“Answer me, you fucking bitch!”
Marilynn nods. “Yes.”
“FUCK!” I scream in her face until my vocal cords are shredded. “Your son is lost in time, and your fucking husband has been taken captive at the Blackspire Ward in Vexamen! Did you know that?!”
Her eyes give nothing away. Nothing except that constant glint. The one that tells me she has always known how this story was going to end.
“Tell me why! Are you a psychopath? Are you fucking demented? That’s my daughter! My little girl!”
A little fight flashes in her gaze. “Don’t you think I would have tried to stop it if there was any other way?! I’d give my own life to stop them from having to go through all this if that were an option. You have known me for over two decades, Skylenna. Trust me. Thishasto happen.”
I want to hit her. I want to choke the life out of her for knowing my baby was going to be swallowed through time and left in the worst parts of our history. I’d give anything to shelter her from that horror.
“Fuck. You. I don’t care if I have to sell my soul to the devil. I am getting them back.”
Marilynn shoves me off, taking a threatening step forward.
“It won’t come to that. I’m going to teach Krimson how to travel too. How to take you with him to bring everyone home.”
51. Collecting Souls
Sapphire
I roll on my side, letting my eyes peel open, and come face-to-face with a woman staring back at me through the rusty bars meant for the cage of a gigantic bird.
The sight of her round brown eyes scares the daylight out of me. I fling myself back, cracking the back of my head into another set of bars behind me. Hissing, I rub my scalp and grit my teeth.
Those curious brown eyes blink timidly, like she didn’t mean to frighten me. In fact, my reaction equally scared her. The woman strains to sit herself up, using a scabbed elbow and dirty hand to inch herself up to lean on a set of bars.
“Skievéz.”
I’m sorry.
“Fuck me. Old Alkadonian can only mean one thing,” I groan, adding pressure to the back of my head.
“She’s from Dementia,” a man says from a cage next to the woman studying me with an interested gaze.
“I speak your language too,” the woman tells me with a smile.
I nod, jerking forward as a hand lands on my upper back.
“It’s just me.” Niklaus. Groggy. Annoyed.
I twist around to see him lying in the cage to my right, pinching the bridge of his nose as he keeps his hand on me.
It only takes me one or two seconds to know where we’ve landed. It’s a hallway made of brimstone and two columns of oddly shaped cages. Red and yellow bulbs, glitching and pulsating with inconsistent light. A dreary old tune, like that of a vintage carnival—an organ, trumpet, and other instruments I don’t recognize. And the scent is exactly as I pictured it. Candied apples and the scum at the bottom of a well.
I lock eyes with Niklaus as he lowers his hand.
“We are in the fucking Vexamen Prison,” I exhale. The dread and denial arrive and leave like a puff of smoke. The uncontrollable laughter snuffs any other feelings out. I sit up, covering my mouth with the back of my hand, pinching my eyes closed as a fit of giggles ruptures my lungs.
“Yep,” Niklaus adds with zero humor to his tone.
I laugh harder, wheezing with tears in my eyes.
“We must have done something horrible to a saint in a past life,” Niklaus continues.
I can’t stop laughing.
