It all looked remarkably fresh: no rot, no rust.
He strode forwards and gave it a savage kick. He gasped in agony, and fell, grabbing the side rail as he did. He’d not noticed that the operating table was bolted to the floor, and he’d kicked it with his bad leg. He leaned on the table, breathing deeply, shaking the offending limb and twisting his foot around until the sharp pain reduced to a dull throb.
She was on the bed.
Not for real. He allowed himself that moment of rationality, but when he’d seen his mother in the asylum she’d been strapped to a bed just like this one, and she had been dull-eyed, and a tiny thread of drool had hung on her lower lip.
They’d expected a hospital, he recalled. They’d brought flowers. Two beautiful, identical, skinny little blond-haired boys dressed the same by their grandmother in smart shirts, shorts and shoes for the important visit. And she’d stormed off to complain about her daughter’s treatment and they’d been left with Nina, and she’d rolled her head and not recognised them, or perhaps had and that had been worse.
Nikolas had screamed and run.
But he had stayed for a moment longer. Had he felt triumph that someone had finally realised she was mad? That she’d been strapped down and punished?—for that is what he’d assumed was happening. For once it was her, not him, being restrained and hurt?
Is this what Stefan had discovered when he’d claimed Nina had been mad? That she had beencommittedat some time? The sickening realisation came to him that she may have been lobotomised, a common procedure in Scandinavia for eating disorders. He felt a profound sense of untethering when he realised he had no one to ask about these things. He was entirely unmoored from his life, no one younger and no one older left alive. He had outlived them all.
And he could not remember.
He hoped that is not what he had felt—relief. Perhaps when she’d rolled her head and seen her wild, indomitable son, she’d thoughtAleksey’s come to rescue me, but that he had understood balance of power even then, and had known, aged four, he could not save anyone, even himself.
They had forgiven each other since. He knew this.
And now he was given all the food and all the love he’d ever wanted, and he was going to be fucked if some building was going to keep him separate from the one who anchored him and brought this abundance into his life.
Just as he thought this, he heard music.
Ben. Good.
But as he listened, trying to work out which way to limp, a voice behind him suddenly boomed, ‘I feed on your fear.’
He whirled around, the music continuing insanely loud from behind the wall to his left. ‘Ben?’
‘Come nearer, my son, come near.’
Fuck this.
He risked his leg and got out into the corridor. ‘I am the king of your castle.’
The voice became more maniacal, the beat louder and louder and more insane. ‘Come here, be my vassal.’
He began to run back the way he’d come, sharp pains at each step. The singer was just as loud, despite the distance he was putting between them.
‘This is the way, the only way.’
It fucking was. He saw some stairs. They only went up. He was already on the top floor! When he wiped a window and looked out though, of course he was back on the ground floor. Nothing would induce him to go up, so he chose a direction and continued to run. The music switched to a single acoustic guitar and a low voice intoned, ‘Come, come, come, my little blond-haired one.’
Yeah, fuck that. He’d already done that in a previous life, and wasn’t about to do it again in this one. He went to a window and tested the bars. If he was on the ground floor, then he’d make use of that. He’d go out the fucking window, and nothing would stop him. The bars wouldn’t move an inch. ‘I long for you, my wayward son.’Something caught his attention.
There was a figure in the window opposite. He was looking across at the other wing, although now only twenty feet appeared to separate what had been, seen from the outside, a much larger courtyard space.
The figure appeared to looking right at him.
He could not tell through the murk and grime whether it was Ben or the moron, but if put to torture would also admit that he knew very well it wasn’t either. The figure raised a hand. Paused for a moment. Then opened and closed its fingers in a little sarcastic wave. ‘So the son threw back the toy; it is your sanity I destroy.’
He turned, saw some stairs going down. Took them, crashed out through a door and found himself in the courtyard. The large one at the back of the building.
He bent and put his hands on his knees, breathing deeply, heard a sound behind him and Ben exploded out of the same doorway.
Ben Rider-Mikkelsen never got scared. He was utterly physically reckless. He didn’t even seem to experience pain like other men. He was so powerful in his own body that he strutted through life impervious to the things other people feared—it’s why they melded together so well. Ben had never feared him, and the terrifying power Ben had sensed coiled beneath his calm exterior had always drawn him closer, a wild thing trapped by its own feral curiosity.
