Chapter Forty-One #2
There is a part of me that wishes to justify my fear.
That wants to point out that it is not death that I am running from, it is not Kolfina or her little guard dog.
It is the others, the monsters in the dark that would feed on the life blood within my veins.
It is the man who holds court over the Night as if he himself created it, a man drenched in so much blood that I seem but an amateur in comparison.
I am a fox lost in a maze full of expert hunters, hopping over writhing vines and dodging rotting flowers that seem to stretch out for me. They grasp at my clothes, tearing through them like knives, slicing into my skin and leaving bloody breadcrumbs behind me for the dogs to follow.
And follow they do, I realize as I round a corner and smack into the eldest son’s chest—Dorian, if I remember correctly.
He arches an eyebrow but makes no move to catch me as I pivot around him and keep running.
Nor do the others—Jonas Alilovi?’s laugh following me as I run past a path he blocks, Carmilla Alilovi? sneering down at me when I turn from a dead end and find her standing in the way of where I’ve come.
“You are a very boring rabbit,” she tells me, and though she does not step aside, she does not attack me either as I duck around her and continue my escape.
Did they plan this? Did they know that I would run?
Did Kolfina know she had one of the most powerful families in the world at her beck and call, ready to hunt her enemies whenever she so pleased?
I cannot help but wonder what she’d done to earn such unwavering loyalty.
Because that is what it is, I am sure of it.
This goes beyond a simple broken rule; this is a game for them to play.
Not justice. Revenge.
I find Lord Nikolai Alilovi? at the exit of the maze. His glass of wine—is it wine? I have never seen a wine so dark—has been refilled, and he drinks from it with a casualness only begetting one who knows he is, without a doubt, the winner.
"May I offer you a word of advice?" he asks me when I skid to a stop before him.
I am at the end. I know I am. The next turn is my exit, if the maze has not changed in so short a time.
He grins at me as I consider how to get around him, and my heart beats a frantic staccato in my chest. "If you are to kill someone for your own benefit, do not let them get back up again.
The past is the most dangerous monster of all, you know. "
Like his children before him, he does not stop me from rushing past, and for a small, foolish moment, I think I've done it. I've made it out. All I need to do is circle around the maze and I will find the forest. I will find the village. I will ask for help—
Where once there was a whole length of grass and dirt spanning the other side of the maze, now the hedges are only a few feet from the edge of the cliff.
I just barely manage to stop myself from pitching over the edge, a shout breaking from my throat as I scramble backwards, tripping over my own feet and landing painfully on my rear.
Something in my wrist snaps. My heart plummets to my feet.
I have to get out. I have to find help. I have to—
When I turn around, Kolfina is there, standing like a reaper in the opening of the garden. She is backed by the human boy, who bares his teeth at me like a rabid dog, and the Alilovi? woman, just as cool and collected as her so-called father.
I am trapped, just as she was trapped all those years ago, and I realize that no matter how far you run, or which direction you go, there is no escaping the inevitable.
Death is not a destination. It is a maze, and eventually, all will meet its end.
"Please—" I beg, ignoring the pain in my wrist and the tears spilling down my cheeks as I crawl on my knees towards the woman I once called wife. "Please, duck, I'm sorry—"
Strong fingers wrap around my throat, cutting my words off before I can finish sobbing them out. Lady Azizi crouches before me, fury flickering in her gaze. "You do not have the right to address her thusly. You are a stain on this world, Walden de Klein, and a rot in this house."
God, I'm going to die. This is it. This is what I've fought so hard to avoid. I'm going to die, and it's all her fault.
Kolfina doesn't say a word, though there is no fear in her eyes. No grief or pain. Only a fierce hatred that draws a wretched sob from my throat.
"Hush now," Lady Azizi coos. "You look so frightened, why is that?"
She loosens her grip just enough for me to suck in a gasp of air. Just enough to choke out, "You'll kill me. You're going to—please, please, I don't want to die!"
A sharp, spiteful laugh meets my ears as the woman throws her head back. "Oh no, no. Death is a precious thing, Walden de Klein. You do not deserve precious things. No, you craved immortality, did you not? I'm going to give it to you."
The last thing I see is the sharp glint of fangs in the moonlight. Then all I know is pain.
I like to claim that I do not fear death, and it is true. I don't fear Death, I fear the lack of what comes after. I fear that there is no Heaven or Hell, no nirvana or whatever other afterlives fools believe in.
I fear that in the end, there is only nothingness, and the thought of it terrifies me. Of floating there in the dark with nothing to do, nothing to see, nothing to hear but my own frantic breathing and the pounding of my heart.
