Chapter 190: I don’t want to die... Not yet
Emily’s chest heaved, her breath hitching as April’s words sank deep into her bruised mind.
"R-really?" She asked, almost in disbelief. Was it that easy?
"I have already stripped them of their freedom," April flatly stated, extending her pale, unshakeable hand toward her sister. "But their final sentence will not be decided by me alone. You suffered their hell just as much as I did—if not more. So tell me, Emily... Do you want to die as their victim, or do you want to be the one who delivers their punishment?"
Silence fell over the room, heavy and suffocating.
Beside the bed, Xavier stood like an iron pillar, his dark eyes watching the interaction with unreadable depth, while Nat’s lips curled into a subtle, dangerous smirk from the foot of the mattress at the word punishment. Even Oliver Baxter held his stylus still against his tablet, his analytical gaze fixed on Emily’s trembling form to record her psychological pivot point.
Emily stared at April’s outstretched palm.
For all her agonized years, her entire existence had been defined by fear, pain, and surrender. She had swallowed every insult from Clara, and then it got even worse when she married Johan three years ago. Clara became so jealous that she increased the amount of torment she inflicted on her.
Emily had endured every taunt from her, strike from Johan, and watched her mother slowly fade into nothingness, believing she was powerless to stop it.
And not to talk of the year when she had been kidnapped and... It was as clear as day that Clara was responsible for the set up, but no one was on her side and she had no valid proof.
She had spoken out, screamed, yelled, but her words were seen as slander from jealousy and wickedness.
Her dignity was thrown into the mud.
Even her husband refused to stand by her side and said she was lucky he wasn’t throwing her away after what she had done behind his back, calling her wasted produce.
That was the worst year of her life and she was this close to jumping into a river when she remembered she had to pick medicine for her mother. Her mother still needed her.
Yet... the only one holding her, the stone that had held her in place so she wouldn’t crumble on herself had died before her very eyes and she had been too useless to do anything about it.
Emily had tied that rope because she saw no other way out. She saw the end and the end was what she wanted.
But as she looked at April—a woman who carried her exact face, yet stood before her like an untouchable, unyielding force of nature backed by an absolute army—something buried deep inside Emily’s shattered spirit began to crack.
A tiny, searing spark of pure, unadulterated rage ignited in the cold ashes of her grief.
Slowly, with her hand still trembling from exhaustion, Emily lifted her arm. Her fingers brushed against April’s cool palm before tightly, desperately gripping her sister’s hand.
"I don’t want to die..." Emily whispered, her voice cracking as a single, clear tear trailed down her pale cheek, her brown eyes filling with a dark, burning resolve. "Not yet, at least. Not when they are still breathing. I want to see them suffer. I want them to pay for what they did to me and my Mother."
April gave a single, slow nod. At least she still had some fire left in her.
"But, April..." Emily called out softly, her fingers tightening around the bedsheet. "You said you also suffered... how is it that you are..." She looked around at the towering, imposing men surrounding the bed, flinched for a split second under the sheer weight of their presence, and quickly lowered her gaze back to the mattress. "...so powerful now? And protected? How is it that your suffering came to an end? Who... who rescued you?"
April went silent for a second.
She did not know quite what to make of the question. She couldn’t tell if Emily was subtly asking why April was no longer drowning in hell while she had been left to rot, or if her twin was naively searching for the name of some knight in shining armor she had to thank for their liberation. Regardless, April did not like the question.
"I did not wait for a savior this time," April said flatly.
Emily looked up at her, blinking through lingering tears. "This time?"
"I saved myself," April stated, her brown eyes unblinking and entirely cool. "With the resources this world offered me and the ability that I was bestowed with."
Even hearing that, Emily’s shattered mind still couldn’t fully comprehend it. She looked over at Nat, whom she vaguely recalled seeing at the black market the previous night when she went to seek the seer, and then looked back at April’s crisp, untouchable posture.
Slow, fragmented pieces began to form a terrifying picture in her head.
"Wait..." Emily’s eyes widened in sheer, sudden realization. "Are you... Are you the seer from the black market?"
April did not deny it.
What came as a shock to her slowly began to twist. Emily’s pale face contorted as a fresh wave of chaotic, agonizing grief bubbled up to the surface.
"You..." Emily breathed out, her voice rising into an unstable, trembling crescendo as she took her hand back from April’s grip. "If you had just given me the reading when I asked... if you had helped me see into the future and I knew mother was going to die... I could have changed something!"
Emily suddenly began to scream, thrashing against the headboard as hyperventilation seized her chest. "Why didn’t you give me the reading?!"
"Because I was out of slots," April calmly responded, not holding her sister’s frantic heartbreak against her. "That was why I asked you to stay until midnight. It was not that I did not want to divine for you."
"Then... then..." Emily sobbed, her voice tearing at her raw throat, "you could have held me back! You saw my face, didn’t you?! You sensed something was wrong after seeing a person identical to you, didn’t you?! So why... Why didn’t you hold me back?! Why did you let me go home so mother had to die?! This... this is your fault—"
SMACK!
April’s hand tore through the air, her open palm connecting sharply against Emily’s cheek with zero reserve.
The sound of the strike cracked through the sterile room like a gunshot.
The entire room went dead still. Alexander gasped softly, Nat’s eyes flicked with dark amusement, and Xavier’s hand remained perfectly still at his sides where he stood.
Outside, behind the glass wall, Oliver Baxter stopped his stylus for a single second, before tapping one word onto his tablet screen: Ruthless.
"You know," April began, her voice dropping into something thin, something like a whisper with irritation laced in it as she slowly withdrew her hand, "I can understand that when humans are backed into a corner, they instinctively search for someone to blame. It is much easier on their conscience. It is human nature, and even I do it sometimes... but I cannot sit back and tolerate it when it is directed at me. So my hand moved on its own."