CHAPTER 54 #2
“I can show you,” she says, getting up and walking toward me. “She swings so high,” Claire says, making my heart skip a beat.
“Let me show you what scares her so you can stop her from swinging from the roof. It makes mommy cry. I don’t like it when mommy cries,” she says looking down.
“Is this what you dream about?” I ask her.
“Yes, but if you know, it will change, you won’t make my mommy cry.”
“And if I don’t see?” I ask not wanting to know what tortures this poor child’s mind. She is blessed with sight but also cursed with it too, I would hate to see the things she probably does.
“You live in the castle, but I don’t get to see Aunty Elora again. Uncle Dragus and Matitus and mommy cries.”
“Can you show me something else?”
“I can show you lots, mommy is having a girl, you’re having a boy.”
“I’m having a boy?” I ask her.
“Yep, he is different.”
“Different how?”
“He is special,” she says.
“So, what do you want to show me then?”
“Everything, all of it so you don’t make Aunty Lora swing from the roof.
I like Dakari but not even he can stop making mommy cry, but you can, so please don’t make mommy cry,” she says, her little hand reaching toward my face.
She places her hand on my cheek, I place mine over hers, the room disappears, disintegrating around me.
“First you must see how it started,” I hear her whimsical voice echo around me as the room shifts.
I find myself in a house I have never seen before.
It is dark. I walk through it, stopping when I walk past a mirror.
I gasp, I am not me but my father, living in his body, trapped in his memory.
I continue, a hallway, a brown door appearing as he looks over his shoulder and I recognize the man instantly as my father’s best friend Alfred, who died in the war.
They stop. cracking the door open wider and peering into the room.
A man and woman are sleeping in a bed together.
My father walks around one side of the bed.
He reaches down and lighting a candle illuminating the room.
I notice my father’s friend on the other side next to the woman.
Alfred grabs the woman by her hair, waking her up.
She screams clutching at his hands, and I realize the woman is Maira, the Queen Zena.
My father then says something to her that I can’t hear.
I watch as Alfred pulls her from the bed, crying and screaming and I notice the bump, her tiny little baby bump.
Alfred plunges his knife into her stomach and twists.
Watching this through my father’s eyes sickens me, the man she lay with screams and fights against me.
They struggle while Maira clutches her bump horrified but it is no use.
Maira is injured, and he is a normal Fae, no fight for a Dragon as my father ran the blade across his throat in front of her and killed him.
Maira falls from the bed onto the ground. I can’t hear what she’s saying, though the look of pure rage on her face is unmistakable. Then she laughs.
The room is plunged into darkness as the candle goes out. My father turns them on, and she is gone.
The vision crumbles, disintegrating, morphing into a new one.
This time, I recognize the room. It is in our kingdom. My parents are sleeping when something wakes them. I don’t understand until I see the tendrils of darkness, black fog drifting across the floor.
Maira appears at the foot of their bed, a blade in her hands.
My mother jumps up, frightened. Maira twirls the blade between her fingers, saying something. My mother looks toward my father in disgust, breaking down, tears streaking her face.
My father tries to explain himself, jumping to his feet, glaring at Maira. Then he freezes, a pained look twisting his features.
Maira points at him. My mother starts screaming, cursing him.
Then she turns the blade on herself.
My father tries to stop her by grabbing the blade, he nearly succeeds when Maira grips his shoulders and spins him back to face her.
She throws herself on the blade in his hands killing herself as it pierces her chest, she kisses him, sealing the curse as black tendrils moves across his skin, she chuckles letting his face go, blood pouring out her mouth as she grabs him ripping him forward pulling the blade deeper into her chest. My father lets the handle of the blade go and she drops on the ground dead at his feet.
The room fizzles and crumbles, disintegrating around me.
The pictures move rapidly as time slips by to the moment I killed Blaire.
My anger became too much as I killed her, Matitus and Dragus trying to stop me.
Then it fast forwards again but like the first time it isn’t my memory I am seeing. Instead, it is Elora’s.
I watch the little girl I know is her, holding her grandmother’s hand as they run through the sewers, hiding from something.
The picture skips rapidly through her memories.
I watch how she grew up, digging through garbage for food, running and hiding from the horrors of her life.
I watch as she watches kids play outside while she cares for her sick grandma, selling her possessions to make ends meet.
I watch every struggle she ever faced, her life of never-ending torment.
It skips again to her grandma cutting her throat, while she clutches her neck trying to stem the bleeding before looking over her shoulder at something and running, ultimately, leaving her behind.
The vision blurs past stopping and I hear Claire’s voice echo around me as the frame freezes.
“Of everything that haunts her, plagues her mind, this is what kills her most.”
The vision plays up until the night I meet her.
The fearful look on her eyes as I stalked her, inflicting pain she begs me to kill her.
Then it is every moment I have ever hurt, there are good memories of us but mostly every time she had hope I tainted it, ruined it.
