Sword of Ares (Awakening the Giants Book 1) by Alex Morgenstern

Author:Alex Morgenstern [Morgenstern, Alex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-07-17T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter XVII - Beetroot Soup

Irema enjoyed the few hours of solitude and prayed for them not to end. She breathed in the vapour of the boiling soup water on the side. The old long hall, with the gold covered table, now deprived of the shining metal as if stripped of its glory, leaving only solid wood, awaited its apprentices like a war widow waiting for her dead husband. The spinning wheels stood orderly over the table, in line like an army preparing for war, or rather, like statues adorning the ruins of a past age. Irema panted, holding an iron knife in hand, her other hand grasped a beet, cutting it into small squares, and then smaller, as a fluid as red as blood soaked the cutting board. The colour of pain, of death. Images rushed through her mind, and she slid her eyes upward as they pierced through her memories like a sharp blade.

She wished, for a second, that the beet juice was actually blood. Not hers, but someone in particular, someone who came home at sunset every evening.

Through the window, the sun was setting beyond the dark trees, casting red and violet light on the clouds. She grasped the knife tightly again. The time was close, like inescapable fate.

She let out a cry, she tensed her fist and waved the knife at the air, stabbing an imaginary foe. She had a picture in her mind. That man, that monster who had forced his way into her life, the man the world called her husband, his comrades called Helius, and she called hell on earth. Many other women had yielded, many, perhaps as a defensive instinct, had accepted their fate.

But not her. Her love for Karus still burnt like a raging sun within her heart. His dark eyes still sparkled in her dreams, his soft skin and caring hands. But his life had been taken and his blood spilled on the walls of the citadel, and Irema’s heart and body had been offered by force to someone else.

She lowered her head, hands still on the handle, and she wept.

The sky grew ever darker, and hell was soon to come. He would push her around like a mule, he would get angry like a raging bull, he would yell and grab her by the hair and hurt her, and use her, and break her dreams. The only thing that kept her from bursting out and lashing out was her mother. Zita was wise, she had gone through a lot, she had fought and killed in her day, and had told her it was not worth it. Wasn’t it? Was living through hell acceptable?

The soup water boiled, the steam escaped from above. She grabbed the beet cubes and threw them inside. She wished she had other ingredients, she thought of a peculiar red mushroom that could give visions to the pure, but to the evil, it could give a slow and painful death. But no, she was trapped, like a beast inside a cage.

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