Chapter 68 The Carousel of Time
Sapphire
His arms have aged. They are locked around me. Firm and unbreakable. His skin is coarser, not just from the scars, but the way his surroundings and violent environment have called for thicker armor.
I wake in a place all too familiar.
There is a stadium. Rows of seating. Inmates scattered across a stage in a social hour. The uniforms we read about when our parents were in this prison.
I grit my teeth, feeling tremendously embarrassed that I just finished telling Niklaus I can control it—yet here we are…
Still in fucking prison.
“I can explain.” No, I can’t.
I look back at him, only to see him simply communicating with only his eyes. They soften and watch me beautifully, like he’s waited eons to witness my fuckups again.
“I need to hear your voice,” I say wistfully. He has such a special voice, a velvet and cruel baritone that can command a room.
Niklaus glances to the left just as Dellilian approaches with something in her mouth. She rubs up against Niklaus’s side like a cat and drops a piece of metal in his lap.
“A key? Good job, Dellilian!” I praise.
I race to jab the key in the lock on the back of his neck. The chunk of metal falls into his hands. My eyes work to adjust to his short-trimmed beard. Three scars along his jaw. His calloused hand rubs at his mouth in gratitude and soreness.
“Say something,” I urge impatiently.
Niklaus’s eyes go round. “You have not aged a day.”
That kills me.
“I know.”
“I’m thirty-one now, Spitfire.” And his voice, though still similar, reflects that progression of time. It’s matured. Lower. Steadier.
“You’re an old man now.”
“I am.” Though he does not smile. This seems to really bother him.
My hand caresses his beard, and he balks. I pause my affection before continuing, waiting for him to process that it’s really me.
“You could be in your nineties, and I’d still be in love with you,” I murmur.
That sapphire-stained gaze snaps up in surprise.
“You don’t mean that.”
“Of course I do.”
There’s a war buried beneath his thoughts, but his posture doesn’t waver. He stares down at me, trying to solve a series of riddles in my response.
“It’s the guilt,” he finally replies.
“It’s not.” But I feel I should clarify. “There is guilt, yes. But I used to hate you, Niklaus. If I still felt that way, there would be a hell of a lot less guilt.”
I place my fingers around his wrist and bring his hand closer to my face. The jagged scar where his ring finger once was…buries me alive.
I brush my lips against it, kissing softly.
“Given my departure that left you behind, I know it would be difficult for you to feel it back…”
“I feel it back.”
My lips hover over his knuckles.
“You do?”
He winds that strong hand into my hair. “I have spent a decade in hell loving you, Spitfire.”
I rest the side of my head in his hand and sigh.
“The fading memory of your face was the only goddamned thing that ensured my survival. I replayed your laugh in my head like a broken record. I tried not to love you for my own sanity. I did. But you saved my life every time you’d appear in my dreams.”
“You love me back?” I stare into his eyes with so much hope, I bet he can see it lighting up my irises with infinitesimal fireworks.
“I love you back, my darling wife.”
Niklaus pulls me to him and kisses me with the passion that followed us through time.
His facial hair scratches my chin, but those lips are silk against mine, parting to take more of me.
It is the most romantic kiss of my life.
It’s the one you feel through your entire body like an earthquake.
The one with so much vigor it makes a valiant attempt to stop time for us.
His other hand sweetly traces the outline of my shoulder, trying to memorize minute details, to savor the smallest touches between us.
As we part reluctantly, Niklaus holds my face close to his, breathing me in, still in agony as it is clear he harbors the fear of losing me again.
“You took my punishment for me,” I say sadly. “Watching you lose your fingers triggered me to travel.”
“I remember.”
“How…how did you survive that, Niklaus?” I plant a small kiss on his mouth.
“Sophia and Jack. Sophia was able to reattach two of my fingers.”
I watch him patiently, waiting for him to get out whatever he needs to say.
“Recovery was horrendous. The nightmares were worse. But…”
“Go ahead. You can say it,” I urge.
He sighs, brushing his nose against mine. “Nothing compared to the amount of time I held out hope that you were coming right back for me.”
He’ll never know that bit of information is a sickle straight through my chest.
“I am still not so sure you are real,” he adds.
My hands cover and caress his own, tilting them to my mouth for me to kiss several times. “I’m real. I’m here. Your little fuckup came back.”
Niklaus chuckles with closed eyes.
“Even if this is another one of their experiments, I don’t care. As long as I get to be with you. I don’t care.”
His words land like a bruise in my gut.
A woman shrieks from the entrance of the stadium. “WHERE IS HE?!”
Niklaus’s instincts kick in, and he is no longer relaxed. He’s standing, clutching the back of a rusted metal chair.
“Where is Dessin?”
My head swivels to the voice that called out his name. A young, lighter, more distressed version of the voice that raised me. I’m on my feet, gripping the back of Niklaus’s arm to steady myself.
What time have we returned to? That tousled, wavy honey hair is wind-blown and strewn about. She’s wearing the one-piece red uniform. She’s searching for my father. Screaming. Inmates part for her like the Red Sea. Her lively hands clamp over her ears, wincing in pain with puffy, red eyes.
Someone shares information with her.
But whatever it is, she only panics more.
“Fuck!” she shrieks.
The moment Niklaus and I look into each other’s eyes, I remember this part of her story.
This…this is the moment my father was injected with the Crow Ivast’s creation that would inevitably leave Krimson and me fatherless.
My mother is looking for him because they’ve been torturing him with Mind Phantoms.
I remember the location they are keeping him.
“Dessin!”
