Mary´s choice for the meeting room was indeed great. The windows were high and there was only one access to this room. Naturally, I could block the exit off completely, but that wasn’t my intention. Instead, I bit into my own hand and swung it at every maid who escaped the room. I was quite merciless with the guards though and rammed one of my daggers into each and every one of them who tried to run.

Arthur was doing quite well in the middle of the room, but still had troubles against the guards who chose to fight as he was just jumping at every single one of them as ripped their throats open with his teeth. Luckily, his superior abilities saved him each and every time. In the end, I grew bored of protecting the door, shut it appropriately and entered the fray. I possibly overdid it by quite a bit as the fight was soon over and I didn’t leave many humans to play around with afterwards.

“Arthur, gotta catch them all.” Just like planned, he rushed out of the door, completely covered in blood while I was surprisingly still quite clean. He obviously followed the scent every single one of those that escaped this room carried with them: Mine. If everything went right, I would never have to see him again, which was quite sad, but also incredibly thrilling. I would get my life back after all as I wouldn’t need to feed him constantly then.

“I´m sorry you had to experience this.” I said to Mary and lead her out of the gruesome room.

“Are you?” Her question surprised me a bit, but not that much. What did surprise me was the look of disgust she gave me though. I didn’t understand her problem at all. We were even voting on the plan democratically in the kitchen and two-thirds were for it. And here I was, thinking that integrating her into the decision-making process would help.

“Mary, I am not keen on having you do this either. It is just not your world and I try to respect that as much as possible. All of this is the bare minimum of necessary violence to save my own skin. If any of these maids would have survived, I would be dead.” I held her hand and looked upwards into her eyes in an attempt to get through to her.

“You could have solved these problems differently without this much violence.” She pulled her hand away from me and walked away from me. I didn’t run after her, knowing she wouldn’t listen. I hated to admit there were indeed several other ways without this much violence, but all were riskier than this.

“Mum!” I shouted just as she opened the door. She hesitated to walk through it and finally turned around after a second or so.

“What?” Mary asked, angry and annoyed.

“Give me a chance.” I said, not really knowing what I was blurting out there. I nervously tripped from one foot to the other as Mary thought about my pleading.

“You already had yours.” She answered and closed the door behind her. This didn’t go as well as I hoped it would.

“Shit.” I mumbled and stormed out of the hallway into the foyer. There was blood at the windows, giving off a very thrilling scent. I wasn’t falling for my instincts though as I ran outside and sprinted towards Arthur. A well-placed fist in his stomach later, I felt a lot better, although the frustration about the conversation with Mary didn’t leave me. I wanted her to trust me, in fact, I needed her to. This was supposed to be what I wanted to call my home and thus, I always tried to be as friendly as possible to her. Heck, I didn’t threaten her that often thus far, I didn’t hit her with a baking tray yet and I even made cookies for her. Was I that unlikable?

Angry, I grabbed Arthur`s neck and slammed his head into the ground. A very approving grunt later, I repeated the process until his face was a bloody mess. In the end, I kicked him in the stomach, puffed my cheeks and left the scene once again. Bashing someone always made me a bit happier, but this endeavour sadly didn’t solve my problem.

A bit desperate, I walked back towards the mansion and began my work on the ground floor. Luckily, the family had quite a few flammable substances I spread around the house. And with this, my work was basically done. Easy.

After a few more minutes of waiting, Mary came down from the upper floor, but we both kept our mouth shut for now. I didn’t want her to act out of line while she just had nothing to tell me. After a minute though, I just couldn’t take the silence anymore, no matter how risky it was. And so, I started humming a few songs Aska liked. It was an hour after I started when she finally snapped.

“Could you please stop?” I stopped immediately, but didn’t know the reason.

“Uhm … why?” Was I too loud maybe?

“You aren’t supposed to like music and look … almost normal.” Wow, this was the second time this happened to me today. Taking drugs was apparently less of a problem for Tom and Mary than to bake cookies or to hum.

“Am I allowed to like knitting?” I asked curiously.

“No, definitely not.” She answered firmly.

“Cooking?”

“No.” A rejection once again.

“Why?”

“Because of things like this.” She pointed to a window where I drew a smiley with blood. It was honestly a piece of art, I even managed to give him a few hairs. “No evil person goes around and knits a scarf. You are a mass murderer, you are –“ Now I understood why they were so adamant about stopping me from doing these things.

“Stop. Did both of you think I am that shallow? That I only enjoy bathing in blood and nothing more? I expected more from you.”

“Tom claimed you are pure evil and I don’t have any reason to doubt him.”

“And you don’t want me to sing or cook because it doesn’t fit your views. You are trying to hate me so much that you cannot bear to see me do these things because they force you to see me in another light.” I looked at her as cold as I could. She shrank back, fearing what I was about to do. “Is this what I should do instead and get pushed into a role I don’t want, just like you, all these years ago as you were forced to marry Arthur? In that case, I´m doing it, so that you can sleep peacefully in your two-dimensional world of evil and good.”

