The Devil Doesn't Bargain (MatD part 2)

Chapter SIXTEEN - Show Me Your Pain

"Pain."

Isidora's whispers flooded the room.

Anne flinched at the sound.

Sebastian pulled me closer.

A dark hooded figure sprouted from the darkness. Its form wilted gently behind the floating candle. Billowing black fabric crested around its face and draped in curling waves down its body, pooling on the floor.

"Isidora?" My voice felt not my own, hoarse and cold in my throat.

"Everyone feels some sort of pain."

Her voice once more bristled around us, echoing from all angles except from the figure ahead.

"We deserve a reprieve."

The figure held a hand out so suddenly I wasn't sure it had entirely moved at all but instead instantly transformed to its new position.

"All of us."

As if on cue, the fabric wrapped frame dipped a pale finger to the flame, allowing the golds and oranges to lap around it in silent regularity.

Anne took a step forward, hand outstretched when the world around us twisted once more. A pale smoke whispering in like quickened fog, filling the space and clouding our vision for only a moment before it melted away and instead of the dark,

we were in Feldcroft.

Darkened skies loomed over a tired hamlet. Stone stacked houses lay silently, bright green trees and thick leafed vines caressed each one.

My eyes flicked to Sebastian's. His brows creased forward and lips hung slack.

"What's going on-" Ominis began, violently interrupted by a blood curdling scream.

A man's

from inside one of the hamlet houses to our left.

Anne sprinted ahead, dropping Ominis' hand despite his protests. The cloaked figure watched in silence.

Sebastian's eyes wide, he dove forward, throwing his arms over his sister fiercely just as she pressed open the door. His hands shook, clutching her tightly as if one less finger and she would slip away.

The man screamed again.

A girl's voice. "Father?"

Isidora?

"He's gone." The man wailed, deep and gutted.

Ominis and I forced our way forward to where the twins stood frozen in the doorway.

Young Isidora, just as I had seen her in the Keeper's memories, stood behind her father. His body crumpled aside a small bed, hands thrown over the body of a young boy, pale and stiff beneath tattered blankets. Tears poured down the mans cheeks, his fingers clutching the fabric, releasing and then clutching it again.

His voice a fragment of a whisper, dying along with the boy. "He's gone."

The figures ahead of us seemed entirely unaware of our presence.

His voice echoed through our blood as the pale smoke returned, filling our lungs and obscuring the heartbreak from our eyes.

"He's gone."

Whiplash. Thick and full against my spine.

We were back in the space of black, the cloaked figure hunched over the candle flame, burned finger tucked to its chest. Though now the fabric had fallen to its shoulders, face of the man in the vision curled in pain.