Doubt flourishes in the sea of my mind.
Each short breath I take sends echoes through the mausoleum built for someone no one else remembers. But what about that vivid memory of her climbing to the top of the Red Oak trees when we were children? Or the time I teased her for the light dusting of freckles over the bridge of her nose? Those strange different colored eyes…
I’ve hated her most of my life. But what if she isn’t real? I’ll never leave this place. I’m stuck here—
That scream finds its way under the crack of the basement door in fragments. It jolts me upright, blasting a hum of panic and relief through my bones. It wakes up that foggy part of my brain that’s been asleep, trapped in a loop of questioning my reality. I know her voice but have not heard that fear in it before. That scream is one Sapphire wouldn’t make unless…
I twist my right wrist in my shackle again, using my thumbnail to carve into the leather.
“Come on, you son of a bitch,” I growl at the restraints.
Sapphire screams again.
“Fuck!” I hiss.
I twist so hard the skin on my wrists begin to peel off.
“Niles!” I shout after hearing another deadly shriek whip through the air. I swear to God if she travels and I’m not with her, I’ll fucking kill myself.
Maybe there’s one redeeming quality in my father during his complete loss of morals and sanity during this time of his life. Maybe I can talk to him. Reach that part of him who raised me. The man who was kind to strangers and made it his mission to make his wife laugh. Is he still in there?
“Niklaus!” she screams my name from somewhere in the house, and it sounds like she’s being choked, or her mouth is being muffled.
“Niles! I swear to fucking God!” I roar as blood trickles down my elbow. Skin curling around the restraints like pencil shavings. I almost have it…
“He isn’t coming.”
Agatha stands at the top of the stairs, holding a gas lamp, and shuts the door behind her.
21. Seraph’s Left Hand
Sapphire
Tears drip down my templeslike drops of blood from a deep wound.
“Don’t do this. Please, don’t do this!” The panic is suffocating as this mad man reaches his quivering hand into my panties. He rubs at my sensitive skin angrily, the same way you’d scrub a dirty dish.
“Why aren’t you wet?!” The offense in his voice is shocking.
I can’t respond because I can’t stop screaming now. It burns through my chest alongside choppy hiccups. My brain doesn’t know how to rationalize what’s about to happen. I can’t seem to process the fact that my arms and legs are incapable of moving to defend myself, though I jerk and heave anyway.
“Stop moving!” He slams his mouth over mine again, this time it’s less of a kiss and more an angry attempt to get me to shut up.
Krimson! Please, help me!
The sweaty man tugs my underwear down, angling his penis to my lips.
Oh god, no!
As I squeeze my eyes shut, a pair of sparkling black eyes stare back at me in the void. It’s a debilitating flash of the empty cosmic space that now brings me comfort. Grabbing my attention and pulling it away from what’s about to happen.
“Use what you know, Miss Sapphire!” Dellilian’s voice erupts in my mind.
My heart stutters in my chest.
Those words ring in my ears, and it takes less than a second to understand what that means. In a situation like this, I need to use any advantage I have. And in this case, it’s knowing more than the man who believes he’s a divine educator of women. And Idoknow more. I’ve studied the history around his actions and experiments. His family’s lineage. His last name that held weight with the Demechnef family.
With a few steadying breaths, I stop crying and screaming and fighting. I go perfectly still, looking down at his attempt to penetrate me.
