“What, Mama? What did she see?”
“A giant kitty cat limping along. It was as big as a tiger, but it was only a baby kitty cat.”
“Aww…poor kitty. Was it hurt?”
“Yes. It had fallen and hurt its paw. It was scared because it couldn’t find its mommy, but Princess Mathilda wasn’t scared. She jumped in the river and waded to the other side, telling the big kitty not to be scared. That everything would be okay.”
“Did that make the kitty happy?”
“Yes, the kitty was so happy to find a friend that it started to purr so loud it knocked the little princess off her feet. The kitty leaned down and started to lick the princess’s face, its whiskers tickling her, and she laughed and laughed.”
Mama’s fingers dig into my side, and I squeal, laughing as hard as the princess in the story.
Once we stopped laughing, Mama went back to brushing my hair. “Princess Mathilda knew she needed help, so she and the kitty went back to the castle where her mother, Queen Claire, ordered her knights to go out into the forest and find the kitty’s mommy. It took them three days, but they brought the kitty’s mommy back, along with his brothers and sisters. Queen Claire, having grown to love the kitty as much as her daughter, declared it and its family could live in the castle and roam the gumdrop forest freely. Do you know what happens then?”
“Then they lived happily ever after.”
“My beautiful, beautiful baby girl.” Mama kisses my cheek and smooths a hand down my hair. “What did Mama tell you?”
I’m not sure what she means, and I look at her in the mirror. Her eyes have gone dark, and she’s not smiling anymore.
“There’s no such thing as happily ever after.” Her fingers wrap around my hair and pull it back tightly like she’s going to do the pigtails I like, but she doesn’t. She keeps pulling my hair tighter and tighter until it hurts.
“Mama, stop, it hurts!” I try to wriggle free, but she makes this noise that scares me, and this time when I look at her in the mirror, she’s smiling again, but it’s not my mama’s smile. It’s a scary smile full of long teeth.
Mama leans down, her nose running along my cheek.
She smells bad.
Her eyes are glowing red in the mirror.
“Bad girls who don’t follow the rules don’t end up with happily ever afters.” She pulls my hair tighter, forcing my head back, and I cry out, trying to get away.
What’s wrong with her?
“Do you know what happens to bad little girls?”
“No,” I whisper.
“They get punished.”
A knife appears in her hand, and my eyes widen. I’m afraid of that knife, but I don’t know why. What’s she going to do with it?
“Mama, please, I’m scared.”
“Good, you need to be scared, Mattie Louise. You need to be very, very afraid of me.”
The knife blade comes down, sinking into the soft flesh of my shoulder, twisting. Screaming, I kick out, but Mama laughs. She pulls the blade out and stabs me again and again and again.
“This is what happens when you don’t follow the rules.”
I jerk awake, my breath coming in short gasps as nothing but darkness greets me. I’m shaking, and not from the cold either, even though it’s got to be well below freezing. No, it’s the images that followed me out of the dream. I remember that day. It’s one of the few good memories I have of my mama. She was high as a kite but still lucid enough to understand I was in the apartment. I loved that day. We played and played and played, and then she sat me down after a bath to brush my hair. I’d forgotten the story, though.
Kristoff took a good memory and turned it into a nightmare.
With no more dead man’s blood, I have no way of keeping him out of my memories or my dreams. With all the things I’ve gone through, I’m dreading what’s coming. He knows everything. He’s been in my head, sifted through my memories, and fed upon my pain as he drank it all down with my blood.
My blood. It leads me to another fear. What will drinking my blood do for him? Will he absorb some of my gifts? I don’t know. It’s something I should have asked after the first time, but none of us thought to question the ramifications of that. Not even Zeke.
Turning over, I curl up under the blanket and try to get a little warm. Zeke must be going crazy. He’s got to be remembering how it felt when he came home all those years ago to discover me gone from my nursery, taken by the woman he’d hired to care for me. He’s only spoken about it to me once, and the look in his eyes had caused my heart to ache for the pain he’d gone through.
And Dan. God, he must be out of his mind. I reach out again, attempting to feel him, but there’s nothing there except emptiness. The cold void of the unknown. My only saving grace is that he doesn’t know what I’m going through, what I’m feeling. I’m betting whatever this collar is, it’s cut him off from me too. He’d drive himself insane if he felt even a fraction of my fear and not be able to do anything about it.
He's safe, I reassure myself. Silas won’t let anything happen to him because he knows if it does, then I die too.
Maybe.
Rhea shared her own protections with me, and now Silas thinks if Dan dies, those protections might save my life. I’m not sure I’d survive if that happened, though.
There’s a soft scuffle, and I sit up, looking around even though it’s pointless. It’s so dark in here I can’t even see an inch in front of my face. My biggest fear is rats, and every little noise I hear, I’m afraid it’s rats. The place is so old there has to be a small army of the rodents on the premises. My nerves are on edge, and my breathing is rapid. I’ve grown to hate the dark over the last few days.
“Easy, Hilda.”
My head swivels, but all I see is darkness. Shaking my head, I lie back down, dismissing the voice as a hallucination of sorts. I’d dreamed of Eli Malone the last time I drifted off to sleep. He was my personal Guardian Angel and Dan’s little brother. He died to protect me back in Charlotte. There’s no way Eli’s here. Just me wishing it were so.
That doesn’t make it so, though.
It would be nice to have my furnace back. Eli told me that he’d be whatever I needed him to be. What I usually needed was to feel warm, and his body would become my own personal furnace. As cold as I am now, I’d welcome it.
I miss him. More than I admit to anyone, including Dan. I loved Eli with my whole heart in a way that was unique and special for only him. His death still cripples me with grief and guilt. I don’t talk about that either. If it wasn’t for me, he’d never have been cursed. Well, technically, it wasn’t me specifically. Silas had started cultivating his bloodline to defeat the Fallen Angel Deleriel, and Deleriel, being Deleriel, put his own safeguards in place. Eli’s family curse was just one of those safeguards.
I wonder a lot if Deleriel saw into the future and knew I was coming. It would explain why he cursed Eli’s family bloodline to kill the person they loved the most. That was me for Eli. Instead of killing me, he killed himself to keep from harming me. I’ll never get his blood off my hands, and I don’t want it off. I should have been able to find a way around that curse. I should have saved him. He was a good person. Honest and kind. Me? Not so much. I’m a better person than I was, but I will still do what I have to in order to protect my family. I’d kill to keep them safe.