Lying on the ground, Isabella's body was in pain not the knife that had just entered her spine but the betrayal she had just received and years of trust shattered to ashes.
Why did I trust him? He tried to kill me with that first shot!
She saw Henry moving around the room, using the bayonet as a support. The bullet in his leg still had injured him but he was doing fine besides that.
"I am sorry, Isabella. I had to say this to you, to everybody who fought alongside us and who died here. I am working with the assassins."
He laid his back against the table and sat up on top of it. The table was itself nearly broken by Isabella's gunfire from a second ago.
A smug on his face with a hint of retreat in his eyes, he had sold the lives of the people he had served with for years and a friend.... all of them but why?
"you... I should've killed the moment you fired that bullet!!"
Isabella lashed out in anger, facing Henry, trying to get up using her arms. She had no remorse for the memory she had spent with him.... she just wanted the kill.
"Me too, Isabella. I could've left you die multiple times and tried with that first bullet but somehow survived everything. It made it harder for me to intact his betrayal. I shouldn't have done that."
Their eyes lock on, rage on one side pity on another. All the control is the ones who played the long game for the victory.
"Why?! Why did you for them?.. Since when? Why become a sellout in the open?! I kill for money and still have my rules but you....Did you sell the life and blood of your brother and mother for... What?"
"I didn't sell anything, Isabella. I was paying back to the people of this kingdom. For their virtuous actions all those years ago."
"...." Isabella wore a confused look on her face, none of her past conversations with Herny reminded her of anything which could fill the gaps here.
"Forgotten have you? Of course, you have. It was supposed to this all of it. The insects which leech off our blood and mind did this to me, you and everybody else."
He jumped off his seat, anger running through his eyes and he walked on the blood which was splattered on the ground from the bodies of Italian men.
It had reached Isabella too, covering her dress in red, but her mind was busy elsewhere.
What lies is he talking about?
Henry walked near her, using the bayonet still and keeping the bayonet over her spine but he did not thrust it. Isabella knew, her act was already caught.
"You aren't bleeding much with the knife, you are wearing some sort of leather armour for your lower spine? How lucky can a person be?"
Isabella had torn a piece of leather the men were wearing earlier and worn it on her lower back, the thrust of the knife hadn't gotten too deep because of it but still she was bleeding and moving around too much wasn't an option.
Henry laid down with his back to the wall next to Isabella, bayonet not at her chest where she wore armour with his other hand, he checked Isabella's pockets and took out any last knife, she had. There were no surprise attacks left now.
"Isabella, How do you remember the Gold Pound City?"
"....?!"
The name rattled inside her ears, The Gold Pound City, the place where she was born and lived with her family until it was all taken away from her and instead gave her the scars on her arms which haunted her to this day.
"...."
Her eyes turned from angry to scared as the memories came floating back, which she did not want to remember but of course, the one reminding her of them shared her fate too.
Henry Forester was one of the very few survivors of the Gold Pound City massacre, the very act which began the rebellion which changed the history of this nation.
"I am sorry, Isabella. I know you haven't forgotten, those arms and screams, have already told about it. Still, do you remember what happened in those days? Do you recall your memory of the people who did it and the person who ordered it?"
With a small apology, Henry continued his inquiry, he wanted Isabella to recall everything of what she remembered. Of course, it was the very reason she was nation wanted criminal.
"Why do you want this?! It's over I killed them all, every single one of them is dead."
"I didn't ask for your actions, Isabella. I asked who ordered it, when it happened and what happened. If you want to die while knowing the truth about your family and life. I suggest you tell it all, from the very start."
The truth of my family? Is there something Mother Elana did not tell me?! How is this possible?!
Isabella had never trusted anyone more than her, not even Edward. She knew if she was dying here only Mother Elana's blessings could save her not Edward. So, throwing away any doubts about Mother Elana, she began speaking.
"The Gold Pound City a city also lined across a cost. Confided between walls and even larger than Capital itself. The home of more than 20,000 immigrants from the nation all In one place because living anywhere else was a nightmare. Too much disparity. There were no schools in the building for study nor did it have a religious place for people to worship. It was a prison, not a home."
It was the worst of the times, the demon's reign had left behind its scars. Tore down religious institutions and immigration was completely banned
Henry continued for Isabella, information which he was sure was common to both of them.
"Impossible for a person or family to return in such a situation the other problem was the ruler Eleanor Gold II, a peculiar leader who had a strange obsession with the construction of the walled cities, under which he ruled multiple cities, along with the one in which we are right now got their walls along with an outlandish capital wall reconstruction."
His construction had led an economy which was struggling to an all-out economic disaster, pushing the price of Bread and pulse to an all-time high even unmatched to this day.
"In response to his terrible, economic decision, he shifted the blame entirely to us immigrants. The Gold pushed the blame on us and the people blindly agreed with him and the immigrants were discriminated against beyond belief."
Isabella knew all of this and she knew what was next to come, a piece of history that she was a part of but not the way she ever wanted.
Henry went quiet and now Isabella spoke once again,
"In 1798, after the situation had gotten very worse in the northern region, in my school children were throwing rocks at me and my friends who came from the city to study. Still, it was bearable but the wages for work were at an all-time low. I remember why my parents skipped dinner for like a week to feed me twice a day"
Isabella soon went quiet too, a sorrowing nostalgia entered her body. The memories she never wanted to remember, were so calming and fulfilling when she did and soon tears were emerging too.
"Isabella continue speaking, You haven't completed your part yet. Speak."
Isabella took a deep sigh to calm herself, she had forgotten all enmity toward Hnery for a moment and left a sense of comradery instead, for the two suffered the same incident.
"I think it was a year after in 1799, The situation reached an all-time worse for everyone. Eleanor Gold II, launched an army at our home, led by Roman Dave Rogers..."
Isabella's blood pressure rose at that name, and anger rose. Blood boiling and hands rubbing against the floor she continued.
"Roman, led an army of 15,000 men from the capital and soon his army was joined by 7000 other blind pigs. Who..... Destroyed our home and took everything we had."
"What did they do to us Isabella, do you remember that? Any of it."
Henry probed Isabella, she looked at him in dismay at what he was asking but still, his eyes were cold and sharp, he knew something Isabella didn't.
She knew that and now her heart won't allow her to stop.
"They killed every man, woman and child they found. Everyone was killed, and their heads were lined on pikes. My father was hit with a shovel on his head... I don't remember what happened to me but seeing the burn marks on my body, I think they tried to burn me alive. I don't what fate others suffered but everybody I ever knew died here under the sword foolish and greedy pigs. Which do not deserve to live!! I Fucking I'll want to kill every last one of them, rip their ribcage and show it to their kids. I don't care if The devil takes me, I want to kill every person I saw that day."
Isabella now cried as she spoke, the pain was heavy and so was her voice now but Herny did not cry, because he had already cried, he wanted to tell Isabella the truth before she died.
"Isabella? What happened to your mother? You didn't mention her."
"She.... She...was I think... She was beaten to death by a shovel in front while trying to protect me."
"Did you see her dead body? With your own eyes."
"No...."
Henry smiled now, a smile of guilt and pain. It was filled it realization, realization of how twisted the world had become and how it forgave its biggest criminals.
"Isabella, Your mother, my mother, my brother all of them have gone through something far more cruel than I and you did. We were lucky that we did not share their fate. Your survival was nature's punishment of them."
What the hell is he talking about? What happened?
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