The Warrior [The Selection]

Chapter Eight: Letter.

"Three... Birthdays?" Mania squinted at Nike, but couldn't seem to find her. "Where's Ris? Where's our sister?"

"My sister," Nike growled, Mania didn't deserve to call either of them sister. "Isn't here. She left this morning. The palace took her."

"The palace?" It wasn't fair, Nike decided, trying to tell her anything. Her brain was too addled, too mixed up between the hallucinations the drugs provided and the real world she was grounded in.

Nike turned to leave. Started walking away. Stopped, turned back. Stared at the skeleton in the bed. Mania blinked back at her, insanity pacing rhythms in those coal black eyes, the same eyes their mother had handed down to all three of her children.

"I am so..." Nike curled her lip, "Disgusted by you."

She left before she could see her big sister's expression, but the wailing started afresh as she slammed the door behind her. Good. She should suffer. Off getting high while Nike and Eris worked until their bones bent. Disappearing for months only to get herself in with Jax and his awful lot. Dumping her problems on her family and this house.

Their mother had named them well, Nike thought as she stomped down the stairs. Mania suited the eldest Black sister, strapped down to a bed and watching the walls dance around her.

Perhaps their mother had known something no one else had, perhaps, even, their mother had cursed them, giving them these names.

*** 

"Patch?"

"Hey, Nikes." His big shoulders seemed to squeeze the door frame outwards, like it was making more room for him in it.

"Come in." She motioned. He seemed reluctant. Eris had left only that morning, but it seemed like she'd been gone for a decade. Patch had been at her side every moment he could spare this week, sleeping on their floor most nights. Without her now he seemed lost, unsure of where his place was, unsure of his presence in a house he'd only had one reason to visit.

They were all a little lost. The children were somber at dinner. Everyone kept glancing at the empty chair which seemed to take up too much space. There was no laughter, no fighting, no life to the scene.

Even little Fern had been confused, big green eyes swinging this way and that, looking for the flash of bright colour unique to Eris. She'd seem dissatisfied with Nike's own brand of orange, lighter than Eris's, closer to blonde than red, but Fern had let Nike comfort her all the same. There was nothing to be done for the other children, who knew the exact circumstances of Eris's absence and resented it completely. Elizabeth received very dirty looks for the duration of dinner.

"It's quiet." Patch observed, perching on a kitchen stool. She'd never seen him so skittish.

"Too quiet." Nike nodded, "Eris made time for every single one of them. We're all feeling a little lost."

"They love you too." He glanced up, smiling that easy smile that seemed so enthralling to everyone else. It was a nice smile, Nike could admit. He was a good looking man, a man that any woman would be happy with. But his smile didn't do anything for her. Never had done.

"Yeah, I know. But Ris knows them better than I do. Speaks to them better than I do. She has a way with people."

"When she isn't terrifying them." There it was, that smile again. This one was softer, gentler, not meant for everyone else to look at, but a whisper of something he kept just for himself.

Still, Nike did not feel the pull that others seemed to feel. Even Clarabelle and Huxley went scarlet at the sight of Patch. Nike had only ever felt that flush of heat when Tanya, the small blonde woman she worked with on the farms, smiled her way.