Katryna had so many painful questions racing through her head since her mother Mira had confined her to her bedroom almost a week earlier.
She had not heard a single thing about Trish after asking each and every servant who brought her food three times a day. She was probably locked away in the dungeon, all alone. The ache of the situation facing her was like a punch to her gut.
Sick with angst, she wallowed deeper into the water.
This was the first bath Katryna had been allowed to take all week. Despite not even wanting to leave the security of her bed covers, she had to admit that it felt good to finally wash herself. She savoured the warm sensation.
When will this all end?
Katryna closed her eyes, sinking deeper into the water. It was like entering another world. The silence was beautiful. All she could hear was the echo of the dripping tap and her heart beating like a drum through the water.
Take me away.
She resurfaced, inhaling a sharp breath. The pleasant scent of her burning lavender candles filled the air.
Katryna’s face, despite having healed, still stung from her mother’s strike the previous week. She had never been hit before. Her gums were still ulcered, and her jaw ached.
Katryna continued to wash, wiping her face one last time as a final tear fell from her puffy eyes.
The door to the washroom opened with a creak. Startled, Katryna covered her chest with her hand and spun around in the tub.
“Excuse me, I’m…” Katryna shouted to the intruder, but stopped upon seeing a familiar figure walk in with dishevelled hair and an old nightgown.
It was her mother, Mira. Katryna’s eyes went wide upon realising.
She turned back around, facing away from her as the woman made her way into the washroom without uttering a word.
Katryna felt petrified; what did she want with her now? She feigned ignorance and scrubbed her arms against the side of the porcelain tub.
Mira, still silent, shuffled over to the open window. She looked out at the view before her. Katryna could only see her silhouette. She looked nothing like the mother she once had.
She was untidy and walking around the castle in a nightgown.
A ghoul of her former, beautiful self. The Mira she once knew had always made an effort with her appearance; she would never be seen wearing such things.
“I’m… I’m so sorry, Katryna,” Mira said beneath her breath, bowing her head down as if about to sob.
Katryna sealed her lips shut, focused only on washing herself. Even if she could fight through the pain to reply, she had no idea what to say back.
Mira left the window side, approaching the bathtub as if floating like a spectre. Her pale face had the exact same expression of despair she had worn since Willem’s accident.
Mira sat on the edge of the bathtub. Katryna covered her chest with her arm, feeling awkward at the thought of her mother seeing her naked. Mira said nothing about it, simply staring at a random spot on the wall.
“I fear I have lost myself since your brother’s death,” Mira said solemnly. “The mother I once was, is dead, too.”
Katryna could not retain her tears any longer, feeling them welling up in her eyes. Still, she could utter a word back.
Mira ran her fingers through Katryna’s wet hair, before taking a cloth and soap and gently washing her daughter’s head.
Katryna had a stark feeling inside as she felt her mother’s soft touch. It reminded her of when she was a little girl and Mira would help her wash each night. She remembered the bond they had once had, the love she had held for the nurturing woman.
Yet, she could not shake an insidious feeling of fear and discomfort.
The warm water ran down the back of her neck. Mira helped clean Katryna’s long, brown locks, and then squeezing each strand dry.
“I am cursed with flashes in my head of his face, after we found him,” Mira whispered. “I struggle through sleepless nights, picturing his final moments.”
Katryna could not deny the primal instinct of nurture it brought her to feel her mother’s touch after so many years. Existing after Willem’s accident with her mother there, but not really there, was like losing two family members in one single event.
Mira had never said a loving word or given her daughter a motherly embrace again. Not once since Willem died.
Yet something still did not feel right to her.
Katryna sensed goosebumps rising on her dripping skin. “I’m going to get out now,” Katryna said softly.
As she went to stand up from the bath water, Mira grabbed her daughter by the shoulders and forced her back down rather roughly.
“Not yet, you aren’t. I’m trying to help you,” Mira said before going back to wash her daughter’s hair.
Katryna began to cry. “Please, mother.”
Katryna attempted to get up again, but Mira held her down. She gazed up at her mother’s lifeless face, seeing her grimacing. Her lifeless eyes.
Katryna felt Mira’s hands strengthening their grip on her shoulders.
“You took my son away from me,” Mira uttered coldly. She refused to make eye contact with Katryna.
Her bony fingers pressed harder into Katryna’s skin.
“Don’t, you’re hurting me!” Katryna said.
“You will suffer as he suffered. I will free you of this burden.”
In a single moment, Mira slammed Katryna’s upper body down into the bathtub. Her eyes were still open as her head sunk under the water. She accidentally inhaled a mouthful from the suddenness of what was happening.
Katryna felt panic kick