Bearing witness to my mother’s distress calls, to the visceral howls as she calls out for anyone to help—it sets my feet into motion.
My entire life, I’ve lacked the respect she deserves.
Reading about some of her experiences on paper is different than watching it play out in person. Or worse, having it happen to me too.
She worked so hard not to let us see her cry.
But she was protecting us from the long, doomed history that broke her heart many times over. My mother was a force of nature. A God-fearing plague on this world in the best way. And she’s had decades of pain.
“Dessin! DESSIN!”
Before I can weigh the downside of what I’m about to do, I graze my fingertip over her trembling shoulder. My mother spins around, heaving and snarling like a wild, deadly beast. My wrist is snatched and I stumble back, bumping into Niklaus’s chest.
“Do you remember me?” I ask nervously.
She picks apart my appearance through a wall of tears.
“You’re the two I broke out of the asylum.”
“Yes,” I whisper.
“What are you doing here?”
Niklaus answers for me as I draw a blank. “Apparently the side effect of escaping the Chandelier City is to end up here.”
My mother considers this with a tidal wave of rising annoyance.
“I don’t have time for polite conversation. I’m looking for someone.”
Impulsively, I grab her wrist and hold on for dear life.
“Drop it,” my mother growls.
I suck in a breath. “I know you don’t know me, but you’ve done so much for me the moment I needed you the most.”
The agitation and limited patience are etched into her brow.
“Let me do something for you now,” I plead.
I’m here, Mom. I am so sorry I took you for granted. I didn’t know how bad this all was… I was a stupid, spoiled girl. I am so sorry.
“He’s in the tower on the east wing. It’s a dungeon they use to experiment on inmates.” My bottom lip trembles as I am tempted to hug her. To tell her how much I’ve needed her to come save me.
My mother tries to pull away again before I stop her.
I can’t let go yet. Not after everything I’ve seen.
“Don’t hold back on them. It takes something extraordinary to unlock a mind like yours. No one will ever forget this day. Especially not me. Not ever.”
You are a legend, and you have made history. I am so proud to be your daughter.
She tilts her head, and squints to get a closer look at the color of my eyes.
“Who. Are. You?” she asks.
The Nightlung surges through veins. And I step away from her, taking Niklaus’s hand and channeling all of my energy into my father, not far from here.
Niklaus
It’s the ash-ridden aftermath of war.
We watched it unfold on the edge of a cliff.
Sapphire’s father, Uncle Warrose, Aunt Ruth, my mother, and father cornered by a swamp as the Vexamen army thundered over the barren land to kill them.
Aunt Skylenna riding on DaiSzek’s back, wielding a sword and balancing with her feet gripping his spine.
And DaiSzek fucking breathed—no, he roared—fire.
The battle was long and gruesome. Bodies of both sides indistinguishable in a pile of limbs, blood, and dirt. The battlefield a feast for the Dralutheran. The wet glint of exposed sinew. Burned flesh and copper. Smoke rose in black pillars from DaiSzek’s ruin.
Sapphire kept her hand clamped over my leg as we watched it all implode. Dellilian hid behind me, too afraid to watch with us.
Knightingale. My father, Aurick, saving my dad, Niles, and bleeding out in front of him. Aunt Skylenna commanding the Blood Mammoth to annihilate the Mazonist Brothers.
We waited patiently for it all to end. The silence after is almost worse than the screams of death before. And this time, Sapphire didn’t look guilty. She did control this jump through time. This is exactly where she intended for us to end up.
And after it was all over, Sapphire turned to me with glossy eyes, still reeling from the sight of limbs and innards jutting from the mud.
“I know you don’t approve of me warning my father…” she said cautiously.
I look around at the red-streaked sky raining ash over the carnage. She’s talking about a fight, I think. Though it was yesterday for her, it was over a decade ago for me. That argument was buried deep in the archives of my mind. Untouched and preserved since the day she left.
“The argument we had,” I clarify, rubbing Dellilian’s head resting on my lap. “Ten years ago.”
Sapphire tries not to show it, but I’ve wounded her.
“It was only a couple of days ago for me,” she replies sadly.
My hand finds the side of her smooth face.
The sensation flutters through my brain like a thousand angel wings.
I still am unable to comprehend that she is here, sitting directly in front of me.
I have fantasized for years about putting my hands on her.
Feeling how soft and feminine her skin feels against my scarred and battered hands.
The smell of her hair. Those heterochromatic eyes that make me feel drunk and dreaming all at once.
I don’t know if the fear of her disappearing again will ever not be ever-present, crushing me from the inside out.
“A lot has changed for me in that decade, Spitfire. Including the stubborn asshole who wanted to stop you from warning your dad.”
Her eyes light up.
“New history path!” Dellilian adds sleepily. “Haven’t done this the first time.”
“What does that mean?” Sapphire asks.
“Miss Sapphire decide not to talk to Dad. Every time in this loop, Miss Sapphire chooses not to tell Dad.”
“You’re saying we’ve done this before in a fucked-up time paradox, and I usually don’t warn my dad? That this is the first?” Sapphire clarifies with hope sparkling on her beautiful face.
Dellilian hums in our minds.
“Warn him, baby. Consequences be damned.” I kiss her cheek, grazing my nose against hers and sighing. “Warn your father, and then we will go and save mine.”
Sapphire’s grin is wide and determined. The delight does something permanent to my heart.
I am a starving man who has been deprived of seeing that smile in the dark, hellish hole I was sentenced to.
And now that I am out, I know I will pretty much do anything to see that smile every day for the rest of my life.
She has me in chains, on my knees for her.