mourn adroxis | 9

m o u r n .

"If only if only,
if only if only."

Feet shoulder width apart, left pushed slightly back, hold the victim in place and bury the weapon in the throat. Any tool is appropriate as long as one uses enough force. However, it is preferable to use something sharp, it is easier work and less strain on the wrist. Catching the subject by surprise is ideal as it is harder to dodge an unexpected attack but in most cases, this will not be possible. Just be certain not to miss.

There is a hole in me just to the left of my heart but it may as well have pierced it because I barely feel anything at all. The cold creeps in further each winter and causes the muscle there to ache, twisting and turning the skin until I'm as knotted as an old tree. Esther places her hand over the scar in her sleep and rubs gently to warm it, hand moving slowly in circular motions the way that it has for years. I don't know how to tell her that it isn't like starting a fire, a spark won't catch and I'll always be heartless.

I tell myself I love her and I do, always. Esther has a smile like a rising sun and she's tough as nails but she was never meant to be mine. I was never meant to be heir to the Adroxis empire and it's been almost twenty years but I still wonder if she thinks of Vern when she looks at me. What should have been always feels so far away.

I look at our children and I love her and I will love her until my bones turn brittle and rust and further. I've never seen the ocean but I imagine that she and it are much the same. I worry that I write her poems in my head to overcompensate, that the hollow feeling inside of me gives me stories to tell. Then she puts her hand on my chest to comfort me in her sleep and I know that I'm always going to be wrong.

We have seven children together, their fingers smell of gunmetal and they carry heat from a young age. No Adroxis child can grow without knowing how to shoot, gun powder runs through our blood. No child of mine can go untrained, not in this district. To be born an Adroxis is to be born with a target on your back.

Babe Adroxis, the patriarch of the family, was the first victor to come out of Nine and we all carry the weight of that on our shoulders. Our roots go deep, far down into Nine's underworld and there aren't very many gang members out there that don't carry an Adroxis gun, in any district.

Our guns travel far, further than most of us ever will.

None of it was supposed to be mine, Vern was the heir and I was eighteen and so caught up in painting that it took me two days to find out that he had died. It was a knife in the neck, dark alley near one of our loading points. Tess Seraphim and I were having a drink because it was her birthday and I was madly in love with her. Her smile made my skin burn and I desperately wanted to be perfect for her. My father sent me a memo, bloodstained and as void of emotion as he.

Vern was dead.

Long live the king.