Chapter 62 You Are My Only Hope.
Sapphire
Drugged women dressed in their fanciest dresses are hard to look at. Heads bobbing with gawdy hats. Drool seeping past their maroon-stained lips. Eyes cloudy and glazed over.
It’s a waiting room.
Tables are set with fine porcelain dishes, scones, and steaming kettles.
Women of all ages wait for their turn to be called.
Their limp hands covered in white gloves fumble and spill hot tea from their delicate cups. The IVs in their arms twitch with each flimsy movement.
“Someone tell me what the fuck we’re waiting for,” I say, biting back the need to slur.
Demechnef officials caught me wandering around in a waiting room, dressed in my Vexamen Prison uniform. I was detained, dressed like a lady, and hooked up to this IV. I can get out of this, even in my sluggish state. Thankfully, I know where I am.
The Demechnef Mountain.
It’s where Aurick Demechnef conducted most of his business. It’s where my mother learned Demechnef was his last name. And it’s the exact place experiments were usually conducted.
I know it like the back of my hand. But I have to believe I traveled here for a reason. If I’m going to tap into the ability to travel again and control it this time so I can go back for Niklaus—I need to understand myself, the past, and what is drawing me to these timelines.
“No one really knows,” an older woman to my right says, sipping her hot tea.
“We hear—l-l-lots of screams,” a teenage girl replies.
Screams?
“Why are all of you here?” I ask.
“Got caught sleeping with my neighbor’s husband. The Emerald Wife accused me of—being Vexamen spy.”
“I wasn’t losingweightinthe women’s ward oftheasylum,” the teenage girl slurs.
“Same.”
“S-s-same.”
The woman directly across from me sets her cup down. “Homeless. Living in the Bear Traps.”
I look around the room and raise my eyebrows. “Do the women who get called ever come back?”
A few women look down at their gloved hands. One shakes her head.
Fantastic.
I don’t recognize anyone here, so I’m not entirely certain who drew me to this spot? Aurick Demechnef? Perhaps because I left his son behind? I’m not really sure who else I would be drawn to.
“Snow Abatora,” a short old man calls from the cracked doorway.
The fake name I gave when captured.
The women look to me. Pity. Hopelessness. Sorrow.
“Don’t worry about me,” I say, rising from my seat and nearly falling to the ground from the intense vertigo.
But really, I just don’t have a choice. I have two people who mean the world to me that I’ve abandoned in time. There isn’t an option to die here or there. If I die after getting them home? Fine. If I, myself, don’t make it home? Okay.
But not getting back to Uncle Niles and Niklaus? Inconceivable.
As I follow the old man to the next room, my sweaty hand instinctively clutches the IV pole I’m attached to. To brace myself for another cage. A dungeon. A dingy basement.
“You are quite the pretty one,” the old man comments ironically. “Too bad he does not care about pretty.”
He?
The mahogany door he opens does not lead to a basement or damp chamber.
It’s a library.
Less of a room and more of a cathedral for rich bureaucrats and wealthy savants.
Oil paintings watch from the mile-high ceilings.
The trim of the dark walnut wood gleams beneath its polish.
A few rolling ladders trace slow arcs across sparkling shelves.
Velvet drapes cocoon the windows. Aged-brass fixtures and a fireplace bigger than the last cage I slept in.
And a young man, fourteen or fifteen, sits in the center of the room.
“Meet your newest guest, Snow Abatora,” the old man tells the teenage boy.
As if moping, he keeps his head down, arms draped over his knees as he sits on the center of a nice table.
“Aren’t you going to introduce yourself, young man?”
The boy shakes his head. Chocolate brown hair shifting side to side.
The old man lowers his head to make eye contact with me above his small, round bifocals that are slipping to the tip of his pink nose.
“Sit down, madame. Now,” he orders.
You don’t have to tell me twice. I drop myself down to a comfortable leather reading chair directly in front of the young man.
“If you want to move on to the next step in your education, then you must be cooperative.” The elderly man grips his own knees with red, flaky hands, inclining forward to invade the boy’s personal space. “I am not a fan of this rebellious behavior. I can tell you that right now.”
My heartbeat picks up speed as I begin to suspect who I’ve been drawn to in the past.
The young man remains hunched, ankles crossed, and allowing this old man to speak to him so callously.
“Shall I ask Mr. Demechnef to make another visit?”
The teenager sits quietly a moment longer, then looks up at me. Those striking, yet toasty warm brown eyes split into me like a throwing axe.
Oh god, it’s him.
