Blood Red (77 page)

Vivi Anna

her firmly.

“She returned from a trip abroad with you already growing in her belly. No one knew who the father was, she would not say. It was odd for a woman of her age to conceive, but not unheard of. She thought it best you be raised as her granddaughter.”

Red stopped struggling. She laid her head on the table. Her breathing was labored. She did not want to hear, but the words were sly and slipped into her ears regardless. She was powerless not to listen.

“I believe your parents suspected something amiss in your tenth year. Your Granny started taking you more and more. You would travel with her to places no one knew of. I think your father found out. He was killed that year. An accident in the barn. Your Granny was there that day. ‘Twas no accident.”

“I have no memory of what you say.” Red’s voice was cold and hollow.

“You were a child, Red. We often block painful memories from our past,” Rapunzel explained. “They will come back.”

“I’ve had dreams.”

Rapunzel sat forward on her stool. “Yes, these are your memories trying to come back to you. Tell us of them.”

“I will, but first I want to hear the rest.” She glanced up at Wolf, her eyes brimming with tears.

“Those who knew of the Brothers return started to suspect that the prophecy was real. They suspected that you were no ordinary child. And your Granny was not who she portrayed herself to be. It was soon obvious that she had other motives. The Brothers 152

Blood Red

knew this. They also knew of the prophecy.”

Red sat up. She could hear the tremor in Wolf’s voice. She stared at him, knowing that his next words would devastate her. She could see the pain swimming in his glowing eyes. Like ink trailing a dark path through golden waters.

“They wanted me dead.”

Wolf nodded. “Yes.”

“And they wanted my…my Granny dead.” She grabbed onto Wolf’s shirt. She pulled on the fabric.

Not to pull him down or to raise her up, but to hold onto something, tear into something. “Didn’t they, Wolf?”

Wolf looked down at her tortured face. He could see the knowledge already clouding her emerald eyes, dulling their remarkable light to him. But he had no choice. She needed to know. Even if the pain of it ripped her apart, and stole any chance of their being together. She deserved the truth. The rebellion would not survive without it.

“I was hired to kill both of you.”

The tears that she was holding in fell silently down her face.

The others watched in silence. There was nothing they could say or do. This was Red’s agony. It was hers to endure.

“The night before it was to be done, I decided I could not. Even I could not kill an innocent child. The rebellion approached me then. They told me of the prophecy and of you. The plans were changed. I was sent to kill your Granny. She had turned on the people of Germania. She was willing to sell you to the 153