I gasp so sharply that I lose my breath; it feels like someone punched me in the stomach. He killed her…he loved her, yet he killed her anyway. I stumble backward, away from the vanity, trying to understand, trying to find words and thoughts and excuses for Victor. I can still vaguely see my reflection in the vanity mirror; I’m dressed in a black dress and black high-heels; my hair has been curled so that it falls just below my ears; my makeup has been painted to perfection by Hestia’s careful hand. But mostly what I see is the sad and bloody picture that Victor ’s words left remnants of in my mind. He killed the woman he loved… “Now do you see?” I hear Hestia say somewhere behind me. “Now do you understand?” I look down at myself again: the dress, the curled hair, the telling similarities to Artemis when she spent her last meal in that restaurant with Victor so long ago, and all hope I had left disappears. Without turning to look at her I answer, “Yeah…I understand.” Then I do turn, and I look her right in the eyes. “I understand perfectly.” Hestia smiles slimly, confidently, and I accept that Death is at my door.
Victor Blood seeped through all of my fingers, and I could hear Artemis choking, gasping for air, and I could not let her go. I held her there in the embrace of my one free arm, listening to her last breaths, feeling the life drain out of her. Osiris and Brant stood like statues in the room, watching the scene with wide eyes and parted lips, shocked by my actions, I supposed. I thought it odd how they both wanted me to kill her, and I did, exactly in the manner in which was required of me, yet they looked as though they had never seen someone dying before. Sirens wailed and drew closer; ultimately drawing Brant and Osiris from their shock-induced states. Police? Who called the police? “We have to go, Victor,” Brant insisted. He walked toward me quickly, drew a knife from his pocket and cut me free from my bonds— I was so dazed myself that I never noticed when Artemis fell from my lap and hit the floor. And I could not recall later—because I thought about that night many nights after—if I ever looked back at her as Brant dragged me from the room and out of the house, still naked. I sped away in my car, following Brant down the back roads, and almost crashed into a tree because all I could look at, the only thing that existed in my world at that moment, was Artemis’s blood on my hands, both literally and symbolically. I was white-knuckling the steering wheel; her blood covered the tops of my fingers, and every crevice in my mind. It was all that I could see, her blood.