Each time, losing her more and more until the day in the cave.
I watch my father protect her, protect my child before asking her to kill him.
I watch as tears slip down her face as she kills him, feel it in every cell in my body that she never wanted to kill him, that she did it to save everyone and save me from myself.
She didn’t think I would be able to do it.
Then I watch as I once again hurt her, no, destroy her using the only thing she had left, our child.
“Now you will see what your hatred will do, what loving you takes from her,” I hear Claire’s voices ring out around me and I feel myself gasp in the real world.
The vision moves. We are in our room and I have just delivered our son.
I am holding our son when she holds her arms out saying something that angers me.
The vision has no sound, so I don’t understand what she said but it angers me.
I watch her hands turn purple before walking over to her.
My hand connects with her face, my son screaming in my arms. Why aren’t our mates with us, why aren’t they here, I can’t understand.
I say something to her, and she tries to get up, her eyes blazing as she tries to take my son from me, I become enraged and shove her, her head smacking the corner of the bed frame.
Blood runs down and coats the floor, and I simply walk out, leaving her there by herself.
The picture changes again to Matitus and Dragus walking in and finding her hanging above the dining room table, then cutting her down and screaming out for me as they try to revive her, trying to bring her back when Abbie walks into the room.
She screams, crying hysterically as she tries to heal her, tries to heal Elora before the floor turns red underneath Abbie, her pants staining red.
The picture flashes skipping forward to a funeral, I see Elora in her coffin. A smaller coffin beside her that Abbie kneels next to sobbing, clutching onto the small pink box, Dakari trying to sooth her. Two lives gone, yet where am I?
I get my answer when I see myself sitting alone on my throne, Dragus and Matitus walking out of the room with my son clutched in their arms, turning their back on me as they leave.
I feel my tears running down my face, the vision crumbling and dying out and I find myself back in the room with Claire watching me.
The visions felt like an entire lifetime but looking around the room I know they have only been minutes.
Yet I felt like I lived a lifetime of torture, a lifetime of pain and I am the one that caused it, caused it all not just destroying myself but everyone around me.
I come into the present moment, feeling very uneasy.
“Does your mother know what you see?” I whisper. Claire shakes her head.
“Are you going to make my mommy cry Uncle Silas, will you take my sister from me too?” she asks just as Abbie walks into the room with some towels in her hands and a change of clothes. She is wearing some of Elora’s maternity clothes.
“Everything okay?” she asks, looking between us both, her eyes going to her daughter worriedly.
My eyes go to her bump, and I get up to walk out.
How am I supposed to fix it when I don’t even know what happened to cause it?
What did she say that angered me that much that I took our son from her, and made her kill herself?
I just don’t see how things could change when I have been trying my hardest to repair us.
I am about to leave the castle, my head spinning with the different scenes I just witnessed when I hear a loud crash.
The castle shakes violently as Elora screams. My heart pounds at the strangled sound.
Looking toward her room, I see the chefs and castle personnel running in the same direction.
I rip open the door to find the outside has crashed through the wall above her bed.
Matitus and her are pinned beneath it. Dragus and I waste no time ripping the tree apart to free them to find a branch has torn through Matitus’s shoulder.
Dragus breaks the branch, freeing him and allowing him to stand.
I see Elora beneath him, Matitus had thrown himself over her, protecting her from harm.
Grabbing her, I crush her against my chest, relief flooding me when I see she is unscathed. Matitus, however, has part of the branch still protruding through his shoulder. Elora wails at the sight of him.
“Grab him,” Dragus says to me. I grip his shoulders, holding him still as Dragus rips the branch from him. Elora instantly hurls at the sight while Matitus gasps at the sudden pain.
“He is okay Elora,” I tell her, watching as his shoulder starts healing.
Her tears stream down her face as she now looks at the huge hole in the wall.
Grabbing her, I pull her to my side and in the shock of everything, she doesn’t even realize she is allowing me to hold her instead leaning into me. I kiss her head.
“We will have to find another room, one where there are no trees outside of,” Matitus says, looking at the tree.
“Come before the wind blows debris in,” I tell her, and she takes a step back, realising I am touching her.
“Come, you need to shower,” I tell her, offering her my hand. She is covered in dirt and leaves from the tree.
“You need to go with Silas love, while we clean this,” Dragus says.
“No, I will stay,” she says, and I hear her heart rate rise.
“Elora please, just go with Silas we are right here,” Matitus tells her, and I grip her elbow softly making her look at me. She didn’t want to go anywhere with me, that much was clear on her face.
“Please,” I ask her, and she looks at Dragus, who nods, stepping closer. I lift her over the tree, helping her climb over I grab her, so she doesn’t need to jump down. She tries to get down from my arms, but I pull her closer, scooping her legs out from under her.
“Just let me hold you, you never let me touch you,” I tell her, pressing my head against hers. She gives in giving me what I want but not relaxing. Her body is tense in my arms as I take her up the stairs to our room.