Chapter 45 On His Head a Golden Crown, and in His Hand a Sharp Sickle
Sapphire
From the tree line, I have the best seat in the house for my father’s murder.
There is the dull roar of the ocean. The clashing of metal. And then, silence. My father’s silence. On his knees. Bent forward. A sickle cracking into his spine, sinking into his right lung.
They say his mind protected itself by splitting new personalities when he was just a child.
Trauma is enough to kill a person, especially when we are little.
As I watch the head of my family cut down at the edge of the sea, I wonder if I’m going to split too.
This has to be it. Nothing on this earth can be worse than this.
I think Niklaus says my name. Wraps his arms around my upper body.
I think my eyes dry out from not blinking.
My world goes mute as I watch my mother scream, dropping to her knees and cradling my father in her lap. How could there be so much blood? It’s a river pouring over her legs.
My body shakes uncontrollably as Uncle Niles rolls through the sand and rushing water to put out his body swathed in flames. Niklaus goes tight around me. DaiSzek slaughters the soldiers still fighting. My mother never lets go of my father.
Her screams are forever. They’ll survive through new eras of destruction. That pain will never go away. It will outlive us all.
“Help him! Save him!”
I’m so dehydrated. I don’t know how tears have managed to wet my cheeks and drip down to my collarbone.
“I’ll love you until hell freezes over.”
My knees buckle. There is just—so much blood.
And it all happens so fast. They carry Niles’s writhing, burned body away.
My father stops breathing, stop moving. My mother listens for his heartbeat in denial.
Everyone watches. Their faces twist with pity and horror.
Her hands are bloody, and she stares at them as if her mind simply can’t process the color.
DaiSzek guards my father’s body, howling like a wounded puppy.
My mother says so many things that gut me.
Things like, “Bring him back to me! We hardly had any time. His body is still warm! Please, don’t be dead!”
I’ve never seen her like this. She’s always so well put together, so poised and composed.
I can’t remember if I’ve ever seen her cry.
Maybe a little sad? But she’s hid it so well for her children.
We’ve never tasted this level of anguish she’s known.
How has she been able to keep this from me for so long?
And eventually my Uncle Warrose comes to her side, careful not to get too close to DaiSzek. He’s the only one who cracks that hard exterior, getting through her heartbreak and panic.
“I don’t know how to let him go.”
My uncle holds her close.
They carry my father’s body away.
That patch of sand is stained in ruby red. The puddle of it seeps into the sand. And I can’t look away as we stay hidden far enough away to remain undetected.
I turn to Niklaus, hiding my face in his chest like a child frightened of the monsters hidden in the shadows of her closet. I can’t unhear her voice screaming. My Uncle Niles being burned alive. DaiSzek’s growls. My father’s body going limp.
I know it was all a setup.
But I never imagined it was so gruesome. So absolutely devastating. And my mother endured it all.
The Nightlung pulses behind my eyes, reeling me back into a sliver of an opening to another time.
And Niklaus falls with me.