Chapter Forty-Four

I feel sick. In fact, the moment my mother's eyes landed on me, I pulled myself out of Inanis's grasp, and hid myself in the crowds. I attempted to look for my father, but I couldn't find him, the place was so big and there were so many people. If I was going to have to speak to my mother, it would be a lot easier to do it when my father was there to defend me.

I sift my way through the mass of people, searching for him, but it is as if he vanished. Deciding that I can easily take on the most famous killer in America, but not my own mother, I brand myself a coward, and head towards the exit. I know that Inanis would give me shit once he finds out that I'm leaving during an important event, but also, I don't care. It will only be for a few moments. I needed to catch my breath, and my dignity.

"You look exacerbated. Everything alright?" A voice speaks behind me, and it takes everything I have to force myself to look back when the exit is only feet away.

Elias Parity and his wife are staring at me. I blink at the both of them, not used to speaking to such famous people with Inanis doing all the talking. "I need air." I say bluntly, and a spark flickers in Elias's eyes.

"Did the party not only just begin?"

"Fuck the party."

"Classily put." He says but with his wife's arm intwined with his own, he beckons to the door, "Shall we leave together? I admit, the last time I met a harvester, I was only seven years old."

The previous bone cutter. Atherton Halis, didn't have the celebrity status like Virtus Lux, or Inanis. He had been a cutter for nearly twenty years before he was unfortunately poisoned by an unknown culprit and Inanis took his place. The harvester, his wife, was a stunning woman, but they say she had the personality of a viper. She is a woman I do not aspire to be.

I admit, I didn't want to leave with the Parity couple. I had not plan to permanently leave at all. They were elegant, and glamorous in all the ways I'm not, but I knew I didn't really have a choice. I'd rather spend the evening with them, then with my mother who I had no doubt would publicly shame me for being a terrible daughter.

"Inanis is going to kill me for leaving." I tell them, as we walk out anyway.

"I've gathered enough about you to know you don't care what your husband thinks."

Partly true. I don't care, but I do care about the fit he will throw when I get back. His constant nagging and complaining will no doubt go on for the next several days. "He's dramatic."

"I wouldn't know anything about that." Scarlett speaks up, but there is a hint of amusement in her tone, which was strange to hear coming from a woman who looked so frugal.

We exit the party and I'm able to breathe in the large hallway of the building. Elias guides me to the front door, and as people are still walking into the party, they stop and stare at the three of us, who don't dare look them in the eyes. Inanis always told me to pretend not to see the people watching you, and so that is what I'm doing. I keep my eyes ahead, and as some police officers walk us out of the white house to a vehicle, I don't think twice about getting in. I didn't plan on leaving the building, I only meant to leave the ball room. Inanis really is going to kill me, especially because he has no idea where I am. I don't even know where I'm going, I'm putting all my trust in a man who wears gold dust like fashion glitter.

"D.C. is a beautiful place." Elias says, as the car pulls out into the street. Scarlett sits comfortably beside her husband, and keep myself as far against the door as possible.

God, I do wish Inanis was here.

"I'm from Oregon." I tell him matter-of-factly, "There is no place a beautiful as that."

"You are right." He agrees, "It is unfortunate that my cemetery was built in Massachusetts. I would have no regret moving to Oregon, or Washington for that matter. America is stunning."

I study him as he stares out the window. This is a man who values the beauty of things. His job is throwing glamour on dead people. He is a top tier perfectionist, and I am wearing a cheap dress that doesn't flatter me at all.

"You and my husband know each other?" I ask him, since there isn't much else we have to talk about. "Why is that?"

"Your husband is a Bone Cutter. As you know before me, my parents owned Parity Cemetery, they were respectable individuals with many connections. The long line of Bone Cutters have always been correlated with my family. Our jobs, they compliment each other. A man who kills, and a man who honors the kill. It's almost romantic."

