But this mysterious entity is like a black cat, coming and going as it pleases. Losing interest the more I want it to let me near.
I give up on traveling momentarily. Never have I heard such a terrifying sound in my life. Niklaus’s screams will echo through my nightmares until my final days.
I watch the skin on his shoulders bubble in horror.
“Niklaus!” I cry. Because, what else can I do? Is this going to kill him and spare me?
Oh god. I try again, reaching for that cosmic mist in the back of my mind, forcing myself to break whatever unwanted barrier or block is restraining me from controlling this.
I slide my hands along his jaw and let him press his forehead against mine. His howls come between his clenched teeth now as he bears down.
“I’m here!” I hold him against me. “Hold on, okay? Hold on!”
People around us drop to their knees, flopping on the floor like bugs being burned by the light from a magnifying glass. But Niklaus holds his position against me, and despite the excruciating pain, he doesn’t waver. Not for a second.
54. All My Relics
Vrath
The blood has dried onmy hands.
I like when it does that. It makes my palms stiff and shiny. The crimson red stain turns darker, a dull ruddy brown. And while the soldiers around me are dancing and cheering in glee as Sapphire and Niklaus wave their weapons around, twirling and skipping in a choreographed attempt to put on a show without killing each other—I use my yellow thumbnail to scrape at the blood in the crease lines of my left palm. It twists and lifts from my skin in flakes.
I smile adoringly as I blow on the dried blood, watching it scatter in the humid air of the stadium, floating like scarlet butterflies.
The Vexamen Breed are much too easy to infiltrate. When they are off duty, here at House of Jester Nights, they are belligerently drunk and stupid. I fit right in with my clothing and painted face. They don’t even notice as I lick my fingers, making the dry blood runny again.
“Why don’t you just move to another era, Sapphire S. Valdawell? Why be imprisoned this far in the past?” I tap my stiff fingers against my paint chipping around my lips. “Are you unintelligent?”
I have watched her move through time. I have studied her patterns, though her methods are shocking to me. Does she not need the blood of a mother to come and go? Does she not need relics from their personal belongings? Time equations and a map? And why aren’t others affected as she interacts with people that she does not belong with?
No one falls ill around her.
Speaking of, the soldiers around me become increasingly snotty and hoarse the longer I’m nearby. Their perspiring skin loses color by the minute. But of course, they do not notice. They are drunk, moronic men who are fixated on shiny toys fighting to the death before their eyes.
Niklaus Demechnef kisses Sapphire Valdawell.
I tilt my head at the psychorrhagic interaction.
I have never understood the peculiar act of intimate touch. I do not receive the slightest ounce of endorphins or excitement of any kind toward touching another human being gently. Perhaps I feel something when I hear the wretched cries of a mother as I insert a tear in her skin and collect copious amounts of her blood. There really is nothing quite like it. Especially if she is a new mother and pleads for me to spare her infant.
Those are the cries that lead to me doing something God-like.
Now, Sapphire Valdawell is not a mother. But her blood sings to me like a darling sea nymph. It chants and hums a tune that reaches me when she travels. It wants me to bleed her. It could be the answers I’ve longed for. The only way for me to return to where I truly belong. Perhaps I will no longer be deathly ill? Perhaps I will be worshiped as a divine deity for my time craft?
I will know for certain once I bleed her.
I do not hate Sapphire Valdawell nor Niklaus Demechnef.
But they run from me, and it is not fair. It is not right. Do they not know that I have watched their ways over and over again? I have seen them interact in alternate paths of what is to come. I have seen all. Why resist me?
The two get directed off stage.
“But how can I reach them?” I ponder.
“You talk to yourself,” the slurring soldier says next to me in Old Alkadonian.
I ignore the brute. I have had enough of my potential interactions with him. His mind is sideways and insides are diseased. I do not like the eyebrow with the scar or that he perspires more from his right underarm than his left.
