Neva wakes with a foggy mind, though she's dimly aware of the heaviness in her heart, asking her Father to keep her husband and son safe, to tear away the thornbushes wrapping around her so she can run towards them again.
So she can be with them again, so Rhett can tell her that it was all only a nightmare.
A touch grazes her cheek, and she opens her eyes to meet those dark, unfamiliar ones.
Through the bleariness, she struggles to make sense of his face before a shiver runs down her spine at the cruel recognition of that cold, unsmiling expression.
She flinches as his fingers glide along her neck, the touch only sharpening her awareness of the soreness circling the front and sides of her throat.
"Your husband is dead," Ishmael says. "And so is your son."
She wonders if she heard him right.
If she did, how can this be?
How is she supposed to live now?
Why is she even alive anymore?
No. No. It can't be.
Her Father won't do this to her.
"It didn't have to be this way if you had just stayed before." He gently unbuttons the bodice of her nursing gown.
Then pauses, glancing at her. "I've been in love with you all my life," he says.
"It all went back to how it's supposed to be."
How did he kill them?
"You were always mine—"
His words are cut short as she grabs the glass vase from the nightstand and smashes it against his head.
Glass explodes with a sickening crack, shards shattering across the floor as his head jerks violently to the side.
Red roses and fragments of glass litter the floor, the sheets soaked with water
as he stumbles backwards, one hand clutching his forehead while blood trails down his cheek.
She snatches a sharp shard of glass from the sheets as she lunges at him.
But he catches her wrist, the shard digging into her skin as she struggles against his crushing grip.
"You're a liar," she hisses through gritted teeth, tears streaming down her cheeks as she forces the shard towards him, desperate to make it pierce him.
Not a flicker of emotion crosses his gaze as she fights to wrench herself free, but he twists her wrist sharply, forcing the shard from her grasp.
The shard clatters onto the floor, and before she can reach for another,
he drives her backwards onto the bed.
No. No. He's going to take from her again.
She can't let him do that to her again.
Rhett... How is she going to face him?
She twists beneath him, screaming through the ache in her throat as she kicks and claws at him.
But he forces her down, pinning her struggling arms against the mattress, just as the door slams open.
"Sir, are you alright?" a man's voice asks.
"Get out." Ishmael's gaze remains fixed on her.
"Sir, you're bleeding."
"I said, get out!" he snaps.
The faint click of the door closing reaches her ears, and her screams dissolve into sharp, frantic sobs that leave her whole body trembling.
His grip on her loosens slightly, his mint-laced breath brushing against her skin as she cries,
disgust swelling within her like a raging storm, agony threatening to drown her faith, her sense of self, her very being into the depths of a bottomless chasm.
Why must it be this way?
What didshe do wrong?
They can't be dead.
They can't. They just can't.
He wouldn't do this to her.
He won't. She knows He won't.
Rhett must be searching for her.
Rhean... Rhean must be crying forher.
She needs to leave. They need her.
But how? Why did God allow it to happen?
Doesn't He care?
Doesn't He love her anymore?
Why would He stand still and watch as they burn her world down,
leaving her writhing, bleeding amidst the ruins?
As Ishmael withdraws,
Neva curls into herself, the shards digging into her skin, yet nothing compared to the breathless sorrow tearing through her entire being.
She wants to go back to him. She wants to be home in his embrace.
She wants to feel the weight of her baby in her arms.
She wants to see them again.
And she will beg until He rips this feeling from her, this sickening sensation of her flesh rotting and crawling with maggots, until He takes her back to her husband... to her son again.