Excerpt: Shattered

Nyx came home to find her father and sister quaintly sitting in the living room eating. She felt sick to her stomach seeing them like this knowing the news she was about to break. She was angry at them for acting to care free in a time like this. She had just lost her mother. She had just lost the only person in her life worth living for and her father and sister were able to sit and eat like nothing had gone wrong. She felt like hurting them, killing them with her words.

They acknowledged her as she walked in. Era offered her some supper, but Nyx refused it. She wasn’t hungry. In fact she felt like throwing up. Anger swelled inside of her. She wanted to scream; she wanted to throw something, break something.

She slowly collected herself and reminded herself why she came here. Her mother was dead and it was only fair to share the news with the other two people who supposedly loved her. She sat down slowly and cleared her throat to catch their attention. “I have something to tell you,” she said solemnly.

“What is it?” Era said with some degree of concern. Alec only continued to eat his food. “Is it mom? Is she better? Did she wake up? Tell me.”

Nyx gathered up her strength and prepared to deliver the surely devastating news. “No, she’s not better,” she replied with a tinge of bitterness in her voice. “She died this morning of heart failure. There was nothing they could do.”

The shock this created in Era was enough to make her drop her plate. It shattered as it fell to the ground. “I, I have to clean this up,” she said hurriedly. She rushed into the kitchen and grabbed the broom. She walked back into the living room and cleaned up the shards of the broken plate. She was dumbfounded.