Stay Dead This Time Chapter 12
Every last trace of color left Stellan’s face.
Two broad-shouldered servants stepped forward, unshackled him from the wall, and pinned him to the ground. “No… Please…” Stellan finally broke. “Elara, I’m begging you… Please… You can’t do this to me… I’m Ansel’s father…”
“Father?” I crouched down until my eyes were level with his. “When were you ever his father? He knelt in that chapel for six hours until his legs were too swollen to stand on. Where were you then?
“He was sick, and all he wanted was a birthday cake. Where were you then? When people called him a wretched child and pushed him around, where were you then?”
Stellan opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
“You have not been a father to him for a single day.” I stood. “So, don’t try using that to beg.”
The servants got to work. Stellan’s screams echoed through the empty dungeon for a very long time.
I turned and walked out. The iron door swung shut behind me, sealing every sound inside.
From that day on, Stellan was kept in the dungeon. He would get one bowl of water and one piece of dry bread a day. His hands and feet were ruined, and he could not even stand. All he could do was lie on the cold stone floor and stare up at the small window above his head.
At first, he cursed me every day. He called me vile, venomous, and swore I would die a wretched death. I did not hear a word of it.
Then, the cursing stopped, and silence took its place.
After that came the muttering. It was fragments of things I could not make out, spoken to no one.
Until one day, I went down to check on him and found him staring blankly at the window. Two thin tracks of tears went down his face.
“I remember now.” His voice was so hoarse it was barely audible.
I stopped mid-step.
“The previous life… I remember all of it…”
He turned his head slowly to look at me, and there was something in his eyes I had never seen before. It was not hatred. It was not anger. It was a deep, wordless remorse. “Elara… I’m sorry…”
I stood in the doorway of the cell for a long time without speaking. “You remember?”
I looked at him.
He only nodded. “I remember… Ansel’s legs… Those years you spent in the cottage… and when you died…”
His voice broke. “I remember all of it…”
“Good.” My voice was calm. “I was worried you’d die without knowing why and think you didn’t deserve it.”
“Elara…”
“It’s not unfair,” I cut him off. “Everything you owe Ansel and me from the last life, you will repay in this one.
Every last bit of it.”
Stellan closed his eyes. Tears slid down his face without a sound.
I did not spare him another glance. I turned and walked out.
From that day on, Stellan stopped cursing me. He grew quiet. He spent his time remembering and repeating the words, “I’m sorry” over and over again.
Still, what good was an apology? In the last life, Ansel and I died. In this life, the debt he owed had to be paid.
As for Vivienne, after her title was stripped, she was locked in another cell in the dungeon. She came to her senses far more quickly than Stellan did, because she had never taken the death-feigning potion and her mind had been sharp all along.
She understood perfectly well what had happened. Stellan was dead to the world, the Montclair title now belonged to Ansel, and she had gone from being the grand matriarch of the estate to a prisoner in a cell beneath it.
