My blood rushes to my face in mortification and hatred. Hot, angry fireworks go off in my arteries. And I want to cry. I want to scream. I want to throw things. I want him to feel how much thishurts.
“Where were you then? If my father is supposedly the most powerful man our country has ever known, then where was he when his only daughter needed him?” Tears roll down my cheeks. I wipe them away furiously. “Where were you, Dad?”
As the hiccuping sobs barrel through my throat, a pair of hands turn me around by my shoulders and pull me into a wide, hard chest.
“I’ve got you,” Krimson breathes, strained and labored.
“I hate him,” I cry.
“I know.”
“He’s saved everyone. He’s been there for everyone. Why not me?”
“I know,” he says again.
“It’s not fair.”
Krimson holds me while my tears soak his gray nightshirt. He holds me because he’s the only one who knows where my fury comes from. Where my insensitive comments originate. Right here. In the doorway of a great man who no longer can do great things.
Not even for his children.
4. Homicidal Mania
Apparently, the city we livein is very different from what it looked like twenty years ago.
My brother and I go to a savant school for adults now, between the ages of twenty and twenty-five, close to the Dellilian Castle. There’s a beautiful reform estate where the Emerald Lake Asylum used to sit. It now acts as a sanctuary, a rehabilitation home for those with mental illness, trauma from the old days of Demechnef law. My grandfather, Chekiss, runs it with so much compassion and care, no one would ever know the dark secrets that land still holds from the old asylum.
Women no longer have to starve themselves, although many older women still do.
Since Aunt Marilynn and Uncle Niles have taken Aurick Demechnef’s place, many laws were abolished and new ones were created to protect women, the mentally ill, and equality.
Apparently, my parents made this all possible.
Apparently, this city used to be filled with manic dolls, fainting couches, and boutiques filled with concoctions of creams and oils for nightly routines. Mints to help a woman purge her food if she ate too much. Brass corsets that helped reshape a ribcage to permanently give that hourglass figure.
I get told often by our professor how lucky I should feel.
“Women used to be oppressed.”
“Women used to be monitored.”
“Women used to be judged by their menstrual hysteria.”
It’s hard to feel lucky when I’ve only ever seen the good side of this country. Everything else feels like a dark and disturbing fairytale. Not to mention…fictional.
“Niklaus, what do you think? I’m certain you have a unique take on this,” Professor Nundy turns from his chalkboard.
Niklaus sits one row behind me. I try to ignore him back there, but paranoia gets the best of me. How could it not? He used to stick gum in my hair or just glare at me until I turned around.
“We wouldn’t have won the war without Mind Phantoms,” he answers in boredom.
Krimson scoffs next to me.
“Interesting take,” Nundy comments. “Mr. Valdawell, you don’t agree?”
Don’t agree? God, this is going to open a can of worms. Look who you’re talking to. We’re the children of Skylenna and Dessin and Kane Valdawell. Mind Phantoms destroyed our parents’ lives.
“I’d say not,” Krimson responds with a venomous chill to his tone. “Poisoning children and their parents so that they can be raised like pigs for slaughter? Can grown men not win their own wars anymore?”
