“You did this to us, didn’t you?” He rotates toward me, anger turning the whites of his eyes a light shade of pink. “You are just like your parents. You brought us here!”
I take a step back and nearly trip. “Me?!”
Does he have a brain injury from the fight?
“Yes, Spitfire! Look where the fuck we are! Look who your goddammed parents are!”
I choke out a furious laugh. “I’m nothing like my parents! I’m not an experiment! I’mnormal. This wasn’t my doing!”
There was a time, yes, where I wished I could be just like them. I wished I was special too. Maybe then I could talk to my father for the first time. Maybe then I could be a part of history too. But now? Hell no. I want to get as far away from our fucked-up family as possible. I want to build my own name, my own life.
Niklaus crunches through the snow to get a better look at me, glaring through the curtain of falling snow. “Have fun freezing to death out here in your short, slutty dress. I’m not staying with your defective brain another moment.”
Something inside me withers before it lights on fire.
“Good! Leave! Enjoy your unmarked grave, coward!”
And he’s gone. Abandoning me in this winter storm.
I know we have never gotten along, that we’ve always disliked each other greatly…but I am in a short dress. My legs are exposed. This thick cloak will only do so much to keep me warm. Iwillfreeze to death out here without him. I never thought his hate for me was so pronounced that he actually wished me dead.
I stumble across the snow to find a cave, too stubborn to die before he does out here. All I need is to make a fire. If I can do that, maybe I can hunt. Get fur to keep warm, give myself a fighting chance to hike back to the city.
A few leagues away, I see it. A dark hole where a cave would exist. I pick up sticks and a couple logs of wood along the way.I’m going to make it. I’m going to make it.
The arctic chill in the air is paralyzing, drying out my skin, and causing my muscles to atrophy. The forest screams with eerie winds and rustling branches. And my view of the white landscape all blends together. I tuck deeper into my red cloak.
Krimson, where are you? I need help.
It feels like half an hour before I see that cave growing larger in the distance. If I can just start a fire…
There’s a whooshing sound that zings through the air. Something slices into the top of my ear. I screech, throwing myself into the snow as ruby drops splatter across the ice. An arrow lands a few feet away from me.
“Fuck!” I whip my head around to see two of those same Vexamen soldiers who tried to grab us before. Did they come here with us when we…traveledagain?
“Whëx eiz Demechnef!”
They throw two more objects in my direction. Metal balls that expand, casting a net in the air before sticking into the ground on either side of me.
Shit!
No amount of scrambling helps, I’m hogtied down, unable to wiggle out of the net they’ve closed me in. And the two soldiers are sprinting through the heavy snow, holding up a sickle in my direction.
“Hey! Wait a second! I”
A fountain of blood bursts from the neck of the soldier to the right as his head isn’t quite cut off, but close enough. The next is speared from behind. The shiny tip of a sword glides through his chest, coated in a thick layer of dark blood. As it slides back out, the soldier drops with a gaping red mouth.
Niklaus stands behind them, wiping off his sword.
Well, hell, I would rather have died.
“Are you hurt?” he asks, pissed and panting.
I shake my head. He ran to come find me. Through the snow.
His large deep-sea eyes trail over my tied-up body, then land on a spot at the side of my head. “Your ear is bleeding.”
My momentary shock wears off. “So, freezing to death is acceptable for me, but being butchered by Vexamen soldiers isn’t?”
