“No, Izabel!” I shout back. I move toward her, and she stands her ground. “It is not what you think,” I continue, lowering my tone. “There is not, and has never been, any kind of sexual attraction to that woman. I simply wanted to study her, to know her ways, to learn how she…”
“How she what, Victor?” She grits her teeth. “How she what?”
I start to speak, to answer her question, but she stops me, and surprises me with the answer all on her own.
“You wanted to know how she does it,” she says with accusation and ire. “How she can do what she does without batting an eye, how she can be so heartless and emotionless, how she can be so immune to love—you wanted to be just like her! You wanted me to go off with some kid I never knew and play fucking house, so you could be just like Nora!” She stops long enough to take a breath. “You let me think I was making an important decision in your Order; you let me believe that you believed in me enough to trust my judgment”—she clamps her jaw shut, presumably to stifle an indignant scream—“but the truth was you had already made the decision for me; you had no intention of killing her, whether I wanted her dead or not!” She turns her back to me; her shoulders rise and fall heavily with heavy, deep breaths. “You manipulated me,” she repeats, at last.
“I am sorry,” I speak softly from behind.
Silence fills the room again.
“So am I,” she finally responds, and it catches me off-guard.
Izabel turns around to face me, and while I am wondering what she could possibly be sorry for, she begins to tell me.
“In my heart,” she says, “I sided with Niklas when you confessed to Nora what you did to Claire.”
“But—”
She shakes her head sharply, in substitution of putting up her hand. “I’m not done,” she says, and goes on. “And while we were in Italy, I was given the opportunity to know the real Niklas, to understand him, and to see through the rough exterior. And do you want to know what I saw?”
I nod subtly, and with reluctance.
She swallows, and glances briefly at the floor; when she raises her eyes again she is not looking at me anymore.
“I saw someone who, although he has done so much harm, still deserved forgiveness; someone who, in a way, is still innocent in all of this; someone who has so much love and compassion in his heart.” Her eyes find mine again and then she says, “I saw a man who…can still be saved.”
“And you are sorry for this?” I ask, confused.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I feel guilty,” she answers. “I feel guilty because…when I look at you…I don’t see the same.”
I turn my back to her so she does not see the pain in my face.
Victor
I step up to the bars, peer out at nothing, and I think about my brother, about Izabel’s compassion for him. And it does not take me long to think about Italy and why I sent Izabel there.
Once I vanquish the emotion from my face, I turn to see her again, ignoring the fact that the knife Artemis placed on the floor inside the cell is the same knife I used to slit Artemis’s throat. That is why Artemis said it was familiar. And that is also why I choose to ignore it, the meaning behind it.
“You are right about my brother,” I admit. “And you have nothing to be sorry for. Izabel, you and Niklas are…the same. You were both forced into this life; you were both against it, and wanted only a normal life; equally you both did what you had to do to survive; and you both followed me when you could have taken another path, a less-traveled road that leads to redemption, and not death. Izabel, like my brother, you are innocent in all of this; you still deserve forgiveness; you can still be saved.” I look beyond her momentarily, my mind captured by my thoughts. “I had hoped you would save him…I had hoped that you would save each other.”
Izabel
The light has been stolen from my eyes. I don’t even see darkness anymore, only nothingness, and the two are not the same. No words, spoken or written, have ever hurt me so much, or cut so deeply; no confession or regret or truth could ever do the damage that this has done.
I feel gravity betray my body and I fall to my knees on the dirty stones; I sense Victor reaching for me, but he backs away when I deny him. “Don’t touch me,” I hear my voice say, but it sounds far off, as if coming from someone else’s mouth. “Don’t…”
Victor sits down on the floor, rests his back against the bars, draws his knees up and props his arms atop them. I can’t look at him, but somehow I can still see his every movement; even the sadness in his face. I see it. Somehow.
After what feels like a long time, after I feel in control of my voice again, I raise my head and look at him with tears in my eyes. “That’s why you sent me to Italy,” I say, pain altering my voice. “That’s why you said it had to be Niklas who went with us. It wasn’t because you knew he’d protect me, or that you knew you could trust him with me—you wanted us to be together.”
Victor sighs. Slowly, he nods.
“Yes,” he says softly. “I wanted to…save you both.”
“You wanted to save yourself,” I come back.
He shakes his head. “No,” he says, “it was not about saving me—it was about you first, my brother second, and then myself last.”
“You’re a liar.”
Victor blinks, stunned.
“I am sorry you feel that way,” he says. “But I am telling you the truth. I only wanted to save you.”