My blood runs cold.
I know that voice. It’s lighter. Younger. Softer. The innocence and gentle nature of that tone is almost unrecognizable from the voice of the woman I grew up knowing.
That’s my mother’s voice.
Niklaus recognizes it too. He shifts his distant stare back to me in muted surprise.
“Oh my god!” I mouth to him.
“Oh, so it’s me holding us back, huh?” the baritone voice says to my mother.
My back goes rigid as I pause to think back on the history we learned about my parents’ journey during the years of the asylum and the war. She traveled through these forests with…
“Impossible,” Niklaus hisses, stumbling back. The color drains from his face, and behind that palpable look of shock—he’s scared.
My father.
Chills sprinkle over my back and legs as I gasp cold air into my lungs. I’ve never heard his voice before. I’ve never seen him walk. I’ve never seen himawake.
A sob crawls up my throat.
“We need to hide!” Niklaus grips my arm, tugging me to the blanket of a nearby tree, bushy with overgrown leaves, vines, and shrubs. “We can’t know what happens if we’re seen!”
Dellilian sits quietly to my left, observing two individuals appear through the shadows of the evergreen trees. My mother, dressed in a black lace and cloak, comes jogging forward playfully. The grin on her rosy cheeks is one I haven’t seen before. Yes, she’s smiled, laughed, been happy. But this grin is dressed in desire and giddiness.
“Yeah! We need to get you in shape! Have you lost all of those big muscles or something?” my mother teases breathlessly.
And right behind her comes a man who seems to eat up the space in the forest with his dark presence. He’s taller than Niklaus, broader, stronger, unyielding with heavy muscle. His chocolate brown hair is without the speckles of gray and white strands I’m used to seeing.
I peer at him through the wispy leaves swaying in my view. I blink at the tears gathering in my straining eyes.
It’s him…
He looks like Krimson with his eyes open.
My dad.
The muscles in my thighs begin to tremble as I try to overcome the urge to cry.
“Oh, so you think my muscles are big?” my father, Patient Thirteen, calls to my mother with a half-smile.
Something soft tears open in my chest. His voice, warm and strong, I somehow recognize within the marrow of my bones.
It hurts.
Oh god, it hurts.
The tingling tautness coating my nerve endings is cut off by the sound of my mother’s laughter as she falls through the hunter’s trap. My posture straightens as I witness a wave of golden hair disappear into the hole.
Niklaus slaps his hand over my mouth before I have the chance to scream for her.
There’s a whoosh, then a thump as her body hits the bottom.
“Skylenna!” Patient Thirteen yells, diving into the hole after her.
I thrash against Niklaus’s arms and hand covering my mouth. His hold is unyielding, as sure as stone surrounding my core.
“We have to help them!” I grumble into his palm.
