What Ella might think of the situation hadn't even occurred to Terrence before he turned around and caught sight of her, he hadn't had time to think about it. He had expected her here, because he'd asked her to come here, to meet him; the last thing he expected was the look on her face. Shocked into forgetting completely about everything else, he stayed numbly where he was.
He'd just killed a woman for touching his jacket, for flirting with him. He was fairly sure that was the exact, polar opposite of being unfaithful to Ella, and yet the look she'd given him made it feel like he'd done the very worst thing he possibly could, the unforgivable.
There were three people that could provoke a strong emotional reaction from Terrence. His parents, and Ella. He was familiar with the feeling his parents evoked; it felt awful, terrible, but he'd survived the worst of it, was about to erase it from his life entirely. Ella, on the other hand, was exactly the same for him that he was for her: because she was perfect, because they were perfect together, they were powerful. He now knew that she could make him feel the exact opposite, even if it was all a misunderstanding.
That was all it was, wasn't it? He couldn't think of any reason why she would have given him that look if she'd understood exactly what was going on; she had to have read something into it that wasn't there. It wasn't broken, it couldn't be, it couldn't.
It sure as hell felt like it at that moment, though. Vaguely, he became aware of the fact that every cell in his body seemed to be aching, especially - for no reason he could quite imagine - his ribs. And there was an extra tightness in the muscles just above his knees, as though he was tensing to jump.
How long he'd been standing there with the dead body of the woman lying near his feet, he didn't know. But after a moment, he blinked, looked down at himself, taking comfort in the fact that he hadn't gotten any of that fucking woman's blood on his clothes. A miracle, that, but he would take what he could get.
He couldn't go to Ella like this, in the vulnerable limbo just before he took his parents' fates into his own hands. He would do whatever it took to fix whatever was broken, but first he had to finish what he'd come here to do so that he could give her his full attention. It was no less than she deserved.
Thinking quickly, he hid the dead woman's body carefully beside the tavern, warding it invisible to anyone else's eyes, using every trick he knew to ensure that it would be undisturbed. He did need to get rid of the body, but if he needed proof later - he wanted to have that proof.
Then he was on his way to his parents' house. Before offering for Ella to join him, he'd come up with about fifty plans for how to kill them, but he'd come here today not knowing what would happen. Now, as he ascended the steps of the manor house, he felt the opposite of spontaneous; he felt cold, efficient. He paid no attention to the fact that the plants in the garden were already catching fire.
His mother was, as he'd expected, in the sitting room, her tea set cooling on the table as she napped over the book she was reading. That was what she did in the afternoons now, or so he had gathered from her writing. It was his father that he was after first, however. He turned the corner to the stairs to see his father coming down; transforming into his hyena form, Terrence took the stairs at a run and crashed into him, bone-crushing jaws closing over the forearm of his father's wand arm. They went down together, struggling, their descent hindered by the stairs before they hit the floor.
The crash must have woken his mother, because when Terrence looked up from where he stood atop his father's limp and weakly struggling form, blood covering his muzzle and his four paws, she was standing in the doorway, one horrified hand raised to her mouth. A moment later she went for her wand; Terrence took a leap to get out of the way, and her hex hit his father on the floor, making him go entirely still.