Niklaus straightens back and lifts his chin, catching on to the conclusion I’ve already arrived at. He clears his throat and attempts to swallow like it’s painful to do so.
“You’re observing us.”
“I don’t understand you. How have you not infected anyone? How—” Vrath peers down at me with that disgust wrinkling the corners of his eyes again. “That strand of hair is touching your collarbone. And the right isn’t.”
He points to the stray hairs closest to my face. I tuck them behind my ears.
“How have you not taken ill? Been soaked in blood? Disease ridden?” Vrath continues.
Niklaus exchanges a look with me. One that says,this man is fucking crazy.
“Is that what happens to you when you travel?” I ask.
Vrath exhales in annoyance, smearing the paint over his eyes in the agitated way a toddler would do when they are overtired. Charcoal smudges over the backs of his hands, blending with cream and yellow colors down his cheekbones and eyelids. It’s in this moment I come closer to identifying his age. Vrath is at least ten years older than us. Maybe more.
“You left doors open for me, you know,” he tells us, still harboring that agitated tone.
“Doors?”
“Yes. I slip through and have to search for you. But you leave none of the usual signs. I see no blood, no maps, no symbols, no evidence of infections. How have you come and gone? How are you moving without them?”
Niklaus glances down at me again before huffing. “We have no fucking idea what you are saying. Do you hear yourself?”
An aged tiredness coils in my bones. And as I bring my hand to my chest, Vrath notes the movement with his eyes. As if he knows all too well the sensations that are unwinding in my body.
“Do. Not. Curse. At. Me.” Vrath’s thin lip twitches.
“How are you traveling, Vrath?” I interrupt before someone’s temper is set off.
The tall, slinky man shrugs a shoulder. “The same way I did at early birth. A mother’s blood is the only way I’ve come across.”
Sorry, what’s that now?
“I advanced faster than you, Sapphire S. Valdawell. I traveled for the first time while I was still in my mother’s womb. Third trimester.”
Niklaus parts his lips, flickering his stunned gaze at me, then back for Vrath.
“Can’t seem to return to the exact moment in time I belong.” Thumb to index finger, he taps then rubs them together. “And I can’t really change anything, yet I spoil and infect myself and others.”
“Spoil and infect?” I ask.
Vrath’s deep frown curdles the air between us. The particles to which he exhales into the air are out of place, toxic and deadly.
“I am often quite ill with infections. Possibly because I don’t belong here.”
“And what about others?”
“I infect them too. Sometimes before I am sickly at all.”
“How?”
His calm yet annoyed stare seems centuries old. “Because I don’t belong in these timelines. Anywhere I travel, I’m a cancerous parasite that infects anyone close to me. It’s as though the universe is allergic to my presence.”
That’s why I can feel myself aching and wilting the moment we moved closer to him. I take a step back, and look down at my hands, wondering if I’ve noticed myself infecting anyone too. Not that I can recall. Although, I almost wish I had that ability when Albatross was on top of me, or when Absinthe was pummeling me with her bony fists.
“But I don’t understand why you haven’t taken ill,” Vrath adds thoughtfully. “I’ve watched you. Those you have interacted with are left in perfect condition.”
“That’s a shame,” Niklaus says, clearly following my train of thought.