Perhaps that's why, when I open my eyes and see only darkness, I think, this is it. This is death. It has finally caught me.
Then a soft light appears, and the darkness opens. I blink up to see the moon full above me, haloed around a head of golden curls.
"Marguerite," I croak, reaching for her, thinking maybe there is a heaven, and she was waiting for me there. But my hand is heavy, my mind sluggish, so it takes me a moment to notice what is wrong. Takes me a moment to realize that I am not dead, and this is not my love welcoming me home.
My Marguerite has brown eyes, intelligent and sharp and ruthless. This woman’s are too soft. Too emotional.
Kolfina frowns at me, her eyebrows scrunched up in that way she always used to do when I’d gotten angry at her for something she’d done and she didn’t understand why.
Perhaps I should feel badly for how I treated her. I want to feel badly, for if she saw the regret and grief in me, perhaps she'd let me go.
"Kolfina—"
"I gave you my heart once," she says. Her voice is scratchy, like she has been screaming for days on end.
It sounds so much like I remember, and yet not at all.
She swallows, hand tightening around the strange lid above me.
"I gave you everything, and you only gave me pain in return.
Now I lie rotting at the bottom of the ocean with your name carved into my tongue.
All for something as ridiculous as so-called immortality.
All to avoid the very fate you've set yourself toward. "
It's then that I notice I'm laying inside something, rather than on the ground where I collapsed. Then that I notice it is a casket I have been laid to rest in.
All to avoid the very fate you've set yourself toward.
No. No, no, no. I can't—she can't—
"Wait! This isn't—Kolfina please. I'm sorry! I am, truly!"
"Your apologies are worth nothing," the boy, Theodore, says from Kolfina's side. "You are lucky, though. I suggested we eat you, but Kolfina thought you’d only make us sick with the rot inside you. You were a waste in life, and so too will you be a waste in death."
"Please!"
There is no hesitation in Kolfina's eyes when she blinks down at me. God, I still hate that dead, empty stare of hers, even moreso now as she stands above me like an angel of vengeance.
"Goodbye, Walden," she says in barely a whisper. "I hope you find eternity to be everything you wanted it to be. May the ocean forgive me for tainting it with your foul offering."
She closes the lid, and I hear the loud echo of the latch as she bolts me in.
Fear tightens a noose around my neck, and though I know it is not real, I swear I cannot breathe. I suck in air, and yet I get no relief from the crushing pressure in my lungs.
The casket shifts and groans across the ground. This is it, I know it is. The hole must already be dug—somewhere in the garden perhaps, or the forest. I could not see outside the walls before the lid had closed.
Is this to be my fate then? To be buried alive for eternity? Is my story meant to be nothing but a footnote to be dug up when historians find my tomb? Will I still be here by then? How long will it take for them to find me? How long can someone of their kind survive starvation?
The box shifts, tips, as if they are pushing me in rather than lowering me.
And then I am falling.
And falling.
And falling.
Whatever surface I hit feels almost like solid ground. I might have thought so if I wasn't still falling, albeit slower than before.
It's a strange sort of limbo, wherever it is they've put me. My prison rocks and twists; my stomach heaves at the motion. It reminds me a bit of the ferry Marguerite and I took for our fifth anniversary. Perhaps they've put me in a cart, or a carriage, though I cannot hear the horses or the tread.
I try to call out, try to slam my fists on the casket’s lid in hopes of someone hearing me and helping me out, but it is no use. No one comes.
I do not know how long I am in this place, but it feels like ages have passed when something jerks at my back and the casket finally settles. I call out again, expecting someone to be there to lift or carry me away at the very least.
Again, no one answers. My cheeks are wet from my sobs as I search for some way out, as I scramble and claw for anything to pry the lid open.
I cannot do this. I cannot let this be my ending. Not after everything I have done to get here.
I slam my hand on the lid again, and something cold brushes my wrist, soaks into my sleeve. It is too dark for me to see what it is, but I can feel it seeping through the velvet lining of the casket. Wet. Freezing. I bring it to my lips and taste the salt and brine.
A cold realization settles over me, and it feels like dying again.
Marguerite. My love. What a cruel fate we have found ourselves in.
I think I screamed. I think I begged and pleaded to whatever god might listen, offered deals to any devil that might care. My throat hurts, my fists are bleeding, my fingernails are missing, stuck in the wood I found beneath the velvet.
May the ocean forgive me for tainting it with your foul offering. That's what she'd said. May the ocean forgive me...
I have not been buried alive; I have been sacrificed to the ocean's eternal grave.
I wonder how long it will take for the water to fill my casket, and then, when it has run out of room, how long it will take to fill my lungs as well.
Perhaps death would have been a kinder fate.