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“You won’t remember this after we inject you, Niles. You’ll only remember what we want you to.”
I have to squeeze my eyes shut to block out the forgotten memories.
“Are you sure he wasn’t lying?”
“He knew the intimate details of your story. It has to be true.”
Niles stares at me. Soft lips parted. “What happened to Charles?”
I look away. It isn’t fair to give him this bit of relief only to rip it away.
“Skylenna, tell me.” His hands are on my shoulder, firm and unrelenting. I can feel Dessin’s gaze fixated on me from several yards ahead.
“He fought until the end. He died from being overdosed on the Mind Phantoms.” I pause, swallowing down the sadness building in my chest. “He never gave in.”
If I could remove any moment from my memory, it would be this one. Niles sinks to his knees, blinking rapidly with an open mouth and trembling hands. I drop to my knees in front of him, gripping his hands but careful not to touch his burns.
“I’m so sorry, Niles.”
But he isn’t here right now. He’s somewhere deep in his own mind, digging through memories until tears are freely dripping down his cheeks.
“He wasn’t a monster?” he asks in a teary-eyed daze.
I shake my head. “No. He was a good dad,” I say with a sad smile. “He was the best there is.”
Niles squeezes his eyes shut, pushing out more tears, and wrinkling his forehead. I pull him into me, angling his face into the crook of my neck where he can cry in peace.
And he does.
Niles sobs into my skin, making it warm and wet with his labored breaths. I run my fingers lovingly over his raised skin, praying away his pain the best I can. The heaviness of this moment gets me thinking about my Scarlett. Oh, how I wish I could go back and tell her about Violet. Tell her about the Mind Phantoms. She deserved to know that if things were different, we would have been loved and cherished by both parents.
I’ll never get the chance to hold her the way I’m holding Niles now.
After several long minutes of rocking back and forth until his sobs become heavy breaths and those heavy breaths become a steady heartbeat, we look to the path ahead and see that Chekiss was the one to stay behind and wait for us. He smiles, not in a way that’s happy, but in the way that a parent smiles at their children during a time of hardship.
“We should get back to the others,” Niles says with a long sigh.
We turn our heads to the side and gasp. Knightingale stands eye level with Niles, nose to nose, and grimacing like a human. Even her doe eyes are in small slits.
I burst into surprised laughter. “Thanks for the time, warden.”
Niles stands with me, keeping his eyes on her like he’s waiting to be bitten.
“Do I just repel animals or something?” Niles grumbles.
As if responding to his question, she growls at him, nudging the back of his knee with her nose as if to sayget moving.
With a light jog, we catch up to the others, slowly being surrounded by the changing leaves. Dark green to candy-apple red. Dessin is standing still in front of the group, looking forward at something in the distance.
I canter up to him, giving his arm a little shove with my elbow.
“What is it?”
He nods once. “She was right. He’s here.”
I follow his stare to the edge of the cliff that hovers over the turquoise lagoon. A figure in all black, tall like an aspen tree, looking out at the water in silence.
Hello, Judas.
