Chapter 53
TREMBLING with excitement is common in soldiers experiencing an adrenaline rush—was that what caused Yuki’s whole body to shake uncontrollably? Or was it just a side effect of her bout with anemia? The key clattered against the keyhole because her hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
POP!
“Oh no!”
The key bounced off the keyhole and clanged against the marble floor. The sound echoed from the walls of the silent corridor. She crouched down and fumbled for the key as it kept slipping from her quivering fingertips.
During her ascent up the spiral staircase and through the long, deserted corridors she didn’t run into a soul. The only living being she came across was the guard standing watch over the entrance to the tower. He wordlessly opened the doors for her when she presented the Violet Knight’s Token.
Yuki stared at the grandiose door blocking further progression through the corridor. She surveyed her surroundings thinking this might not be the right room, but her path had to be through this door—there were no other doors aside from the one she used to enter the top floor.
When she successfully got the key to stay in her hand, she squeezed it so tight it dug into her palm—she wasn’t going to let it fall again. Sweat from her hands made the key slippery. She put her left hand on her quivering right hand to steady it. Slowly and ever so carefully, she slid the key into the beautifully shaped keyhole. The shaking of her hand caused the golden key to rattle against the lock.
Breathing in deeply, she pushed the key deeper into the hole. It clicked in place and she gingerly turned it. Clack. The dull sound of the locks releasing reverberated in the still corridor. Even Yuki’s strained breathing had a way of sounding loud in the ominously quiescent space.
She put her right hand on the embellished doorknob. Debating whether it should be pushed or pulled, she stepped back and yanked on the knob. The heavy door haltingly pulled along the floor until there was enough space for her to squeeze through. Once inside, her anemia came surging back. The scrap of strength she scrounged up to get to the highest floor and inside the room left her like a puff of air and graciously left a pounding headache in its wake.
“…Agh…” Yuki collapsed to her knees and her shoulders trembled with heavy breathing. The sunlit room was dreadfully quiet and her wheezing echoed off the pristine walls.
My head…feels like it’s splitting in half…
Buzzing filled her ears. Hammers pounded away on her skull. She had grown accustomed to the pain coming in intermittent bursts, but she could never get used to the searing pain itself. The pain increased with each encounter as if it were adapting to her resilience, finding a new way to cause her misery.
No longer able to find a way to endure this wave of pain, she buckled over and held her hands to her head as agonizing moans ripped from her constricting throat.
“Ugh…aaaah…gaaah…”
Heat scorched her from the inside out as if someone had lit her organs on fire. Everything burned, but she was chilled to the bone. Gooseflesh prickled across her skin. The room flickered in front of her eyes like someone was messing with the light switch. She writhed on the floor to escape the acute pain and icy chill to no avail.
“…Aaaaaaaaaaaaaagggggggggh!” she screamed in an inhuman shriek.
Screams pulled from her lungs and throat, but the sound didn’t reach her ears through the buzzing. She couldn’t hear anymore. Black spots started to smear her flickering vision. The buzzing receded into the distance that belonged to her senses. Tears fell from her eyes and soundless sobs racked her chest. Her sobs turned to vomiting. Wretched agony soaked her face in tears.
I don’t want this. I don’t want to lose consciousness here.
She needed to stand at any cost. Wiping the bile from her lips, she lifted her head. She rubbed her eyes and opened them wide to see the room, but all she saw was black.
No way.
Yuki couldn’t see a thing. Nothing passed through her iris to her brain. Touching her hands to her face and neck confirmed her head was up and eyes open.
She couldn’t hear anything. Nothing covered her ears yet not a single sound passed through—not even the sound of her breathing or sobbing. The distortion in her senses made her feel like the ground was falling out beneath her. A burst of dizziness knocked her sideways and her head impacted the ground. The floor should’ve been level, but it undulated in waves like the ocean. Nausea welled in her stomach.
Slow-moving darkness began swallowing her piece by piece. Frantically, she flailed and kicked her legs, but she didn’t know where to go. Once again, she found herself in a world of black. Yuki had fought long and hard to escape from being devoured whole by the dark—to keep from letting it catch her and entangle her in its wicked snare—but it caught her.
Someone…anyone…
“Save me…” she squeezed out hoarsely.
“All right,” replied a prim voice.
Someone reached down into the pit of darkness and grabbed Yuki’s arms from where the snares had buried her. She felt herself being pulled out of those vicious depths. An icy hand pressed against her forehead. Her teeth chattered against the cold. Another hand wrapped around the back of Yuki’s neck to reassure her and plant her firmly back in reality.
