The Lady of the Night – Chapter 2

 

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Chapter 2 

Youth and the Massacre 

Memory carries its own fragrance. For me, youth smelled of melted candle wax lighting our modest home, of bread my mother baked on cold mornings, and of my father’s damp boots, always dusted by the streets of revolution.

I was nearly seventeen when my father first led me into a secret gathering of rebels. The cellar was thick with lamplight smoke and the sweat of men shouting furiously against the nobility’s privileges. I listened, spellbound, sensing that something vast was about to erupt.

Soon, I learned to handle the small daggers my father hid beneath the mattress. “One day, daughter, you will need to defend yourself,” he told me. The cold steel in my hands felt both alien and strangely comforting.

But on that fateful winter night of 1791, my youth ended.

The wind sliced through the cracks of the window, carrying the distant scent of burning barricades. I was asleep when the door splintered open. My heart pounded. My mother’s muffled cry echoed through the room.

Soldiers.

Heavy boots thundered up the stairs. I seized the daggers beneath my pillow, my palms slick with sweat. The first soldier burst in, and I struck instinctively, slashing his arm. The sharp scent of blood filled the air. He roared and hurled me against the wall. The wood cracked beneath the force.

My father appeared with a musket, firing point-blank. The deafening blast dropped the soldier, but three more stormed upward, shouting curses at “the dogs of revolution.”

The fight dissolved into chaos. Muskets flared, bayonets clashed, furniture toppled. My father fought bravely but was pierced through the chest. I screamed as the metallic stench of blood mingled with his sweat.

Desperate, I fought to shield my mother. I seized a glowing iron from the hearth and struck a soldier’s face. The acrid smell of scorched flesh filled the room. He howled, but another seized my mother.

I will never forget the sound that followed — the brittle snap of her neck breaking like a fragile branch.

Iron arms restrained me. The commander, cloaked in red, leaned close, his breath sour with cheap wine.

“The price of rebellion is death,” he whispered. “Let all witness what happens to those who defy the crown.”

I struggled in vain, forced to watch as my parents’ bodies were dragged outside. Torches lit the street. Before neighbors compelled to watch, the soldiers hung them by their feet from a post, a grotesque warning. Blood dripped onto the frozen ground like a macabre clock, marking the end of the life I had known.

I escaped in the confusion, running into the night, tears mingling with blood at the corner of my mouth. My feet tore against the stones, but I did not stop. I ran with the wind, with the pain, with the hatred.

In the forest, alone, wrapped in the scent of moss and wet earth, I collapsed. Snow fell, covering my bloodstained clothes. In the silence, I felt hollow — dead though still breathing.

Then, something stirred among the trees. A presence. Steps too light to be soldiers. Eyes gleaming like blades in the shadows.

And there, in the solitude of the woods, I met the stranger who would change everything.

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