“Niklaus?” I touch his shoulder.
“I can’t look at him,” he mutters.
“Okay.” I hold in my sob.
“I want him.” He directs to where Vrath once stood over the execution. “I want to kill him, Sapphire.”
This part of the village is nothing but embers and unbearable silence and the torrent of rain lightens to a dewy mist.
My mother sits next to Uncle Niles’s arm, gently moving his head back to his shoulders and neck. Her whimpers harbor an excruciating laceration in all of our hearts. She doesn’t push Niklaus to come near his father. Doesn’t pressure him to confront this tragedy.
My mother simply cradles her lifelong friend in her lap, and my father kneels beside them both.
“Krimson?” she calls, voice wounded and bludgeoned like an animal that has just survived a natural disaster.
My brother steps forward, making an effort to lift his head in strength.
“Take us home.” She looks into his eyes with a downfall of new tears. “Take us home so that I may bury my brother.”
73. “I Will Fear No Evil If You Are with Me.”
Sapphire
Over One Thousand Years in the Past
If today I die, Ihope my family will understand why I’ve done this.
Why Niklaus and I had to slip away, to make it look like we were going into the Nightlung with them to return home. Why we have been chasing Vrath through time, following his scent like a bloodhound, into the gorge.
And he knew we were coming.
He knew DaiSzek would not follow and that he would be safe.
But all it will take is for Niklaus or me to draw his blood once. One time for the Short-Haired Windilas to appear and hunt him down.
“The golden lamb has been slaughtered!” Vrath sings in a monotonous nursery rhyme tune from within the forest we’ve been dumped into.
Niklaus keeps his face unreadable as we spring to follow the sound of his voice, though I know these taunts are killing him inside.
“I silenced your yellow songbird!” he chimes again.
My blood bubbles over in hatred.
The night is young under a full moon. It’s ice cold out, somewhere close to the North Sapphrine Forest with sharp-needled pine trees and the bland scent of snow. Our breath heaves from our chest in white clouds of fog.
“I killed you father, Niklaus Demechnef. I killed Niles Offborth!” Vrath’s howl through the trees is baiting and unnatural. “The last thing he tasted was rain.Rain!”
Niklaus and I stop running as the sickness comes back in full force, meaning we’re close. So close I can hear Vrath’s excited breathing.
“Come out and fight me like a man, coward!” Niklaus growls.
My mind won’t block out the image of my uncle’s head. The way his shoulders stayed angled over the chopping block. I feel nauseous and dizzy. But it gives me that bit of fire I need. I know I will not return home until I end Vrath’s life. Until I watch him bleed enough to drown out this memory that I will never forgive myself for.
“There is no fight to be had. I was less confident of my footing in the face of your RottWeilen.” Vrath steps out from behind a pine tree, meandering, that gnarled, black stick in his hand. “Hence, why I beckoned you to follow me here. And now that your beast is gone, I maybe collect the blood that will help me find my way back home. You understand, don’t you?”
I’m on my knees now, vomiting blood.
Niklaus remains standing, hunched and clinging to a dying tree.
