“Even if this is another one of their experiments, I don’t care. As long as I get to be with you. I don’t care.”
His words land like a bruise in my gut.
A woman shrieks from the entrance of the stadium. “WHERE IS HE?!”
Niklaus’s instincts kick in, and he is no longer relaxed. He’s standing, clutching the back of a rusted metal chair.
“Where is Dessin?”
My head swivels to the voice that called out his name. A young, lighter, more distressed version of the voice that raised me. I’m on my feet, gripping the back of Niklaus’s arm to steady myself.
What time have we returned to? That tousled, wavy honey hair is wind-blown and strewn about. She’s wearing the one-piece red uniform. She’s searching for my father. Screaming. Inmates part for her like the Red Sea. Her lively hands clamp over her ears, wincing in pain with puffy, red eyes.
Someone shares information with her.
But whatever it is, she only panics more.
“Fuck!” she shrieks.
The moment Niklaus and I look into each other’s eyes, I remember this part of her story. This…thisis the moment my father was injected with the Crow Ivast’s creation that would inevitably leave Krimson and me fatherless. My mother is looking for him because they’ve been torturing him with Mind Phantoms.
I remember the location they are keeping him.
“Dessin!”
Bearing witness to my mother’s distress calls, to the visceral howls as she calls out for anyone to help—it sets my feet into motion. My entire life, I’ve lacked the respect she deserves. Reading about some of her experiences on paper is different than watching it play out in person. Or worse, having it happen to me too.
She worked so hard not to let us see her cry.
But she was protecting us from the long, doomed history that broke her heart many times over. My mother was a force of nature. A God-fearing plague on this world in the best way. And she’s had decades of pain.
“Dessin! DESSIN!”
Before I can weigh the downside of what I’m about to do, I graze my fingertip over her trembling shoulder. My mother spins around, heaving and snarling like a wild, deadly beast. My wrist is snatched and I stumble back, bumping into Niklaus’s chest.
“Do you remember me?” I ask nervously.
She picks apart my appearance through a wall of tears.
“You’re the two I broke out of the asylum.”
“Yes,” I whisper.
“What are you doing here?”
Niklaus answers for me as I draw a blank. “Apparently the side effect of escaping the Chandelier City is to end up here.”
My mother considers this with a tidal wave of rising annoyance.
“I don’t have time for polite conversation. I’m looking for someone.”
Impulsively, I grab her wrist and hold on for dear life.
“Drop it,” my mother growls.
I suck in a breath. “I know you don’t know me, but you’ve done so much for me the moment I needed you the most.”
The agitation and limited patience are etched into her brow.
