Chapter 57

Somewhere in the recesses of her mind, Sophia was aware that Neil’s fingers were laced with hers. Though she was sound asleep, it was not a restful one. She didn’t thrash about in terror, or cry out, like she knew she had in the past, yet she was very disturbed. Everything that had happened in her life spun around in her dream, sliding from one image, one event, to the next. The emotions and sensations pooling over her like a tidal wave, pulling her under and smothering her until she felt like she was drowning. Again and again, this happened, until it settled on just one.

Her heart skipped, in the dream and probably in her sleeping body. Neil stood before her, the feral look she recognized from her past dreams expressed by the deep look in the depth of his eyes. The fear she felt in them, every bit as present in this dream as they were then. Back when he was just a nameless face. Sophia was in the dream, but also like she was detached and watching from the outside. Feelings of disconnect were interspersed with her being in the moment, fully engaged.

They were dressed in their normal clothes, their hair as it’s usually worn. If it weren’t for the vague sense of being outside her body, she wouldn’t have known it was a dream. Well, that and there being something just very...off. Though it started the same as her dreams in the past, the feral look in his eye causing both fear and lust in her, it shifted quickly. Spinning, swirling visions of him danced in front of her eyes through a sparkling haze. A floating fog with glimmering lights. Their eyes were locked on one another, their focus only on each other, with blatant disregard to their surroundings. He reaches his hand out to her and she moves in as they circle around each other. Fluid, slow moments, a dance of their fingertips, their eyes, and their emotions.

“How did I see you here, in my dreams, long before we ever met?” Sophia asked. Her voice was quiet and ethereal in tone. It echoed in her ears like a siren song, yet she knew it was her voice. She wiggled her fingers, searching for sensation.

“Because the goddess deemed it,” Neil replied.

“Is this where you want to be?” She held her breath, afraid of the answer.

“It is.” He had finally answered.

They continued their dance. Humming surrounded them in a steady decadence. Sophia moved in closer. She grazed her fingertip down the side of his cheek and ran it along his jaw. She knew she had to ask, though she didn’t want to. She knew the answer would affect her future.

“But what if you have a mate somewhere?” She asked.

Some part of her was deeply worried that she was interfering with his destiny. The other part, the part that thought she had suffered enough in her life and that she was deserving of what happiness that has been brought to her, wanted to remain selfish. Wanting to keep Neil to herself and build a life together. Sophia knew though, that to defy the goddess, to ignore the moon, would only lead to a path of destruction. But her mother had told her when she was little to hold on to happiness. Neil made her happy, so shouldn’t she hold on to him?

They continued to dance, the sensual touch of their fingertips grazing along the skin of the other. The intensity of the humming, the sound, growing louder with each passing minute. Her stomach tightened, her heart thudded hard and fast in her chest. Her body tingled from her head to her toes and a wave of dizziness spun into her head.

“Does the moon have someone for you, Neil?” She asked in a soft whisper. At the mention of her name, the moon shone brightly over his shoulder. Her beams beat down on them like a cool breeze and a sunny ray in one.

Neil stopped moving, and the look in his eyes turned hard. Sophia stumbled backward. The look in his eyes had turned mean, edged with an anger that she had never seen before.

“And what of your mate, Sophia?” His tone bit into her like a razor blade.

“I know you have one. Where’s your mate?”

Before her eyes, his face contorted and twisted to a face she had never wished to see again. A face that she spent months forcing out of her mind and memory. A face she spent months battling in her nightmares. A face that brought her back to the second worst moment in her life, her mother’s murder, being the first. Matthew stood before her, angry, aggressive. With rapid speed, quicker than the snap of a finger, she was transported to the day in the locker room. To the day she lost a part of herself that she could never get back. He grabbed her by the back of her hair and yanked hard, as he pushed himself inside of her again and again. She felt herself tear and the intense burn of being violated and she gagged. The sound of her back smacking against the lockers behind her echoed in the locker room with jarring metallic sounds. It bounced off the ceiling, Tears ran down her face from continuous pools that welled in her eyes, burning her sinuses, and blinding her in the pain.

After what felt like hours of being invaded, violated, both body and mind, everything spun again. Swirling images of past beatings, past tortures. Her father stood in front of her naked body, whipping her over and over again, until she was in the bathroom under the stairs.

The dank smell of stagnant water permeated her nose. The millipedes still moved across the cement block walls. The rust-stained toilet and the spreading mold hadn’t changed from when she was last there. Or was it where she is now? No, then wasn’t now, or now isn’t then. Sophia was back in time. Back to yet another time where she desperately tried to push out of her memory. To forget what ever happened. She wiped the back of her hand, as if she had just finished vomiting. She turned to the sink and filled the cup with water. Taking a sip, she swirled it in her mouth, then her eyes lifted to the mirror.

Bella looked back at her. She was beautiful and elegant, but her face was marred with the bruises that Sophia knew she herself had worn in the days leading up to her rescue. Her clothes were spotted with dried blood, and fresh spatters were under her nose and her cheek.

“Aren’t you going to help me, Sophia?” the reflection asked.

“Are you going to let him do this to me, and the rest of us?” She gestured vaguely toward the door. “Are we going to be subjected to the torture, the pain, that you had to. Do you think we are deserving of it?” She asked.

Sophia choked back sobs and raised her hand to her mouth, but Bella’s hand in the mirror didn’t raise.

“Save us Sophia. Save us.” Her soft voice echoed, growing more distant, until Sophia looked at her own reflection in the mirror.

Sophia looks in the mirror in horror, unaware that the ground and ceiling were being overrun by spiders, spinning their silver web, pulling the liquid silk into their stomach and then back out. When one landed on her hand she jumped and shook her hand vigorously. She felt massive hands on her shoulders. Unkind hands, and she looked in the mirror again, though she wished she wouldn’t have.

Matthew stood behind her. She was locked in his firm grip, and he glared at her with such hatred it burned her. Like a hot flame that was touching her shoulders and anywhere his gaze touched in the mirror.

“Did you forget, Sophia?”

Tears welled in her eyes. She is not this weak person anymore; this isn’t who she is. She bit down on a cry when his nails dug into her skin and she lifted her gaze to the mirror again, ready to confront him, rather than cower under his cruelty.

Leo, she whispered. She took in her brother’s kind eyes and handsome young face in the mirror. Relieved that Matthew was gone and that the spiders were scurrying back into the recesses of the wall, she sucked air in and out.

“Leo,” she said.

“Did you forget, Sophia?” he asked her.

“What, Leo?” Sophia reached a hand out to touch his reflection in the mirror. His grip wasn’t on hers as Matthews had been, but he still stood behind her, slightly to the side.

“Did you forget to protect me? Did you forget to save me, while you were saving yourself?”

“Leo, no!” Sophia exclaimed.

Leo got smaller and smaller in the mirror as if he was drifting further and further away until he was sucked into the wall. Everything spun again, fast, colors, visions and emotions washed over her in such waves that she felt nauseous. The voices thundered at different cadences in her mind, speaking over each other until they all blended.

Sophia covered her ears with her hands and closed her eyes as tight as she could, but it couldn’t stop the visions before her eyelids closed.

“No,” she cried. “No. No. No.”