She Belongs To The Devil

"Adeline? Tell me what\'s wrong?"

Adeline averted her gaze away from her brother and let out a shaking breath. She couldn\'t quite bring herself to look into her brother\'s sapphire eyes that were full of questions.

"Sister…" Nigel stood in front of her and tilted his head to look into her eyes. "You know you can tell me everything, right?"

Adeline\'s long lashes gave way to her eyes and she looked at her brother\'s knitted brows. She nodded her head. "I know."

She nervously scratched her forehead and pointed towards the chairs in the middle of the antechamber. "Why don\'t we sit down first?"

Nigel\'s heart was now starting to race. He got an unsettling feeling in his gut that whatever she was going to tell was a piece of bad news.

They both took a seat while facing each other. Adeline was clenching her hands so tightly that they were sweating already.

She took a deep breath in and took some courage to open her mouth. But instead of words, a series of feeble sounds coated with pain escaped her mouth. And almost at the same time, warm streams of tears trickled down her cheeks.

Nigel felt a pinch in his heart upon seeing his sister so vulnerable. He pulled his chair to shift closer to Adeline and took her hands in his. "Adeline… is the news that bad?"

Adeline painfully nodded her head. And she spoke while gasping for breath in between her cries, "Father… our father… he doesn\'t have much time left on Earth."

Nigel\'s grip on Adeline\'s hands loosened. He was left stunned when he heard what his sister told him. A searing pain erupted in his heart and spread through his veins. He felt a burning sensation in his throat and his eyes fought off the urge to cry at that instant.

He gulped real hard and then asked Adeline, "How do you know that? Is he… is he sick?"

Adeline lowered her head to look at her hands where her tears were landing. A soft whisper came out of her mouth in response, "He was. But Theodore had already taken him to the fountain…"

Nigel raised his brows to form a questioning look on his face and demanded clarification from his sister, "Then what is it? Why are you saying that he doesn\'t have much time?"

"You know how Theodore took the life of that Vampire Princess to save me, right?" Adeline wiped her tears and looked at her brother.

Nigel nodded and asked, "Yes. But what does it have to do with our father? Did that Princess do something to our father that was fatal to him?"

"The thing is…" Adeline\'s eyes welled up again and she paused. She didn\'t know how her brother would take it after knowing that their father\'s death was indirectly invited by Theodore\'s action.

"Adeline, tell me already!" Nigel held Adeline\'s shoulders and prompted her to spill everything out faster. The curiosity was killing him already.

"The thing is, Theodore\'s action of taking a life made his father furious. And as a punishment to Theodore, he said that he was going to take our father\'s life…"

Adeline wanted to clarify how their father had already lived more than his lifeline but the difficult feeling in her throat prevented her from speaking out another sentence. She was trying not to start crying again and was choking in the process.

And that gap gave time to Nigel to get angry, not at Theodore, but at God. He had known Theodore long enough for him to be able to hate that gem of a Devil. But he was pissed at God because he felt what he did was unfair.

He dropped his hands away from Adeline\'s shoulders and rested his head on the low backrest of his chair. He was then glaring at the ceiling as if he was directly staring at God. The pain in his heart was growing numbingly. He clenched his fists and dug his claws in his palms to prevent himself from turning.

And he asked in a low growl, "Why would he do that? How can the almighty be so cruel? Why would he punish Theodore?"

"And…" he clenched his teeth to stop himself from speaking any further but he couldn\'t help but voice out his disappointment, "…how can it even be called punishment for Theodore when our father is the one who is going to die? And it is us who is going to suffer?"

"Maybe God already knew that Theodore had started to see a father figure in our father…" Adeline spoke while dabbing her palms over her cheeks.

She sniffled and glanced at her brother. She could see the veins on his hands bulging like never before. She feared that he was angry at Theodore and feared even more that he might turn into a wolf and run to fight Theodore.

So she quickly tried to emphasize that Theodore was also a victim here. "And knowing that his father figure had died because of his actions would make Theodore spiral into insurmountable guilt. Having to drown in the sea of guilt is the greatest punishment ever."

Adeline recalled the countless times Theodore had apologized to her and said, "I have already seen that guilt in his eyes. He is suffering more than us… silently…"

Nigel felt bad that he had unintentionally made himself sound as though Theodore wasn\'t the one who was suffering. "No, I meant to say that Theodore didn\'t do anything wrong. Those vampires were the ones to infiltrate Wyverndale and attack innocent people. All Theodore did was defend. And why does our father have to pay the price? For receiving his help?"

Adeline didn\'t have an answer for her brother. To be honest, she also had the same question for her father-in-law.

She wanted to ask what was wrong with Theodore interfering with the inhabitants of Earth if it meant that the wrongdoers were getting punished right here on Earth rather than waiting for them to go down to Hell. They were going to get punished for their crimes either way.

Nigel inhaled deeply and shakily. He looked at his sister\'s face as she had now stopped making any sound altogether, not even the sound of breathing.

She was holding her breath and was spacing out. In her deep eyes, Nigel could see pain, fear, anger, and more than anything… guilt.

Nigel called Adeline in his sad voice, "Adeline, why do I see guilt in your eyes? It\'s not your fault. I am not blaming you or Theodore…"

And he heard Adeline\'s barely audible voice, "If only I was a little stronger… or a little faster… If I was able to kill that vampire on my own then this tragedy wouldn\'t have happened."

As if her body was hearing her request, she felt extreme pain in the middle of her forehead. She tight-shut her eyes and clasped her forehead. She crouched down a little while letting out a guttural sound.

"Adeline? What happened?" Nigel was about to touch her cheek with his now bloodied palm but before he could do so, Adeline opened her eyes and leaned back.

She took a deep breath in and just like that, she looked completely fine despite how she had acted just a moment ago.