Chapter 6

The day Alexia was discharged from the hospital was the anniversary of her mother's death.

As she emerged from the hospital's sterile portico, a familiar black sedan, polished to a mirror-like finish that reflected the grey, unpitying sky, was idling at the curb.

A rear window descended with a faint electric hum, and Anton's head emerged. "Mom, we're coming with you to visit Grandma."

Within the car's leather-scented gloom, Kassandra was arranged beside him, offering a smile of such saccharine pity it was a confection of pure malice.

Alexia's fingers tightened upon the bouquet of white lilies she carried, the cellophane crackling like dry leaves underfoot. She entered the vehicle without a word.

The cemetery was a place of stark geometries, of granite and clipped yew under a sky the colour of slate. An attendant in a drab uniform approached, informing her with practiced solemnity that the plot's maintenance fees were past due.

"I'll take care of it," Jacob said, striding toward the office, assuming the posture of a diligent, responsible husband.

The instant his back was turned, Kassandra's expression soured. "A shame, is it not?" she murmured, her voice a silken thread of poison. "That she should occupy such a prime piece of ground. My own grandmother is so dreadfully crowded."

A current of cold fury, sharp and swift, passed through Alexia's veins.

Thought abdicated to instinct. Her hand swung, and the sound of her palm striking Kassandra's cheek was a sharp, percussive report that startled a flock of crows from a nearby oak.

Kassandra stumbled back, her heel catching on the edge of a marble plinth. She fell awkwardly, her head striking the stone with a sickening, solid sound. A dark bloom of blood began to seep into her hair.

Jacob and Anton came running.

"She hit me!" Kassandra sobbed, clutching her head. "I was just trying to be nice, and she attacked me! I know she's just jealous, Jacob, I understand..."

Jacob and Anton exchanged a glance, a silent, instantaneous communication that passed between them like a spark across a gap. In it was the familiar, unsettling recognition of a desired result achieved.

The flicker of satisfaction in his eyes was instantly suppressed, his features hardening not into a mask, but into the rigid, unforgiving lines of a magistrate about to pass sentence. "You have gone too far, Alexia."

"She needs a real punishment this time, Dad," Anton said, his voice cold.

Jacob turned to his bodyguards. "Dig it up."

A dread unlike any she had known, a glacial weight, settled in the pit of her stomach. "Dig what up?"

"The grave," she breathed, the words barely audible, a puff of white vapour in the frigid air.

The men exchanged uneasy glances, but a single look from Jacob set them into motion. The shovels bit into the damp earth with a series of dull, rhythmic thuds, a sound that seemed to measure the final seconds of Alexia's sanity.

"No! Stop!" Alexia screamed, lunging forward, but Jacob grabbed her, his grip like a vise.

When the unadorned wooden coffer was brought to the surface, one of the men, misinterpreting the fury in Jacob's gesture, pried the lid open with the edge of his spade. A sudden, cruel gust of wind dipped into the hollow and lifted the contents. Her mother's ashes did not so much swirl as they were violently scoured from the box, a fleeting grey stain against the sky before they were lost to the indifferent air.

The colour drained from Jacob's face, leaving it a waxy, bloodless canvas. "What have you done?" he hissed at the man. "I only commanded you to unearth it."

The bodyguard stammered, "I... I thought you meant..."

Time seemed to suspend itself. Jacob stared, horrified, at the empty box, a flicker of genuine regret in his eyes.

Alexia watched the last physical remnant of her mother disperse into nothingness. The memory of a warm hand, the scent of lavender-all of it now tethered to an empty, desecrated plot of earth. A knot of insufferable pressure formed in her chest, and when she tried to draw a breath, she choked. A fine, bright spray of blood erupted from her lips, staining the pale lilies she still clutched.

Her vision tunneled to black.

As she fell, their panicked voices seemed to come from a great distance.

"Father, I believe we have miscalculated," Anton cried, his voice shrill with a child's terror of irreparable damage.

Jacob's hand, trembling, found hers. "Alexia... I am sorry. Forgive me."

"We love you, Mom," Anton sobbed. "We truly do."

A single tear escaped from beneath Alexia's closed eyelid. They needed her ruin to feel contrition; her annihilation to prove their love.

She would grant them neither, ever again.