"What kind of black smoke?" She whispered softly.
"Black magic. My parents were killed by it. The car rolled over and slammed into the trees at the side of the road and crashed. The driver, my brother, and I were injured, but it didn't kill us. My parents, however..." The anger in his voice was unmistakable now as he continued.
"I saw my mother, who had been smiling at me only a moment before, covered in blood. Her skull had been split in two and her body had been severed at the middle. And my father..." Sebastian couldn't bring himself to describe it fully, for the grotesque image was already replaying itself behind his eyes with brutal clarity.
"My father's head was lying right in my lap, and his body had been thrown out through the side of the half-torn car." His throat bobbed and his heart was beating so frantically that Viola raised her hand and placed it gently against his face without even thinking, moved by an understanding of his pain that needed no words.
