Chapter 93. Freedom Comes with a Price

Layla’s POV

I sat in my bedroom. The door was locked, and my dress from yesterday hung on the door. Yesterday, when I took it off, something sticky and wet clung to my fingers. I was sitting on the foot of my bed, the memories of my bloodstained hands still fresh in my head. It was there in front of me, the blood drying onto my skin as I stared at it.

Once I went to wash it off, the water turned red, the smell of metal rising, and the vision of those people being killed playing over and over. Now, when I looked at my hands, they weren’t clean. I would forever have blood on my hands from that night. Nathaniel made it so that I was a participant not only in the ritual but in the killings, the murders.

Those four people were then discarded like dirt, their bodies burnt, and everyone went home in silence. Today, as I looked out the window, I saw that the doors were open to the houses, and the food was on the tables. The children ran around playing, and the adul