Chapter 287: To Kill Her Mother

"She didn’t let me get treated. She hit me, telling me it was my fault for getting sick. Telling me that I should never have been under the rain and how everything that happened was because of me. And I believed her."

"She knew you were a child, right? And children don’t take to being locked up, right? That children like to explore and that, if anything, it was her fault for neglecting you, right?" Lysander asked coldly.

His emotions reflected Orion’s, who had been quiet as he listened to Sophia speak. He was trying very hard to control his emotions just so he could hear everything Sophia planned on telling them, even if he wanted to do nothing more than find out who it was that had hurt her like this.

Sophia shrugged. "I was but a child, Lysander. And the only person I knew and the only person I could trust was my mother. She taught me everything, so obviously when she said it was all my fault, I believed her. I told myself that it was my fault too, because if I had not even left the room in the first place and did what I was told to do, then I wouldn’t get sick. She gave me a task, and I can’t even remember what it was, but she was angry that I didn’t finish the task," Sophia told them.

"Every time she visited and found out I was still sick, she got angry...."

"She should have gotten you treatment," Marta exploded in anger. "She should have gotten you a healer to help you recover, and not blame you for being a child she neglected."

"I know that now," Sophia told her. "I know now that none of it was my fault, but then I had thought it was my fault because, like I said, there was no reason not to believe her, because she was all I knew and she was my teacher too."

"I apologized a lot to her. Begging her to forgive me."

A silent understanding washed among the people in the room. They now understood why they had always heard her apologizing. It was because someone made her feel guilty for something she didn’t know. For something that they had caused themselves.

Sophia’s hands shook as she spoke. Orion noticed and then placed a palm over them, steadying her. She gave him a grateful smile.

"I told her I was sorry for being sick. For being under the rain. For not listening to her. I begged her numerous times to forgive me. I begged her to forgive me for not even recovering, even when there was no treatment whatsoever that I even received," Sophia told them.

"She came in the next day, and when she saw I was still sick, she hit me numerous times. Then she brought in a nurse to treat me for just two hours." She gave Marta a grateful smile.

"I don’t know how, but what I was seeing was messed up in a way. That day, I saw you treating me, but I didn’t know it was you at all," Sophia said to her.

"It was reality overlapping with your memories," Lysander told her.

"I suspected. There were a few discrepancies—like I was seeing people I know now, but then I was still stuck there, in my bedroom," she told him.

"We were trying to bring you back to us, even though it was extremely difficult," Marta told her.

"Thank you," Sophia told her.

"There’s nothing to thank me for, dear. I would do it over and over again if it was needed," Marta told her.

"You know, I felt more warmth from you than I felt from my mother," Sophia said with a smile.

"Sophia," Orion called out softly.

"Yes?"

"What happened to your friends?" he asked her.

Sophia’s gaze fell, and her eyes dimmed a bit.

"They died. My mother said it was my fault they died. I know that’s not true and she was just trying to twist everything and put the blame on me, but my brain didn’t comprehend it at that time. I believed her when she told me that it was because of me they died. And she was partly right though—if I had just minded my business and decided not to make friends, then they would still be alive now, pursuing their dreams," she said sadly.

Noctis growled in anger. Orion didn’t say anything at first. For a while, there was just silence in the room, and then he spoke—his voice calm and leveled.

"Do you remember what pack you belonged to?" he asked her.

She shook her head. "I only remember what happened during the fever."

"Do you remember your mother’s name, then?" he asked her.

Sophia shook her head.

"How about how she looks?"

"I can’t remember her face very well, but she has long black hair and she always dressed stylishly. Why do you ask?" she asked him with a frown on her face.

Orion groaned loudly, ignoring her question. "How am I going to work with this? How do you expect me to work with just this? There are numerous people with long black hair who dress stylishly, Sophia."

"I know that, and I’m going to try to do more to remember. If I can remember this, then maybe I can remember the other things I’ve forgotten," she told him.

"Um, Sophia," Lysander called to her. "By any chance, did your mother try to drown you in a river or something?"

Sophia stared at him in shock. "How do you know?"

"You were choking for air like you were drowning. The injuries on your body—you enacted them upon yourself. To us, you were hurting yourself, but to you, she was doing something else," Lysander told her.

"No wonder my body hurts," she said with a laugh.

While she laughed, she had no idea that Orion was one second away from bursting through the doors and finding her mother.

"She tried to drown me, but—"

She didn’t even finish her words before Orion stood up, anger radiating from him. He kicked the chair he was sitting on to the floor and started storming out of the room.

"Where are you going to?" Lysander called out.

"To kill her mother," Orion said casually. "I’ll drown her the same way she tried to drown Sophia."