life she had stolen.
However...
Now that she was here, kneeling in the mud with my blade at her throat, I could not find the rage. There was only exhaustion. Only the hollow emptiness of someone who had already lost everything and was tired of pretending otherwise.
Marta looked up at me.
The rain ran down her face in thin streams, dripping from her chin and mixing with the blood that seeped from the small cut on her neck where Tempest rested. For a long moment, she did not speak.
She just looked at me with those tired, hollow eyes that had once seemed so kind, so full of warmth and grandmotherly affection.
