Chapter 55 The Endless Night #2
“She said it wasn’t a distraction. She let me in on a secret that I’ll need one day.”
Niklaus is quiet for several seconds. His breathing growing heavier as he ponders this.
“I think she’s known this was going to happen—for a long time, Spitfire.”
“That what was going to happen?”
“This. Us. Traveling back in time. I think it was—part of the prophecy. It explains why I wasn’t allowed to hear it.” His gravelly voice is less strained than before but still hurting.
“Are you angry with her for not warning you?” I ask.
I don’t want to fill his head with ideas, but I can’t help feeling betrayed by Aunt Marilynn.
If she knew this was coming…why wouldn’t she warn us?
We have experienced tragic event after tragic event.
We’ve been starved, beaten, abused, and tossed through time like rag dolls.
We’ve been sexually violated. We’ve seen so many things that our parents worked hard to protect us from.
How could she not warn us?
“No,” he mutters, swallowing against a dry throat.
“Oh.”
“The result must outweigh the journey,” he adds.
“You think?”
Niklaus sighs with a light shrug. “My mother was born into the Crimson Kres Colony. They memorize the prophecy as soon as they learn how to read. They’re sworn to secrecy and are devoted to their beliefs that the historical figures who play out vital events are precious to the future.
All I know is that the future is precious to them because for at least fifty generations after the prophecy’s end, there will be benevolent leadership. ”
I look down at him skeptically.
“I don’t know how much of that I believe, but…”
“But what?”
“But we’ve seen how ugly the past is, Spitfire. I have to hope that my mother’s people are right. That everything our parents went through, everything we’re going through is going to lead to a future that—that isn’t going to hurt people the way the past does now.”
My face and neck lose blood as I hear his thoughts play out loud. They carry more weight now that he’s been scarred and tortured from the past the prophecy has aimed to be free of.
“I see your point.”
“I do think Mom tried to prepare me, though,” he muses sleepily. “All the training. Rigorous history lessons. It was for this, I think.”
I blow out a breath. “That must have tortured her. Do you think she told your dad?”
“No.” The left corner of Niklaus’s mouth curls up. “He has such a big mouth.”
I chuckle.
“She definitely has been bearing these secrets all alone.”
I wonder if my mother knew. Would she be able to keep all of this from me?
I take in a quick breath to ask him, but Niklaus burrows into my leg sweetly.
My fingers forget themselves, tracing over the spikes of facial hair along his jaw, smoothing the longer hair on his head, and stroking his cheekbone.
Niklaus stiffens at the intimate gesture. His cheek hot against my inner thigh.
I pause my hand nervously.
“Keep going,” he whispers huskily. “I love your hands on me.”
Something warm and light wakes under my ribs.
“No, you don’t.” My cheeks burn.
“Oh, yes I do.”
My heart takes the bait.
“That’s not how our conversation went before the shower,” I retort.
His arms clutch me tighter at the memory.
“I know.”
I feel nauseated at the sudden images that are shoved to the front of my mind. Niklaus finding me in the packed room of screaming inmates. Niklaus barring his body around me. Niklaus taking the punishment for the both of us.
His screams impale my mind once again, leaving me breathless with tears blurring my vision. The smell of chemicals and burning skin.
I look down at the blisters on my arm as a tear rolls down my cheek.
“Why did you do it?” I ask thickly.
“Hmm?”
“Why did you shield my body with yours?”
I feel his eyes open as those long, dark lashes tickle my leg.
“You know why,” he murmurs.
I’m flooded with feelings of confusion and that radiating crush that died in my heart so many years ago. It’s foreign, but still recognizable. Still warm to the touch.
“No. You made it clear how you feel about me.”
Anger, fear, dismissal, longing, yearning… Not good enough. Not good enough. Not good enough.
“You set the stage first, Spitfire.”
“No—”
“In the cave. You shut me down after we escaped the asylum…after things changed between us,” he adds.
“Well, because—”
Niklaus places a single, warm kiss on my thigh. It’s all-consuming, carrying a current of tingling feelings up my arms and back.
“I’m not good with rejection, my darling wife.”
I blink repeatedly, choking on my own breath.
“You lied?”
He kisses my leg again. “I lied.”
He lied. He didn’t mean what he said. He was reacting to my dismissal of our time in the asylum. I run through it all over again. That part of my brain that has spent so long despising him tries to reel me back in, then wavers as I take in the damage to his back and arms.