“Hello,” he greets. Voice a little lighter and less frightening than the last time I heard it. Smooth as cashmere.
“Hi.”
“Good. Enjoy.” The old man bobs his head contentedly and stomps out of the library.
I suck in a nervous breath, taking in the heavy scent of parchment and old perfume. Why have they put us in such a glorious space? I thought he was tortured and experimented on during his time within the Demechnef walls? What is this?
“Can you tell me what’s happening?” I ask him, heart hammering in my chest.
“An experiment,” he answers.
I don’t think I have ever seen so much sadness in one expression.
“And what is my part to play in this experiment?”
My young father looks my way, then to the fireplace where he rests his gaze on a dying flame.
“I will not tell you. Not because I am cruel or sadistic. But because knowing will cause you so much stress, my heart can’t take it. And if you try to run, it will only get worse.”
I take in his white shirt, gray pants, and suspenders. And based on the way he carries himself, it’s not Dessin.
“That’s fair. Though I won’t panic—I respect your decision,” I tell him kindly.
He stares me down now, lifting an eyebrow and studying my posture with curious, suspicious glances.
“Really? You aren’t going to press for it?”
“Nope.”
He looks positively flabbergasted.
“Now…” I steady myself from the bizarre dizziness rotating my world. “Are you going to tell me your name?”
That small smirk lights my soul. “Kane Valdawell.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Kane. My name is Snow Abatora.”
Kane freezes, shoulders tightening under an invisible weight.
He loses focus for a few seconds, gazing off to the side.
It’s strange to watch what I can only guess is occurring right now.
He is both present and elsewhere all at once.
Then, blinking several times, clearing away a thought, he returns to my face with narrowing eyes.
“He says that’s not your name,” he finally says.
My breath hitches.
“Who says?”
“You’d think I’m crazy if I told you.”
That makes me sad to hear. “No, I wouldn’t.”
Kane considers this, and sighs. “I have dissociative identity disorder. There’s another alter in my head who just told me you’re lying about your name.”
And I bet I know which alter that is.
But I can’t think of a rebuttal fast enough.
“That’s okay,” Kane says, stretching his legs. “Your secrets are your own.”
“Thank you.” I wish I could tell you my last name is Valdawell too.
My stomach twists and dips as the drugs leave me spinning again. I close my eyes, holding onto the arm of the chair in hopes it will subside by grounding myself.
The table in front of me creaks as Kane moves, hopping off of it.
“Hold still,” he instructs, tugging and readjusting my IV bag.
I peek through my lashes as he swaps the medication with something else.
“This should flush the drugs out of your system.”
The nausea is soothed slowly, lessening its violent hold on my gut. I observe Kane hiding my former IV bag in a spot among some loose books. Leaning against the shelf, he crosses his arms and watches my reaction thoughtfully.
“You can try and escape…” he offers with a shrug. “But they’ve gotten good at hunting women down who try to leave.”
Somehow, being in his presence does not scare me.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I say.
“No?”
“I am exactly where I need to be.”
“Hmm.” Kane tilts his head and loses focus again, eyelids looking heavy and tired. After a moment of looking confused, he rubs a hand over his face.
“What?” I ask.
“You have a familiar face. But I know we’ve never seen you before.”
I agree with a nod. “No, we’ve never met.”
He looks down in thought again. “You remind me of someone.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yes.” With a quick once-over, he scans my face. “Your green eye. Wavy hair. Your cheekbones.”
The inside of my chest runs warm, turning gooey and soft.
“And who do I remind you of?”
Kane stares up to the ceiling, drumming his fingers against his arm.
“My sweetheart.”
Mom, I wish you could see this.
“How long have you known her?” I ask.
“A very long time.”
“And wha—”
Kane lifts a hand to stop me. “I don’t like to talk about myself here. Certain details are used against me if overheard.”
I wilt in my seat. But this is my chance to get to know him. Hear all about who he was as a young man.
“I’d rather hear about you, anyway,” Kane finishes.
I gulp, feeling less heavy and more alert since he swapped out my IV bag. The smaller details of his face, hands, hair are clearing up. I can see my father now.
“What do you want to know?” There’s so much I want to tell you. Where would I even start?
“Do you have a sweetheart?” he asks.
The echoing loss of leaving Niklaus is an arrow impaling my chest that I can’t pull free.
And without that pain? I’d have nothing left.
The motivation I have right now to investigate, to understand the purpose behind my time-traveling journey, to discover how to control it?
It would dissolve into thin air. I cling to that anguish like a beacon that will eventually guide me back to him.