“What a foolish girl you are. You used your power till the brink of death.”
“Vi…vi…?”
“In the flesh and blood. Didn’t you hear me when I said I’d be waiting for you?”
Yuki clearly heard Vivi talking, but nothing else. She couldn’t comprehend why she couldn’t move her head. Incapable of responding, her head hung limply against the hand holding her up.
Something rushed through her as the icy, soft hand sucked out all the stagnant, rotting darkness permeating her body. The sensation lasted for but half a minute. Vivi’s hands let go of her. Yuki blinked. The blackness cleared from her eyes and her deadweight body felt astonishingly light.
“W…hy?”
Suffering for months from chronic illness had her forget what it felt like to have a body free of aches, pain, and dizziness.
“Why? Funny question. Didn’t you just ask to be saved?” Clad in a dress patched together from pink and red swatches, Vivi shrugged. “And…it’s also a little reward for making it this far.”
“R-Reward…?”
Vivi flashed a devious smile and lifted Yuki’s chin with her finger. “Yes. It’s a prior investment in you because you’ve a long ways to go in entertaining me.”
“I don’t…understand…”
“Who said you needed to understand anything? It’s for my entertainment, not yours. Don’t you think you should get back to entertaining me? You know the whole saving people thing? To the place where your Knight is? He’s gonna die pretty soon. Unless you’re okay with that. Then you can chill here on the floor doing nothing.”
Vivi jerked Yuki’s chin to the side. They were in the parlor room. Floor-to-ceiling windows were decorated with white lace curtains. A large mahogany desk with a comfy chair faced one of the windows. A satin sofa sat in the center of the room and on the other side of it stood an imposing door.
Yuki’s heart dropped. She knew Vivi wasn’t lying when she said Luca was going to die soon.
“Luca!” she screamed.
She pushed off the ground. Her knees buckled from the fear he might already be dead. She dashed for the door and fell against it as her legs gave out. Pushing through the exhaustion, she shoved the door open with all her might. Whatever Vivi had done, Yuki’s stamina was back and the door easily opened.
A spacious room the size of a small house was on the other side of the door. Stark white walls marked by windows with simple white curtains surrounded only one object in the room—a gigantic white bed.
Yuki gasped and forgot to exhale. Surrounded on all sides by pure white, someone slept within the folds of cloth. Even from the corner of the room, their face was bloodied from pocks and hives. If not for the smooth, golden hair she had been so familiar with—no, if not for prior knowledge it was him—she would have never been able to tell who it was sleeping there.
“Luca!” the name burst from her lips in a pitch closer to a shriek than a shout. She pitched forward in a dash for his bed. The momentum sent her tripping over the decorative rug. Shooting out her hands, she braced for impact against the soft rug. Shock rattled her and she scraped the tip of her nose.
“What a sight. You’re not a child or have your looks deceived you into thinking you’re one? Is this really the time to be a clichéd idiot and slip?” Vivi cackled. “Truly, what a pathetic heroine you are!”
Yuki ignored her and pushed off the ground. She made a mad dash for the bed.
“…!” She sharply inhaled when she saw Luca’s face.
Swaddled in pure-white sheets and blankets, Luca’s festering hives ruptured before her eyes in a grotesque eruption of pus and blood. From a distance she hadn’t noticed how much blood oozed from his orifices, dyeing the sheets, his clothes, and skin a dark-red.
It’s the same…
Luca’s symptoms were a mirror of the queen’s. His case of Ten Day Fever progressed at a horrifying, unheard-of speed. A vise squeezed her heart at the pitiful state her Knight was in. It took all her willpower not to turn away.
I should have come here much sooner.
Luca’s hair had grown longer than the last time she saw him. His eyebrow length bangs had grown past his cheeks.
I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for being late.
There was so much she wanted to say to him, but the words were stuck in her throat.
“I’m…sorry,” she choked out. However, the unconscious man in front of her had no reply.
Yuki clambered up the bed and leaned over Luca’s body to get a clear view of his golden hair and bright-red face. She placed her hands around his cheeks. At some point during the constant use of her powers, she had gained a sense of how to control it. She honed her senses in on her hands and Luca. Immediately, a wave of dizziness struck her. She didn’t flinch—she had grown used to that sensation as well.
At once it felt like an avalanche of snow had smashed down on her. Numbness tingled her limbs, the world spun, and black dots blotted her vision.
“Hey,” she whispered to him, placing her forehead on his. Luca’s sticky blood smeared her forehead. She shut her eyes and spoke to him. “…Luca, get better soon.”