Rise of a Queen (Kingdom Duet #2) - Rina Kent Page 0,5

like pulling my own teeth from my mouth. It’s not about changing names and going blonde for a few years. It’s not about cutting my hair and picking a different clothing style. It’s not even about losing my northern accent.

Those are the easiest parts of disappearing. Everything else that’s hard to change is the problem.

It’s about altering the way I walk so people don’t recognise me from afar.

It’s forcing myself to become a right-handed person after living for sixteen years as a left-handed person. That’s why my handwriting is rubbish, and when I’m exhausted, I switch back to my left hand without realising it.

It’s stopping myself from eating the food I like the most so that I’m not recognised through it. Over time, I’ve lost all joy in eating altogether and it’s become a chore.

It’s about erasing my habits and everything I used to take for granted, one by each bloody one.

Disappearance is about rebirth.

When I first escaped the Witness Protection Program, I kept watching over my shoulder and under every bed I slept on. I searched the wardrobes and installed three locks on my doors. I never slept with my window open, even if it meant drowning in my own sweat due to summer’s heat. For a few months, I moved from one motel to the other and covered my tracks in case anyone from back home was following me.

I stopped being Clarissa and threw everything about her life behind me. I stopped believing in superheroes and in love. I stopped dancing and singing in the shower.

I stopped living.

So when I find myself at the site of my rebirth again, I’m not surprised.

After watching the snippet of Dad’s interview, being attacked by Sarah, and hearing the message Alicia left about her own death, I had no actual presence of mind to think.

I still can’t.

My fingers shake, my knees, lips, and palms sting. I haven’t stopped for a bathroom break and I survived on a bottle of water through the entire four-hour drive here.

I’ve returned to where I was born and reborn.

The cottage in the middle of the forest.

Dad’s site of murder.

On the internet, there are articles about how this place is haunted and many curious teenagers film themselves inside it to prove they’re fearless.

A few years ago, I gave up ownership of our house in town. I signed it over to a charitable association and they’re now using it as a centre for disabled children. I had my solicitor make all the arrangements so that no one would know I was behind it.

However, I didn’t give up this cottage. One, it’s not really worth much, and just like back then, it’s as if a part of my soul is still trapped in there, along with those dead women’s bodies.

It’s black outside except for the silver moon. Its ghostly fingers creep between the stilled branches and the silent, black earth. The silence is like that in a cemetery, long and deafening in its uninterrupted quiet.

A shiver claws up my spine as I watch the place where many lost their lives without being heard. Death reeks from every pebble and every tree. From the sky and the night. They stand witness to the time everything started and ended.

The moonlight casts a shadowy silver light on the old architecture that Dad built with his own hands. He was so good with them, his hands.

He knew how to snap necks, then fix me breakfast. He knew how to set traps for helpless animals, then brush my hair as if he was the most doting father on earth.

It’s been eleven years, but it’s almost as if I saw Dad dragging a dead woman across the ground only yesterday.

Time is…immeasurable in this place. It has its own metrics and its own haunted memories.

It’s been a few hours since I arrived, but I haven’t left my car. My fingers keep tracing my watch, back and forth, as if that will fill me with the needed courage. I told myself I would get out when I could control the trembling of my limbs, but that hasn’t happened.

My hand is still quivering as I open the door and step outside. I follow the moonlight’s trail, my unsteady heels crunching against the pebbles.

My ankle pulses with pain; I probably twisted it when Sarah pushed me to the ground.

I limp my way to the cottage, then stop in front of the door. The need to destroy it — or better yet, burn it — rushes to the forefront of my