Chapter 35 Mariella #2
He leans down and flips open the lid. A miniature ballerina pops up in the center of the box, its paint faded with age.
The ballerina rotates, and I flinch at the off-key, high-pitched melody of Sleeping Beauty’s “Once Upon a Dream”.
I try to step backward, but my body is still planted on the bed back in Silas’s office.
My feet push back into the bed base, every muscle straining.
I’m trapped inside Parker’s past, and the only way out is to finish watching it.
Parker and Rose stare at the music box, eyes glued to the rotating ballerina, but with each passing second, my heart rate quickens.
Something’s wrong.
Silas jumps to his feet a second before my older self barges into the room, pale-faced and short of breath. “We have to go. Now,” she orders, freezing before the spinning ballerina. Her trembling hands rise to her mouth.
I don’t need an echo to feel her heart racing in her chest or the terror flooding her body. I’ve felt it every night since I was seven years old. I’m living my recurring nightmare in perfect detail.
A middle-aged man with short, dark hair enters the room behind her, flushed and breathing heavily. “You need to come with me,” he says to her, straightening his tie. An armed man appears behind him.
“Nickol?” Professor McGregor says.
My future self twists to face the man—Nickol—and backs away from the door. “Stay away from me.”
“I just want to have a quick chat in my office,” he says.
The room’s silent besides a few lingering, off-key notes as the music box runs out of rotations.
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” she says.
Nickol nods to the security guard, who pulls a handgun from his holster, and the room erupts into chaos. Everyone rushes to their feet. Rose and McGregor are yelling, and Parker and Silas storm forward.
Emotions flicker through me—confusion, disbelief, betrayal—but the moment they reach me, they vanish, as if Parker’s plucking them from my body. I wonder why he doesn’t shield me from the silent rage simmering beneath the surface, like a dark snake slithering under my skin, preparing to strike.
Silas reaches my past self first, wedging himself between her and the gun aimed at her head.
“Wait,” she yells. She reaches for Silas, a sudden wave of calm in the room’s pandemonium. Her hand touches the middle of his back. His body tenses, and she closes her eyes for one fleeting second before Parker breaks the group apart, ramming the guard away.
Everything happens at once. I don’t see Silas take the gun, but suddenly it’s aimed at my future self, a dark fury in his gaze, and the gunshot is ringing in my ears. She crumples to the ground, a circle of dark red blood blossoming over her chest.
Parker roars, rushing forward to take her into his arms. “No!” he yells, his voice breaking. “Stay with me.”
Silas gestures to Rose and Parker. “They’re working with Fan,” he says to Nickol.
“Liar,” Rose screams, tears streaming down her snarling face.
There’s no blue left in Silas’s narrowed gaze, as if the pigment has washed away, leaving behind a cold, cloudy gray.
After everything he’s done, deep down a part of me still believed there was good in him. Even when he took away my powers, he did it to protect me. But this?
Tears wet my cheeks, and my heart aches fiercely, as if the dormant chamber reserved for him has been torn from my body.
It’s as if I’ve slipped into yet another nightmare, where my Silas—the first person I trusted after my mother died, whose chest I wept on while divulging my past—turns into something else. Someone else.
Matthews.
My attention snaps to my future self. She’s dying. I’m dying. I need to stop thinking of her as someone else, because it’s my limbs twisted on the floor. My blood pouring from my body. My life about to end.
Parker’s emotions gush through me, adrenaline, terror and distress overwhelming my senses. I’m struggling to focus over the roaring in my head, my racing heart, and the uncontrollable tremor seizing my body.
“You’re a dead man,” Parker growls at Silas, and I feel his raging promise from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. He lowers his head, and warmth spreads through my body.
“He’s trying to travel,” someone yells.
“Stop,” Nickol yells. It’s then I notice the strange-looking gun with a long, narrow barrel in his hand. “You leave this room and you’re as good as dead. We’ll send people after you. You’ll never stop running.”
Parker doesn’t respond. Body shaking and head bowed, energy erupts within his chest, the thrumming power mirrored within my own body.
He doesn’t react when Nickol fires his gun, or when a small syringe embeds in his neck, but I flinch as if the needle’s pierced my own skin.
Another gunshot rings in my ears, and I’m thrown into my own memories.
The darkness.
My heart struggling to complete its final beats.
The oxygen dwindling in my blood.
This is it. My spirit’s about to leave my body.
I am seconds from death.
I close my eyes, and every single emotion Parker felt in that moment pummels my body, knocking the air from my lungs.
Emotions so strong and pure, no amount of training could suppress them.
His fear and desperation inundate me, his burning need to protect my future self and his eternal promise to undo what’s happening to her.
To change his past and save her life.
Above all, I feel his blinding, unconditional love for her. For me. And I know without any doubt in my mind that Parker would never do anything to harm me.
Wet tears spill onto my cheeks. My mind’s in this dim room, but back in Silas’s office, Parker pulls my body toward his, as if he needs to be closer. As if my touch might ease some of his debilitating grief.
Our chests press together, warm cedar and freshly cut grass igniting my senses as he draws my face toward his.
“I’ll save you,” he says into the shell of my ear, voice trembling with emotion.
“And I’ll kill Matthews for what he did to you.
” And through the death, the darkness, and the despair, his lips find mine, a silent vow promising revenge.
My skin buzzes, the electricity pulsing through me, far stronger than when Parker brought me into his past. He opens his mouth, tongue tangling with mine in a desperate, fervent kiss.
Parker’s energy continues to course through my body, accumulating until the pressure in the rooms shifts.
His grasp on my arms tightens, but he breaks away from me, drawing in a ragged breath…
and everything else—Rose, Silas, his cottage—is gone.