"Your husband," Scarlett speaks up, "came to our cemetery a few years ago. It's not necessarily tradition, but seeing as all the Bone Cutters have been buried there, occasionally Inanis will come and pay his respects."

"Virtus Lux and Atherton Halis are buried at Parity Cemetery?"

She nods, "Their graves are monumental."

"I didn't know that."

"Not many do."

"Inanis must have done something to upset you." I boldly claim to her, and her eyes widen a fraction at the accusation, "You speak of him like he is an annoying pest you can't be rid of."

Scarlet says nothing for the longest moment, and so I ease the awkwardness by saying, "it's alright, I'm not too fond of him either."

We lock eyes, and a small smile plays at her lips, "It's not personal. I'm not fond of immoral justices."

"Yes." I drop my gaze to the car's floor, "Neither am I."

"And yet you are to kill our First Lady." Elias breaks into the conversation, "How must that feel?"

Like shit. "Like your wife said, I'm not fond of immoral justices."

"But you go through with it."

"I don't have much of a choice."

"You had a choice to leave the party." He points out, "You had a choice to marry him. There's always a choice."

I had a feeling choosing to leave a stupid party, and publicly killing a woman because of my title were two very different choices, but I didn't say that.

A small prick of guilt began to stab at me, with each minute I was gone from the party. I know that Inanis hates the parties just as much as I do, and the fact that I left was undoubtedly unfair. My moment of panic was weak, and I shouldn't have left with the Paritys.

The car eventually stops, and Elias and Scarlett get out. When I exit the car I realize we are at a cemetery. It was the last place I expected to be, and yet, the first place I should have assumed.

Elias looks around, his eyes moving from grave to grave, "Unfortunate isn't it?"

"That they're dead?" I stand beside him.

"That they are dead, forgotten, and shamefully hideous."

"It doesn't matter." I say frankly, "Because they are dead."

"It's not them that matter, it's those who look at the graves that do."

"Beauty is everywhere. I don't need to look at a grave to be enlightened."

"And yet there is no other place that can make you feel a certain way, than a garden of dead."

"Because death is sad."

"No," He corrects me, "Death is untimely, but it is a pledge. Our story doesn't matter, because in the end we all perish."

I've gathered that he's trying to tell me something. In the manner he was speaking it was almost as if he was giving me justification for killing the First Lady. Death is a promise, so if I don't kill her someone else will.

I feel a knot in my chest, and I don't give him any indication that his words meant anything to me. I watch Scarlett intertwine her arm around her husband's. They begin to walk down the path into the cemetery, and I don't follow them.

Instead, I choose a stone bench to sit on, and I let the weight of the last few days, and for the upcoming days, slowly melt off me. The sun was practically gone now, and a slight breeze blows through the trees making them all sigh in unison. The cemetery was quiet, nobody here but the driver of the car that brought us, who was leaning against a tree, smoking a cigarette, waiting for us to return into the vehicle, and the Parity couple, who were out of eyesight down the path.

Of all things to think about, I kept thinking about Inanis. Wondering if he was searching for me right now, or if he was too busy entertaining others.

Inanis has been just as stressed out as me. I can see it. The way his act dies while it is just us alone at home. How the exhaustion accentuates its presence the longer he allows it to show.

Why I am feeling bad for him, I'm unsure, but damn, it is overwhelming.

When the Paritys return, I'm the first to get into the car. We leave the cemetery, and I feel a new form of respect grow for the couple who brought me here. It wouldn't surprise me if they had been waiting to get me alone, to take me away and remind me why I am in the position that I am in. I must have been wearing the stress like a mask

A moment of clarity, was all I needed. After a day like today, watching Inanis cut a man's fingers off, interviewing the two people we were going to kill, to a party full of what Inanis calls 'snakes'. The icing on the cake was seeing my mother, not even Inanis could help me with that.

I have had my moment to breathe, and now, it is only fair that I give my husband his.