Page 45 of The Darkest Half

“What kind of world were you living in, Sarai?” she goes on.

Sarai… It’s been so long since I’ve heard that name. A part of me wishes I never left her behind. The nobody girl who was somebody, even if only to a drug lord. At least Sarai knew who she was; at least Sarai knew her place in the world, albeit dangerous, it was stable. At least Sarai could trust the man who claimed to love her—at least he thought he loved her enough to never betray her.

Lysandra paces in front of me. I don’t look at her once, not because I don’t have the energy, but because I just don’t care. Even if she was in reaching distance and I could will myself to grab her, I wouldn’t try. Because I justdon’t care.

I keep my gaze trained on Victor and give no one else in the room an ounce of my attention.

But he doesn’t look back at me…

Why won’t he even look at me?!

“Look at me, Victor…you fucking look at me!” Shouting steals my energy reserves, but I don’t care about that, either. “VICTOR! LOOK AT ME!” My entire body quakes with my voice, muscles trembling.

“I speak for Victor,” Lysandra says. “I always have. Everything he has ever said to you, all the sweet nothings he has whispered into your ear, had come from me.”

She crouches in front of me so I might look her in the eyes. I refuse. I…can’t. I just can’t. A fucking tear escapes and tracks down my cheek.

“He wouldn’t have known what to say to you, otherwise,” she adds. “And you know what that means, don’t you?”

She’s trying hard to bait me, and it’s already working, but I refuse to let her know.

When I don’t answer or as much as look at her, she says, “He never loved you because he, like every other true member of The Order, doesn’t know what love is.” When she said the word “true,” I had glimpsed her in my peripheral vision and saw her look briefly in Niklas’ direction as if to mock him.

Wait a minute…

“Are you…Vonnegut?” I ask Victor.

I’m beginning to wonder. Because if he is supposed to be and has been all along, why would he be acting this way? Why would he be sitting there, letting this bitch do all his talking, refusing to even make eye contact with me and—

“I have always been the one you thought we were hunting,” Victor says, and the sound of his voice stuns me. Not only because it has been so long since I’ve heard it, but because it sounds so foreign to me—not to mention the admission that just came out of his mouth, which is all I can think about. Victor Faust is Vonnegut.

Trying to ignore the pain burrowing deeper and deeper into my heart, I continue, “What was the point of all this? I can’t even…I…I can’t even fucking begin to understand…a reason for anything you have done!”

Calm down, Izabel! Just stay calm…

Lysandra rises to a stand.

“Does it matter?” she asks.

“I wasn’t talking to you!” I scream at her. “Shut your cockhole and let the adults do the talking!” I couldn’t help it; I couldn’t resist—I’m so angry I feel like I’m going to explode.

Blackness covers my vision, a giant iron bell bangs around inside my skull, and I taste blood in my mouth. When I finally come to, I see the toe of Lysandra’s shoe in front of my face, glistening crimson, and only now realize she had just kicked me in the face.

The pain comes in a delayed reaction, pulsing and throbbing upward from my chin to my head.

In a blur of movement, I see Lysandra’s blond hair falling and her shoes coming out from beneath her; a hard thump! sounds as her body hits the floor, followed by a series of thwap! thwap! crunch! As Niklas’ bloody fist rains down on her face repeatedly. One man appears behind us and pulls his emaciated body off her.

“You disgusting, worthless piece of shit!” Lysandra hisses. She stumbles to her feet, surprisingly without losing a shoe, and rushes over to Niklas, held back on his knees by the operative who had pulled him from her. “Worthless!”—she kicks him in the stomach—“Piece!”—again in the gut—“of shit!” She kicks him in the face, and he drops, face forward, to the floor.

“Niklas! Don’t you…touch him!” I try, but my voice is hoarse and my throat burning.

“Enough of this,” I hear Victor say.

All eyes in the room—many of which, including James Woodard, who I had forgotten entirely—turn to Victor Faust as he stands from his chair.

“Hollis,” he says to Lysandra, “find your seat.”

Without an argument, word, or hesitation, she does what she’s told.

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