“Let’s go.” Niklaus leads us away from my parents.
“No, please…” I’m at a loss for words. I need to see him just a moment longer. I need see how he treats her. If he is everything they said he was. I need to know…
“Now, Spitfire!”
The room blurs and sways as I stumble on my heels further and further away. My father steps toward Aurick in a dominant confrontational stance. And I want to scream for him. Tell him who I am. Ask him if he ever wanted children. If he would have wanted a daughter. If he truly loved our mother. I want to beg him not to fall into the coma.
I just want him to know me!
“Bad man back!”Dellilian’s urgency floods my veins with a spark of soberness.
Even with a queasy stomach, drooping eyes, and unstable balance—I spot him in the back of the ballroom. Among the curtained shadows, hidden from the golden honey lights. But he can’t hide that hideous face, even if this castle is full of women wearing enough paint on their lips and cheeks to paint a masterpiece in the grand hall.
“Shit!” I sputter, turning to sprint behind Niklaus.
“Yeah, shit,” he agrees.
As we bump into drunk couples, bursting through the backdoors of the castle, I throw off my shoes and run as fast as I can. We don’t have weapons on us. No knives, swords, or ways of getting rid of this psychopath.
But do we really need them? Niklaus and I have been training damn near our entire lives for this kind of crisis, right? Why can’t we fight him off ourselves?
“No fight! Must run!” Dellilian shouts in her fairy-light voice.
Evergreen branches whips across my skin. The night sky beams with sparkling stars and a waxing crescent moon. A charge of chilly gusts of wind whirl around us.
“Shit!” My feet crunch over twigs and roots, collecting splinters by the dozens.
“Don’t slow down!” Niklaus whispers-shouts over his shoulder.
“We can fight him though!”
Niklaus slows down to get a better look at me. He considers this.
“Yeah, I’ve thought about that too…”
“There’s two of us and one of him.”
“But—”
“But nothing. Are we really going to let him hunt us like this?”
“She’s right, Niklaus Demechnef. Are you really that frightened of me?” A storm of goose bumps, nausea, and disgust roll under my skin like a flesh-eating disease.
How Vrath managed to catch up to us, I don’t know. But there is a layer of betrayal in his eyes that we had the audacity to run at all.
“No, not frightened.” Niklaus takes a bold step toward him. “Your face does turn my stomach though.”
Vrath reaches for his face before freezing in place. Those giant eyes slipping to the shadows behind us, jumping back and forth in soundless astonishment.
“You arecheating!” he hisses in disgust, a rare sight of explosive emotion. Two steps back. Vrath sticks out his plump bottom lip, appearing so much younger all at once. His inner child clawing its way to the surface.
“What?” I ask, whirling around to search for whatever he just saw in the shadows.
“I know what that is!” Is he hyperventilating? “You think I don’t know what you’ve brought to this world?”
Niklaus’s only reaction is a slow, bored blink. There’s an understanding in his posture that neither of us know what Vrath’s talking about, so there is no point in getting worked up with him.
“Stay back!” Vrath yanks out a black, gooey tree branch strapped to his back. “How could you…”
