Warrose shakes his head, placing his hand over his mouth before speaking. “Maybe that’s a good thing. Niles won’t leave their side. He’ll watch out for them. He knows what our world was like before we fixed it.”
Tears rush to my eyes at the hope he suddenly has.
“It’s true. He’ll know how to keep them safe,” Ruth agrees.
“No. They—” My voice breaks, and I have to breathe to keep the heartbreak at bay. “They left Niles behind. Theylosthim…inVexamen.”
Ruth’s face falls. The color leaves her flushed cheeks.
“When…”
“Far enough back when the Blackspire Ward of The North was still around.”
Ruth blanches, moving her chair back as she clutches her hand to her chest.
“NO! Tell me he’s not in there, Skylenna… Tell me they don’t have Niles!”
I look to Warrose, then back at Ruth. “From what Krimson saw, he is currently a captive.”
“No! Oh god, no!” Ruth shrieks, crying in her hand.
“God-fucking-damnit!” Warrose shoves past me, stepping off the porch and pacing the tree line with a horde of pent-up energy.
“Where are the kids?! Are they safe?” Ruth is still crying but trying to straighten up enough to hear my response, desperate for some news.
“We don’t know yet. All Krimson knows is that they are at least better off than Niles.”
“Can Krimson travel too? He must! We need to leave now! We have to—”
I hold my hand up to her. “He’s working on it. I’ve shown him how to search for her in the void, though the place he’s going is different. Similar to the void, but a separate entity entirely. I can’t follow him there.”
“But does he know how to travel like Sapphire did?” she asks.
I shake my head.
“Oh, Skylenna…” Ruth reaches for my hand and tugs me to her. “If Niles is a captive, we have to find a way to get to him now. Most captives there ended up dead or horribly maimed.Especiallyones from our country.”
Warrose places a hand on my upper back. “We have to do something. I can’t leave him in that place. Fuck, Dessin would have burned both countries to the ground to get him out.”
“Does it look like I’m going to sit around and wait for a miracle? I don’t care if it fucking kills me—I will bring my daughter, Niklaus, and my brother home,” I say confidently.
The floorboards behind Ruth creak.
“They’ve traveled back in time, haven’t they?”
Down the dark hallway, Marilynn steps forward in her nightgown and slippers.
And I practically float out of body to watch what happens next. Squeezing past Ruth’s chair, I charge Marilynn, sinking my fingernails into her throat and slamming her into the wall. Picture frames clatter to the floor. Her head makes a small hole in the wallpaper.
But Marilynn, though perfectly capable, does not fight back.
She stares back at me with those, rich, all-knowing, blue eyes.
“You knew, didn’t you?” I shout in her face.
No response.
I slam her head into the wall again, to which Warrose shouts my name.
