Chapter 4
Apparently, the city we live in is very different from what it looked like twenty years ago.
My brother and I go to a savant school for adults now, between the ages of twenty and twenty-five, close to the Dellilian Castle.
There’s a beautiful reform estate where the Emerald Lake Asylum used to sit.
It now acts as a sanctuary, a rehabilitation home for those with mental illness, trauma from the old days of Demechnef law.
My grandfather, Chekiss, runs it with so much compassion and care, no one would ever know the dark secrets that land still holds from the old asylum.
Women no longer have to starve themselves, although many older women still do.
Since Aunt Marilynn and Uncle Niles have taken Aurick Demechnef’s place, many laws were abolished and new ones were created to protect women, the mentally ill, and equality.
Apparently, my parents made this all possible.
Apparently, this city used to be filled with manic dolls, fainting couches, and boutiques filled with concoctions of creams and oils for nightly routines. Mints to help a woman purge her food if she ate too much. Brass corsets that helped reshape a ribcage to permanently give that hourglass figure.
I get told often by our professor how lucky I should feel.
“Women used to be oppressed.”
“Women used to be monitored.”
“Women used to be judged by their menstrual hysteria.”
It’s hard to feel lucky when I’ve only ever seen the good side of this country. Everything else feels like a dark and disturbing fairytale. Not to mention…fictional.
“Niklaus, what do you think? I’m certain you have a unique take on this,” Professor Nundy turns from his chalkboard.
Niklaus sits one row behind me. I try to ignore him back there, but paranoia gets the best of me. How could it not? He used to stick gum in my hair or just glare at me until I turned around.
“We wouldn’t have won the war without Mind Phantoms,” he answers in boredom.
Krimson scoffs next to me.
“Interesting take,” Nundy comments. “Mr. Valdawell, you don’t agree?”
Don’t agree? God, this is going to open a can of worms. Look who you’re talking to. We’re the children of Skylenna and Dessin and Kane Valdawell. Mind Phantoms destroyed our parents’ lives.
“I’d say not,” Krimson responds with a venomous chill to his tone. “Poisoning children and their parents so that they can be raised like pigs for slaughter? Can grown men not win their own wars anymore?”
My brother is so often calm and collected. Unless it comes to defending our parents. My mom always says those are the moments she can see the avenging alter in him. Dessin always showed his anger and ill-intent through cool, cutting words and an indifferent expression.
“War is war. There are no shortcuts.” Niklaus sounds like he’s on the verge of smiling. Krimson can hear it too.
“You’re right. Far be it for the Demechnef family to have enough balls to fight a war themselves. Let the Valdawell family continue to do the heavy lifting,” Krimson replies with a cruel smirk.
A chair screeches behind us. Niklaus is on his feet, but neither of us turn to look.
“Conveniently leaving out moments of history for debate, I see. Or have you forgotten that Aurick Demechnef died in that war.”
A thought sparks behind Krimson’s punishing gaze. “Someone had to pay for the sins of the Demechnef dynasty, didn’t they?”
Oof. Cold, Krim. Fucking cold.
Hey, I’m just happy I’m not the one doing the fighting this time.
Niklaus remains standing, somehow keeping his composure. Keeping his loud, violent silence.
“I suppose you’re right. Considering he and Vlademur Demechnef are the reason we even had great, supernatural warriors to win this war, why shouldn’t he be punished for such a heroic war plan?
” Sarcasm. Heavy, condescending sarcasm.
“Because once again, without Mind Phantoms, there wouldn’t have been a great war to begin with.
There would have been genocide of our country.
But go on, Krimson. Continue telling me how the good of two outweighs the good of the many. ”
An icy fire roars under my brother’s flesh. But he keeps it contained. He always does.
“You know, your own father was a victim of Mind Phantoms. So was your grandfather,” Krimson breathes. The killing blow.
I turn around to see Niklaus’s face, because right now…
my interest is peaked. His furtive ocean eyes make a single sweep in my direction.
It’s quick but lands like a crashing avalanche over my body.
The pang from its landing hits my stomach.
What I see in his heavy stare isn’t cruelty or coldness.
It’s a deeply embedded burden. The same discomfort I’ve seen in Niklaus since he was a little boy.
He covers it well.
Ultimately, he shifts his gaze back to my brother.
And that look morphs back to rigid spite.
“Niles Offborth is not my father. I’m a Demechnef. And he is nothing more than an asylum patient who should have never been released.”
Oh, yeah.
He’s a dead man.
The burst of rage is a flaming drug that turns my muscles into unfeeling iron.
I rise from my seat slowly, snatching my textbook before Krimson has a chance to stop me.
Without a word, I spin around and launch the heavy book at his face.
It makes perfect contact with a loud thump followed by his deep, erupting snarl.
The classroom chuckles, gasps, and whispers.
Before he can retaliate, I make my way for the exit, turn on my heels and give him a glance of uncaring steel. “I hope you die alone, just like your father.”
I wait outside in the glittering snow for my brother to get out of class. The small park is just outside of the Emerald Savant Estate. The central fountain is frozen, the stone walkway is covered in ice. But I don’t move from this black iron bench. Even if it is named after my father.
My toes are numb, and my nose is the color of a cherry, but I refuse to show my face in there after throwing the book.
An angry chuckle ripples through my lungs, and I smirk back at the memory of his red face. I threw a book at him. Ha!
“Can we talk?”
My smile is peeled off my face.
The traitor stands to my left, shivering in her plush, white coat and blush-pink mittens.
“Can I get buried alive first?” I say without blinking.
“Sapphire,” Mabel Rose says critically.
