Chapter 147: His Gift
"Ah! Careful on that spot." Maurice winced softly, almost pulling away from Samantha who carefully applied turmeric paste to the reddish burns on his bare back. To her relief, most of the burns he had gotten had healed, as if he had attended to the major wounds elsewhere, but there were still a few burns that needed treatment, whilst she had to stop again when she heard him wince to himself. Applying ointment or getting him to eat whenever he felt unwell was always mission impossible for Samantha, even during their younger days, and it was quite obvious his tactics hadn’t changed, but this time around, she did not blame him for it as she observed the burns intently.
"Did you get them from the fire?" Samantha questioned her brother who finally straightened his back since she was done. He turned around to look at his sister whose gifted green eyes glimmered with concern, but before she could apologize for not being there for him as promised, Maurice shook his head as he held both of her hands, silencing her with a deadpan stare as he wouldn’t want to see her cry again.
"Let’s forget about the past after today. You’re here, I’m here, and we’re both still alive." Maurice soothed her while looking straight into her glossy eyes, his own conveying his silent relief. "When the coronation ends, we’ll finally get to leave and start our lives somewhere that holds no memories of what we’ve been through here. We’ll forget everything, the pain, the separation, it’ll be like it never happened and we won’t have to feel sorry or guilty about anything. Remember? Father had plans on taking us away from EmptyHollow from the start, before he got murdered, and we have a chance to fulfill that wish."
Samantha listened to her brother speak, even his voice had changed from what she remembered it to be. What he said made sense to her, this was what she wanted too, to forget everything and start all over– to forget the pain in her heart. She wanted to agree with him, but whenever she tried to give an answer, her mind would inadvertently drift to Ivan and then she would lose her tongue, rendering her with the inability to respond, and then came the indecisive feeling that had her rethinking her choice.
Will changing places really do her any good? She couldn’t answer that until she figured it out herself.
"Maurice..."
Lowering her gaze from his, Samantha turned her head towards the window that had been draped with velvety curtains. Leaving her brother’s side without answering him back, she walked towards the curtains and spread them apart, whilst revealing the crimson hue that was beginning to shroud the moon, and her emerald green eyes widened in awe when an otherworldly light was casted upon the landscape below.
"The blood moon." She blinked as the moonlight spilled into the room, casting an ethereal glow upon her face, and a shiver ran down her spine. There was an inexplicable connection she felt towards the celestial transformation, but then the blood moon could only affect vampires and a few other supernatural creatures out there. Since she mysteriously possessed the powers of the missing orb, does that make her one of the supernaturals as well? Will it hold any effect on her? Disturbingly, she didn’t want to figure that out.
"Maurice, are you seeing this?" Samantha drew her brother’s attention to the blood moon outside the window. "Feels like the world is bathed in blood. Do you think Vesunard ever experienced a blood moon on a daily occurrence?"