My eyes involuntarily flood with tears. My face swells and blood vessels burst under the throbbing pressure. And all I can do is buck and thrash under his psychotic hold, unable to even scream or cry—my vocal cords have been smashed down. My airway flattened. I have nothing left. Nothing.
“There he is!” That voice. Soft. Sweet. Innocent. It smears across the chaos exploding in the back of my head.
Something rips the weight off my body. The knobby knees jabbing into my sides are gone. The heavy breathing, grunting, and whining is now across the room. A gust of wind replaces his presence. A coughing fit secures my survival, wheezing and gasping as his hands have been torn away from cutting off my air supply, though I can still feel the sting from where his fingernails cut into my neck.
I fight to blink away the tears and blinding blurriness, but it won’t go away. All I hear is what sounds like the smashing of fruits. Over and over again. Splatters of liquid. Grunts. Moans.
I turn my head to see black hair. Five o’clock shadow. A shirtless back. Bloody knuckles and forearms. Albatross lying on the floor like a sack of raw meat.
The relief shoots through me like an arrow directly into my gut. I fight to breathe. To keep my eyes open. To swallow down my surprise. It’s euphoric. He broke out. He found me. He saved—
The familiar sensation floods my senses. The dusting of stars across my vision. The hook that pierces my gut and tugs me into a black hole. Oh god, this is it…
“Niklaus!” The sound is a garbled rasp at best. It hardly touches my own ears much less his. My vocal cords are destroyed and mangled in my throat. “Niklaus!”
The man I’ve known my entire life turns to look at me. Blood streaked across his jaw and left cheek. Eyes dazed and furious.
“Niklaus—leaving…”
His eyebrows shoot up, and he jolts forward, throwing himself over me. His hands are careful not to touch the places that are bloodied, blossoming with black bruises, or visibly injured. Carefully, Niklaus grabs my shackled hand. Even though we haven’t needed to be touching when I travel, I accept the touch.
Even though it’s him, I sigh with relief. It’s the first bit of human contact that hasn’t been nonconsenting, predatory, or abusive since we got here. It’s a silent action that waves a white flag for a moment.
The room trembles and darkens as that hole wraps around us, tugging me backward. Falling. Floating. Tumbling. And Niklaus simply rests his temple against my wrist, allowing it to take him too. Relinquishing control and closing his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers.
And this time blinks from existence.
Letter #2,076
Skylenna
Dear Dessin,
Today I went back. A memory in the void I haven’t visited yet.
The night Aurick hit me.
I can picture you shaking your head and getting angry, wondering why the hell I would ever want to relive that night. I couldn’t even bring it up around you without watching those beautiful eyes turn from a warm brown to pitch black.
After Aurick hit me, I left. He passed out drunk.
That should have been the end of it, right?
It wasn’t.
Why didn’t you ever tell me you were there that night? Watching? Waiting until I left to get your revenge? It was small, sure, but it was you. I just know it.
I peeked back into the void to wander the halls of that mansion. Remembering what it felt like to be in the beginning stages of falling in love with you again. To go to sleep the night before I feel that thrill of exhilaration because I’d get to see you in the asylum the next day.
But when I passed Aurick’s room, I saw the wall adjacent to his bed. Next to the window, it read:
Aurick
Demechnef
Hits
