GabrielI did not look back.      I gone on, and waited for a plea to stay with her, but I did not hear her voice. I expected it though, she was Mathilda after all, and she was strong enough to slay her own battles.     As I let myself be further away from her which I oddly dreaded,

GabrielMathilda was burning, and I only watched like before.      It pained me that even after all these years, I could do nothing. I was still the beaten-up kid. I stood, frozen in place, and endured her image as it gone up in smoke. And then I heard her, “Stop being a baby, Gabriel.”  

And then I remembered it.     I stood in front of the cloaked sister, not knowing she was Tina. Suddenly, there was a rumble and the surrounding was lit by a lightning, and before I could fully see her face, someone hit me.      It happened before with Gabriel, so I had a quick moment to fight the urge of being unconscious. My eyes were hazy, but I saw

I wanted to punished him with my own hands.     I could be Princess Anipe who killed her abusive and adulterous husband by drowning him on the Nile river in his sleep. But I could not do it. First, the knights were probably guarding him, and second, because the river-lake was miles from the convent. I could not carry him on my own.     I could be Gloria who faked his rapist husband’s death only to cage him on their house basement until he rotted. But there was no basement in the convent, only the hidden room in the library that was now known. And if I would be using any of the other rooms in the convent, the walls were not thick enough to subdue his scream at night.      Or if I could not be the two, I could be court maid Gyung Hui of the Yi Dynasty, who put poisoned on her lips before kissing the prince who played her expecting heart. But I did not know any poisons in the herbarium, and I

Sister Ana was summoned first.     It had been hours since she entered the holy hall that was now converted as courtroom, and it had been the same time since we were instructed to stay at the mess hall. I was both a victim and a witness, but it felt like I was the person in trial for there were pins and needles resting on my feet as I waited for my turn.     “What is taking them so long?” Sister Katarina asked. She was on the edge of her seat, and her hands were pressing on each other. “Do you think they will cross-question us like that?”     “Nope. I don’t think so.” I answered her. Relief washed over her face, and it vanished into thin air as I said, “I think we will have a longer time than her.”     “And why is that?”     “