Frozen River - Part 4

Kasik picked up his coat and hurried out of the cave.

On the night that his foster parents and Raskaea had died, Sylilin had asked them to meet him in the mountains. He had been waiting for almost an hour by the time they arrived. They gasped when they saw the monstrous sword he was holding. When he had come home, he had brought a huge, long bundle with him, but no one had known it was a sword. What seemed to alarm them more, though, was his ashen face.

"Son, what's wrong?" asked his father. Not his real father, though.

Standing up from the boulder he had been sitting on, he walked stiffly toward them. "Father...I'm not really your son, am I?" He felt as if he were learning to speak all over again. His tongue felt swollen and heavy.

His foster mother opened her mouth to speak, but his foster father's words came out first. "No, you are our son. We found you that day in the snow, raised you, and loved you. You are our son as much as Verok and Kasik are. We love you."

"I'm sorry...Father." Two teardrops sped by Sylilin's face as he dashed forward, slashing the blade across his foster father's throat and slicing it into his foster mother's chest.

They had died quickly. Maybe even painlessly.

Only Raskaea was left, her beautiful face struck with fear and shock. Her legs were twitching. She looked like a doe that was deciding on which way to run. Except her decision didn't seem as if it was which direction to run toward; it was whether or not to run at all.

She bolted-toward him. "Why!? Sylilin! Why!?" Tears were flooding her eyes. She tripped and fell onto his shoulders, her large brown eyes still asking him that same question. Her hands on his shoulder, she dug her nails into his robe and through to his skin. "Please tell me why...my Sylilin would never do this. What's happening?"

He saw her. He saw her tears. He wanted to kiss them away, but the sword in his hand forbade him. The woman before him needed to die.

"I...love...you."

"I love you too," she replied.

Then he thrust the edge of Ragnarok into her slender belly.

Years after, he still felt the blood on his hands.