To His Hell and Back-Chapter 199: Child Of Death-II

Cassius who had heard everything in silence finally broke into a faint laughter. He stepped away from the two deadbeats, sitting down on the chair that was placed beside Arabella and leaned on it. Though it was an old furniture when he sat on it, the chair looked as if it had been handed out from one descendant to another as an heirloom.

With an ease laziness he clicked the teacup that was empty, pretending that he was drinking it when there was nothing inside as he spoke, "So let me rephrase your words for you. You had a marriage proposal with a woman yet you slept with another woman and got her pregnant. Once she got pregnant you panicked and didn’t want to claim the daughter as yours. Then you saw her adding something into your food and now you claimed that she’s a witch who had tricked you into marriage when you had nothing? Not in looks or wealth?"

Both Mrs Rath’s face and Charles’s face turned bright red as Cassius had read through their pride and egos.

Cassius then sighed and touched his cheeks, looking at Arabella slightly with a smile, "Thankfully I have the look to back up all my cheeky attitudes right? Else I would look as miserable as this one."

"No!" Mrs Rath yelled, "It was really a potion! After all that woman... she could... she could bring the dead back to life! What else was that potion added to Charles’s food if not a love potion? Because after Charles refuses to eat her food, he grew sober and never realized that he was ever in love with her at all!"

Cassius turned at Arabella who also had turned to glance at him.

"Dead to life?" Arabella inquired, "What do you mean by that?"

"Tsk! That’s why I told you that you aren’t suppose to be in this world," snapped Mrs Rath to her. "Don’t you know? You were a stillborn! A child who was supposed to be buried. As we prepared a small coffin and flowers before burning your corpse you cried all of a sudden! Back alive! That only happened after your mother requested some time alone with you after we all have confirmed that you were dead! I took a peek while she was alone and I saw her pushing some odd liquid into your mouth and not long after that you came back alive even though your heart had stopped beating for more than six hours!"

Shocked by this revelation, Arabella became speechless with nothing to answer. She couldn’t understand it... how was it that she had died before? Stillborn?

"Don’t look shocked, not only has your mother brought you back to life, you had also brought your sister back to life once! That’s why all of you are- disgusting- nothing but monsters who had died so many times and be brought back to life! Disgusting! Blasphemous!"

A sudden memory filled Arabella’s head as she had recalled an old memory she hadn’t had before once. That memory was of her sister crying as blood filled her hands. She recalled that it was a memory of Ariel who had fallen down from a high place and hit her head on the stone, causing for the blood to spread like puddle under her small body.

Then...

Then she tried to hold Ariel’s hands and all of a sudden all Ariel’s wounds were gone.

But wasn’t that a dream? A mere fragment of her imagination?

The room fell into a heavy silence. Even the creaking of the old house seemed to still.

Arabella sat frozen, her fingers numb against the fabric of her dress. Her breath came shallowly, eyes locked onto the distant corner of the room but seeing none of it. Stillborn. Brought back. Her sister’s blood. The dream... was it really a dream?

She remembered Ariel’s lifeless body. The way her own hands had trembled as she’d touched her sister’s skin. She remembered weeping, begging, whispering prayers she didn’t understand. Then Ariel’s warmth returned like a sudden spark. Before her child self could understand what had happened, Ariel was breathing again, standing up with a confused look on her face and once they had gotten home... she now recalled how horrified her mother had looked.

No, not a dream. She recalled everything now, clearer than ever.

She clutched her hands together, staring down at them in disbelief. What had she done? No. What was she? ƒreeωebnovel.ƈom

Mrs. Rath kept ranting, her voice shrill with a twisted eagerness. "You and your sister should have stayed dead! Both of you! What kind of children defy death like that?! It’s not natural! It’s an abomination!"

"That’s enough," Cassius said quietly.

But Mrs. Rath didn’t stop, as if she couldn’t hear him, she continued her words, "I told Charles from the beginning that she wasn’t right. Something about her was odd- how she looked at others and those green eyes she had passed to you and your sister! Your mother cursed this family. And look what came out of it? Monsters pretending to be girls! Who knows what you two really are and what kind of blood has been disgustingly mixed inside of you. But we want none of it! None of you disgusting monster’s traces in this hou-"

Cassius stood.

The room’s temperature dropped instantly as his towering figure shadowed the two people who were huddled. He considered how embarrassingly weak Charles was as even until now he hadn’t let out a single word of explanation, letting for his mother to say everything and inquire his wrath. Such coward. Such a man who couldn’t even be called a man for not being able to protect his family.

How could this man be the father of his courageous Arabella?

He walked slowly, almost lazily, to stand in front of the old woman and Mrs Rath flinched at his approach, her mouth twitching with words she hadn’t dared say yet.

"Do you know what I hate the most, old hag?" Cassius asked, his cold voice stiffening the two and Charles had pushed away his mother to corner himself away from Cassius which Mrs Rath seemed surprised by but not for long as Cassius’s steps approached her. He continued in a lazy drone, "People who speak of monsters while rotting from the inside themselves."

Mrs. Rath stiffened, but he leaned in slightly, his crimson eyes glinting. "You speak as if she’s a monster for surviving when the real monsters are here, the ones who had callously sold her to her death and wished so that she would never be born at all. Yes, perhaps she has a power. Maybe worse, she’s a monster! Boo! But so what? In the end she is your granddaughter and she does share your blood. Even if I have a monster for a family, I would stand by their side, no matter what they do. Whether they kill, they eat flesh, no even if they have to take bath in blood every single night. I would of course stand by its side when it tries to survive or come back from death. No, I’ll even praise them for surviving."

Arabella’s green eyes turned stunned as she could hear the rage that he tried to content in his words yet at the same time his words that both sounded humourous put a certain warm in her heart who was too baffled after finding out what she could be.

Cassius snapped his finger, "Try to think. Which one of you are really the monster? Someone who can come back to life or the one who constantly pushed their family to face death?"