I said and glared at her as she opened her mouth to reply. She should choose her words very carefully, otherwise, this relationship between us wouldn’t be salvageable anymore. Luckily, she stayed silent for now and I soon returned to dipping my finger into the blood and painting smileys at the wall. At least that was creepy enough for her.

“They are coming.” She said after several hours and pointed out of the window. Indeed, there were a bunch of villagers, armed with pitchforks and torches marching up the street that lead to the mansion. They wouldn’t win against Arthur like this, that was for sure, but Tom was apparently very successful at convincing them to wait just short until right before dawn. Arthur was still standing in the front yard, waiting for his pray, as I took a candle out of the wall.

“Let´s go.” I said and set a curtain on fire, then the next one. After we left the hallway, I set the wooden floor on fire as well and waited for a few minutes to see the fire spreading nicely. Mary was already coughing from all the smoke and I sent her to the weapon's chamber, only to follow behind her as the stair began to catch fire as well. Next, I ran through the ground floor and repeated the whole procedure, only to realize that I completely forgot where the stairs leading down were.

At least I found the stairs after running through the whole burning house … twice. I seriously needed to improve finding my way, but it was pretty hard considering that everything was so easy in purgatory in that regard. One house and a compass were it for most of the time.

Luckily, I found the weapon's chamber quickly as Mary leaned against the wall and waited for me outside, rather than inside. The door turned out to be made out of iron and as I couldn’t find any way of fire spreading through the underground hallway, I quickly closed the door behind us and used a few rags to stuff the gaps between the door and the doorframe.

“Puff …” I said a bit sadly as the connection I had with Arthur vanished suddenly. He was dead for good, killed by a few citizens who saw their chance as the sun rose. I just had to hope that Arthur died by Tom´s hands before the sun actually rose, otherwise it would be damn hard to explain why Arthur didn’t go up in flames but rather took a nice little nap in front of his enemies. “Arthur is dead.”

“I see.” Mary said slowly. “Why did you hug me yesterday?”

I raised an eyebrow and looked at her coldly, but still answered her question nonetheless.

“I wanted to see how it feels like.” She was surprised, much more than I anticipated in fact.

“And?” Telling her the truth here would be going back on my words, so I stayed silent and sat down at the opposite wall. She wasn’t getting any more answers from me she didn’t want to hear. “I´m sorry, Lucinda. If you really want to bake cookies all day, you can naturally do that. I will even help you if you want … don’t make the same mistakes I did.”

Her words were genuine and they came from the bottom of her heart. It touched even me to hear these words in a way she probably didn’t anticipate at all. Baking cookies all day was tempting after all. My usual smile returned to my lips swiftly and I make sure to eradicate the coldness in my eyes completely.

“Where does the change of heart come from?” I asked, slightly curious about the swift turn.

“You cannot murder if you are baking … at least not as much as otherwise.” Her words made me laugh loudly and I had to hold my belly as I couldn´t stop. This was truly a Mary worthy attempt to limit the destruction I caused. “I will do anything that stops you from murder, Lucinda.”

I finally stopped laughing and stood up gracefully.

“Lucy.” I curtsied elegantly.

“Lucy?” Mary apparently still didn’t grasp that going around as Lucinda was a rather dangerous endeavour if I wanted to play the role of a noble family´s daughter.

“Lucy White, a noble daughter who spends her money for charity. I like baking, cooking, knitting and tea parties … alright scratch the tea parties, that will never work out. Am I going through a nine-year-old with the right clothing? Probably … although I hate to wear pink.”

“You don’t have to change your name.” She said while frowning. I assumed she was still against impersonating someone due to her past, but for me, it was just a name, a very special name at that. If I were to do this for real, I would have to live with much, much worse things I couldn’t do. Like throwing a pan at Tom in public.

“Oh, no. I cannot tarnish the reputation of the White´s family by wearing the name of a murderer, can I? I promised you after all. And besides, Lucy is a great name! You can even give me the nickname Lu …” Sadness enveloped me and with closed eyes, I sat down once more. I avenged her death, and yet the pain about her loss didn’t vanish like I hoped it would. It always came back from time to time, hitting me like a carriage at full speed. Luckily, I also managed to hold the tears back successfully and fought back against this crushing feeling of sadness.

“Lucinda … Lucy …” Mary said.

“You are free to call me whatever you want as long as there aren’t outsiders around.” I smiled happily at her uncertainty with the names.

“Lucinda … how was the hug like?” Once again, I was beaming. I was beginning to like her more and more now, although she was completely unlike me. She was interesting, but not in a way that made me study her or play with her, but rather in a way where I wanted to be around her and see what she was capable of on her own.

“Repeatable.” She smiled bitterly at my answer and waited for me to rob over to her to wrap her arm around my shoulder. I leaned over to her and felt how her warmth spread around my body. I assumed this was the first sign of affection I ever experienced without any ulterior motives. I wanted nothing out of being this close to her, and she didn’t gain anything as well.