“And you won’t change your mind?”
“No.”
“Sapphire? How is he holding up?” Sophia asks from Jack’s cage.
Niklaus pretends to be asleep.
I smile. “He’s hanging in there.”
Sophia squints her eyes to examine his back, pressing her forehead to the bars. Her nod is sweet and sincere, and something about it wilts my heart. Knowing her fate and being powerless to stop it crushes me.
“Your vision isn’t clear, is it?” I ask.
“My whole life. Everything’s always been a little fuzzy.”
“You would look very nice in set of round bifocals.”
A somber expression crosses her face. “Maybe when the prison gets a physician for the eyes.”
One day, I think. One day, you’ll get your glasses.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” she says warmly.
Niklaus’s breathing grows heavy and deep, limbs relaxing as he falls asleep.
“What kind of experiments does Crow Ivast do on you and Jack?”
I’m afraid to ask. I have a feeling…I mean, I know what was done to my parents to some degree.
“Different methods of torture mostly. Long, rigorous hours of finding ways to bring us suffering without killing us.”
“Why?”
She closes her eyes. “He has been testing theories that if twins suffer from mental and physical trauma at a young age, their minds break, and they could potentially be capable of immense new abilities.”
“And has it worked?”
“Nope. My sister, Story, died for a theory that will never pan out.”
“Story? When did she pass?”
“When we were eleven. The doctor lost his temper after she tried to stop him from burning the bottoms of our feet. She took the branding iron and threw it at his back. He—” Sophia’s gentle voice cracks. It’s still fresh. “He pinned her down and burned her face off and broke her nose with the iron.”
I pull my lips and look away.
She was eleven.
“I wish she died on the spot, but she didn’t. My sister survived for a short while, a few days, screaming from the melted skin on her face. She couldn’t even cry tears because her eyes were burned shut.”
An ache rises in my throat. This was my great-aunt. Story was my father’s aunt he never got to meet.
“Oh, Sophia…”
She wipes her runny nose with the back of her hand.
“Anyway, she ended up passing away from an infection from her injuries. I remember asking if someone could bury her with my parents in the mountains. You see, when the Doctor discovered sets of twins, he abducted them and had their families murdered.”
“I—I didn’t know that.”
There’s never really been much conversation about my father’s lineage at all actually.
“The Doctor’s wife was there when I asked. She desecrated Story’s body with holy water. Said that bad little girls didn’t get proper burials. That her body would be tossed in the cremation pit with the other dead inmates,” Sophia continues, now sobbing into the back of her hand.
“Absinthe,” I say between my teeth.
“You’ve heard of her.”
“Yes.”
“She was wrong. My sister was strong. She’d take punishments for me. She’d distract me with fairytale stories when the terrible doctor was torturing us. Story was the best, most brave little girl. And with her death, I lost my whole family.”
Jack comes in and out of sleep, giving her arm a soft pat.
“Except for Jack, of course.” Sophia smiles sadly. “We’ll always be family.”
“How long have you two known each other again?” I ask, hoping the subject change will dry her pretty brown eyes.
“Since we were children. His village was close to mine in the mountains. We’d play together because we thought we were so special, the four of us being twins and all.
” She chuckles, wiping her face. “I used to call him Mr. Leather Man because he’d always wear this leather jacket Jeb made him. Even in the summer.”
“And Jeb was Jack’s twin brother?” I ask.
Sophia lowers her eyes sadly.
“Similar fate as Story?”
“Very similar.”
Tears swell in my eyes.
I wonder if my mother knew any of this.
“You’ll see them in heaven one day, Sophia. You both will. I know they’re up there waiting and watching,” I say.
“Jack and I always say Story and Jeb are probably the most stubborn guardian angels.”
A lingering silence passes between us as sleep lowers my eyelids. Niklaus is like a warm weighted blanket that makes sleeping in a cold, eerie cage not so bad.
“Sophia?”
“Hmm?”
“I don’t know how much time with you I have left, so I want to tell you this now…I can’t say I know, but I hope you’ll remember it for the rest of your life.”
“What is it, Sapphire?”
“Absinthe and the entire Ivast family will get what they deserve one day. There will be someone far more powerful than you can imagine who will make them suffer fates worse than death for a very long time. That is, of course, before they are actually put to death in gruesome ways.” I swallow, drifting to sleep.
“Story and Jeb will be avenged. I promise.”