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Chapter 11
Numb limbs weigh me down in a sea of endless black. I feel nothing. Hear nothing…
At least at first.
Eventually, snippets of sound and scattered phrases puncture the silence.
Broken ribs.
Shattered femur.
Broken ankle.
Dying.
Dying.
“Open your eyes, Little Rose,” the devil growls.
How fitting that my soul would be claimed by him.
“Open your fucking eyes. I know you’re still in there. I’m waiting. So open your fucking eyes…”
But even he can’t keep me grounded for long. My soul is tissue paper, caught between two unreachable worlds. One is bright and soft. It calls to me in delicate whispers.
Come home.
The other is dark, and painful, and loud. So damn loud. It snarls into my ear, increasingly incessant.
“Look at me, Little Rose. Open your fucking eyes…”
I long to sink into the warm light and forget the madness, and the torment, and the pain. So much fucking pain.
Death is so quiet…
But a world containing Mischa is impossible to ignore. He drags me back, bit by bit until sensation returns in agonizing snatches. I can’t move. I’m lying on my back, aware that I’m on a mattress. Light and shadow flicker behind my eyelids as people move nearby. Talking.
“I thought I told you not to come in here?” a man scolds, but his tone is gentle. And familiar, though I’ve never heard it so hoarse. “You wanted to braid her hair again?”
He pauses, but no one responds.
“Fine,” the man says, sighing. “But you’re going to make her bald.”
Me? My head throbs, but through the pain, I sense a gentle touch moving through my hair, gathering up various strands and carefully arranging them.
“Don’t give me that look,” the man says, and I can finally put a name to that husky rasp. Mischa? “For a girl, you have an odd idea of what looks pretty. And you’re lucky I’m even letting you stay after what you did with the crayons—” He breaks off as if interrupted. Then he laughs. “Keep it up and I’m going to sell you right back to Nicolai.”
Sell? I try lifting my eyelids. Moving. Speaking. Even breathing is a struggle. Mischa must have devised a new form of torture: sitting on my chest.
“Don’t stay in here too long,” he warns amid the thud of heavy footsteps. “And no more fucking coloring.”
He’s gone, but I’m not alone. Someone continues to stroke my hair, styling it with all the care that I used to take with Briar’s. Vanya?
Again, I try opening my eyes. At first, I can only make out snippets of detail. White walls bathed in daylight. Crisp ivory sheets. A bulky, round shape that I think is my leg propped on a pillow.
Straining with the effort, I manage to hold my eyes open long enough to acknowledge that I’m in a small room, on a bed positioned near a row of wide windows overlooking a swath of green. There’s a doorway up ahead, leading into shadow. Someone’s perched beside me on the mattress, partially visible: tiny legs sheathed in oversized pants and slender arms that go still the moment the figure must realize I’m awake.
I’m jostled as the slender person in question leaps from the bed. In a blur, they race from the room. Pale. Blonde. The little girl from Nicolai’s.
