The End of Innocence: Book 3 of the Kinstone series

You’re…You’re alive?

I continue to stare into the mismatched eyes of the girl kneeling in front of me, claiming to be my long since dead birthmother. I always felt a strange connection to her, a weird if not perverse familiarity towards her. The more I gaze at her, the more I should’ve noticed something.

The gash down the right side of her face was where that part of her head was destroyed when my family’s house was devastated so long ago. Even to this day, the image of seeing my mother’s mauled and disfigured body haunts my dreams.

It’s not a thing you truly purge out of your mind. And when I did see her corpse, I saw through the eyes of child, rather than an adult. So it burned deeply into me.

The last time I truly ever thought of her and the others was on the one-year anniversary of their deaths. It took me that long to fully come to terms with it all, and it was a slow burn throughout that first year.

But…I buried you. I buried you next to Dad, Mommom, and Granddad. So why are you here now? How are you even here? Why so much anger and hatred towards me?

She suddenly stands up and lands a kick to my face, sending me flying back. My body crashes through a wall of the house, and lands some distance away, skidding to a halt.

I groan loudly, feeling as though a horse or certain vampiress had kicked me. My face aches and throbs as I roll onto my side, coughing. I peer over to the hole my body had just rocketed out of. I was a good three or four yards away from the house, and that’s after being sent through a wall.

Diana steps through the hole, now carrying my diary. She took her time. Step by step, she inches closer to me, her mismatched eyes gleaming in the moonlight overhead. Her face twists with a mix of hatred and seemingly perverse sense of impending joy.

When she finally approached me, she lands a vicious kick to the stomach. I groan and cough, coiling around my stomach.

“When I saw you that day at the market,” she says, angrily, “I was utterly shocked to know that the girl I saw there was in fact my child. You walked around so naturally, spoke clearly, the way to interacted with the people; it was though I was staring at a normal girl.”

So…you were the presence I felt in the mist. Those eyes, the smell which brought me to the ground, made me sick to the point where I nearly passed out from the pain and discomfort. I cough once as she landed another kick to my stomach, this time actually lifting me off of the ground.

“Do you have any idea how sickened I felt ‘palling’ around with you at the mall that day?” she asks. “I could hardly believe that the girl I was walking around with was the very same child that I had given birth to over thirty years ago. You can’t begin to imagine the utter humiliation I felt to see my child acting so much like a teenage girl.”

Diana growls, “You then tell me you ‘fell in love’ with a boy while in Japan. Just hearing those words made my stomach churn. Then you showed me around your new home. A literal kingdom to rule over as its princess, even talking about it makes hate you even more. How long did you keep that a secret from me? It felt as though you’ve been leading two separate lives.”

She then kicks me in the head, causing it to rock back violently. “You were a great man once, a handsome young man. Now you are nothing more than a spindling whimpering little girl. You threw away your life, your future,” kicking me again in my exposed stomach, “your family. For what? To live out a fantasy? To become something that you’re not? When I died, did you even mourn for me? Did you?!” She proceeded to kick me over and over again, all to the stomach and face.

I cough up some blood, spilling it onto the ground before me. My ribs ached, feeling a couple of the lower ones were either now cracked or by this point broken. I stared up at her the moment she stopped, watching her kneel before me.

“Then…there’s this,” holding up my diary, “you withheld so many secrets from me. I nearly threw up after reading through all of this. I was sickened, reading page after page of what you felt and experienced. I couldn’t believe at how far you had fallen, how quickly you had fallen to this…this…transformation.”

She then slams the diary across my face, “You disgust me, utterly and completely.”

My cheek stung from the book. My body writhes with pain from her repeated blows. She slowly rose from the ground, dropping the diary, and kicks me yet again, sending me against a tree.

I gasp for air as my body bounces off of the thick trunk, landing at its base. My muscles still feel as though thousands of needles were piercing my body.

My body isn’t responding to me. For some reason, and not only because I have basically woken up, something else is preventing me from using my magic. It’s being blocked or…sealed. Maybe the pain is causing the blockage. I then notice something else, streaming down my body.

I peer over to my right arm; the shirt sleeve is now red and moist with blood, feeling it roll down my arm. A sharp sting burns from my thigh. My injuries from the battle had reopened. Now combined with the injuries she had given me, made it hard to focus enough to do anything with magic.

Diana walks over to me and kneels down, grabbing me by the throat and hoisted into the air. She slams me against the tree I landed against, pressing me hard. I struggle for air amidst her tightening vice-like grip. I peer down at her, seeing a malicious glee shine within her eyes. She was enjoying this.

This isn’t my mother anymore. I saw no spark or shadow of love or empathy in her gaze, only the desire to kill me.