“What possesses you to believe you’re safe in my presence right now?”
She shrugs. “Because I know you. Yes, you’re grumpy, but you’d never hurt anyone.”
Wow. Maybe we were never friends. Does she know me at all? I stabbed Niklaus once with a pencil. And moments ago, I threw a heavy fucking book at his face.
“Do you know who my father was to the world, Mabel Rose?” This. This is one of the only times and occasions I use his reputation in my favor.
“A hero,” she says.
“A monster.”
She blinks in surprise. I don’t let go of our eye contact. In fact, I let my stare make her undeniably uncomfortable. I let my inner monster gleam through my different colored eyes.
“They say he mutilated people who pissed him off. Albatross Ivast? Removed his penis and carved his name in his forehead. The head cook who starved him in the Vexamen Prison? Burned alive in her own oven.” I rise from my father’s dedicated bench.
“Sometimes I feel those same sociopathic tendencies. Should we test my temper today?”
“You really don’t think you deserve this after what your family has done to mine?” She takes a step away from me. “I mean, I know you had nothing to do with it…but am I not allowed to be angry and hold you accountable?”
I flex my abdomen as if she’s just punched me.
“Eight. Months.” My molars scrape together.
“I shouldn’t have kept it from you for that long…
I should have told you right away and that would have surely satisfied my need for retribution, and we could have moved on as friends.
I just knew what you would say. I knew you’d hold a grudge instead of just accepting that this was purely out of vengeance. ”
“What would I say? That Niklaus Demechnef has tortured me for years. Has spoken unforgiveable statements about my father, not just to me but to everyone?!”
“You talk way more shit about your dad than he does!”
“BECAUSE HE’S MY FATHER! I’M ALLOWED TO HATE HIM! I’M ALLOWED TO TALK SHIT!”
Mabel Rose takes another vigilant step back, brushing her white-blonde bangs away from her face with nervous, trembling fingers.
“I know that. I’m sorry.”
“What about when I was seven, and he dumped his glass of milk down my back at lunch? Or wait, no, I’ve got a good one.
” I hold my hand up and laugh. “How about last year when I cried at the picture of my father in that history book? I stepped out of class to have one fucking moment alone. And what did he do? He ripped the picture of him out and set it on fire to turn to ash on my desk.”
“Krimson gave him a nasty black eye for that one, though,” the traitor counters.
“So?!? That’s the least of what he deserved!
My father would have made him eat his own intestines for treating me this way!
” I bite my own tongue. I don’t normally speak so highly of him.
But deep down…I think it might be true. If Uncle Warrose was willing to dangle a skinny eleven-year-old over the cliff of the lagoon by his neck, who knows what Patient Thirteen would have done for half of these offenses toward me.
“I don’t think he’s as bad as he portrays himself to be in front of everyone, Sapphire. Can’t you just apologize for what your mother has done, and we can be even now?”
Hell pummels through my core in a firestorm of murderous thoughts.
“You think I deserved this to pay for the actions of my mother?”
“I do.”
I hold my breath.
“Okay. Let’s say that’s true. Are you aware of what Belinda’s crimes were? Torturing, maiming, and killing innocent people in the asylum?”
Mabel Rose does not have a rebuttal to that.
“Either way, what’s done is done. I hope it made you feel better. Because I will never speak to you again.”
“Is this because you’re jealous of us?” She stomps her small foot in the crunchy snow.
Oh. Ohhh.
“I beg your pardon?”
“That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? You had the biggest crush on him all those years ago, and now you’re just jealous that I got him, and you didn’t!” I’ve never seen Mabel Rose’s face so red, so pinched, so ugly.
“Got him? You got him?!” I bark out a hateful laugh. “He just admitted that you’re an easy fuck at my house last night! In front of our families.”
The length of her throat stretches and shifts. The insecurity stewing in her thoughts is bleeding into the minute changes in her body language. The twitching of her thumbs, licking of her lips, and uneven motion of her breathing.
“Did you really think we could still be friends after this? Even if I could get past the fact that you’re sleeping with the man who has made it his mission to cause me great pain and humiliation, you lied to me for eight months. You are no friend of mine, Mabel Rose.”
Off in the wintery distance of the estate, my brother and Niklaus make their way toward us. Their eyes are firmly on us with alarm and heightened interest.
“Then thank you for helping me realize something today,” the traitor says calmly, schooling her features to appear poised and indifferent.
“And what’s that?”
“I guess I’d rather be his easy fuck then your friend.” White-hot venom. And she isn’t done yet. Her white eyebrow lifts with a menacing thought. “Oh, and Sapphire? Your father is in a coma and is never going to wake. Get the fuck over it.”
If I wasn’t so shocked by her malice, I would act on the tendrils of resentment and wrath binding my organs in a chokehold. She didn’t. She wouldn’t. Unforgiveable. Dead to me.
“What are you two talking about?” Niklaus closes the distance behind Mabel Rose, consuming her small frame with his bulking height.
“You okay?” Krimson asks close to my ear.
I barely shake my head.
I’m not okay.
Niklaus holds my gaze like he’s trying to pass me a secret message.
With one arm draped over the traitor’s shoulders, his smirk is slight.
It tugs on the strong jawline covered in black whiskers, revealing a dimple on his left cheek.
If I didn’t know of the dark, dirty contours of his soul at every angle, I’d think he was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen.
A deceiving devil dressed as an angel.
And he’s just taken my best friend away from me.
Murder dances behind my eyes, showering my thoughts with creative, delicious, substantial forms of torture and death.
Maybe I’m more like my father than I realized.