She doesn’t answer.
He cuts her again, and although the act itself is enough to bring Nora to her knees, what strikes me the most is that she doesn’t move. Nora is unbound. Nothing is keeping her from fighting back, from rounding on Fredrik and taking that knife from him to protect herself. Yet, she does nothing. She willingly stands against that wall with her arms raised above her, and is letting Fredrik torture her. I know she can fight. She would very likely give Fredrik a tough time. She did all of us. She proved she has enough skill to fight back and keep Fredrik from hurting her. But she doesn’t move.
“She’s not going to break,” I say with realization, my gaze fixed on the screen. “Victor…she’s not going to tell him. She’s letting him do this to her…”
Fredrik’s going to kill her.
I burst out of the room, nearly tripping over that stupid rolling chair on my way out, and take off down the stairs.
“IZABEL!” I hear Niklas call out after me.
But I don’t stop. I keep on running until I make it to the third floor, and I run up to the door and punch in the code.
“Izabel! What the fuck are you doing?” Niklas is coming up behind me. “STOP!” his voice booms through the hall.
I rush into the room.
“Fredrik, don’t you fucking kill her!” I scream. “I can’t let Dina die! PLEASE!” Tears pour from my eyes.
He doesn’t even look at me.
Nora shrieks as he cuts her.
“CONFESS!” she cries out just as Niklas, Victor and James burst into the room behind me. “I say nothing until I get my confession!”
Fredrik cuts her again.
I look to and from Victor and Fredrik, my eyes filled with desperation and conflict.
Nora’s body begins to slide downward toward the floor, her bloody hands leaving smears against the brick.
Tears stream from my eyes. Dina…
I feel like I’m going to faint.
“Stop,” I hear Victor’s voice.
A sudden uncanny silence fills the room when Fredrik stops. I’m afraid to look up, afraid to see that Fredrik’s blade finally went across Nora’s throat.
But I look anyway.
And she’s alive.
Nora falls the rest of the way against the floor; her blood staining everything.
Fredrik steps aside and Victor moves closer.
“Confess you sonofabitch,” Nora says, looking right at Victor.
I look at him with confusion, but he looks at no one other than Nora.
“You know I’ll do it,” Nora says, gasping for air. “You know I’ll let them die.”
She will. If she could withstand Fredrik’s torture, the torture the SC-4 inflicted on her, I know she will…
Niklas steps up beside me. I feel his hand hook around my waist so he can hold me up. I didn’t even realize I was on my way to finding the floor, too.
“Wait! What about Dorian?” I call out. “He has to be here—.”
“She doesn’t care if Flynn is here or not,” Victor says, still only looking at Nora. “The only person in this room she cares hears what I have to say…is my brother.”
I look up at Niklas standing next to me and I feel his hand go slack on my waist. He’s looking right at the back of Victor’s head with confusion at rest in his eyes.
“Confess!” Nora says one last time through a heavy breath and with trembling hands.
“I killed Claire,” Victor says with his back to us. “I killed the woman my brother loved.”
Niklas’ hand completely falls away from my waist.
18
Izabel
Unable to speak, or find my thoughts, I look back at Niklas with a look of shock on my face that quickly turns to heartbreak.
Niklas doesn’t move. He just stands there in some sort of incomprehensible void. His arms down at his sides. Is he looking at me? Or is he looking at Victor behind me? Whatever he’s looking at I know he doesn’t see it.
I’ve never felt so guilty being alive.
“Claire was my sister,” I hear Nora’s exhausted and pain-filled voice say. “I loved her. She was my weakness. She was why Solis cut off the tip of my finger, why I was beat to near death for being compromised. I was supposed to be reformed by what they did to me. But it only made me worse, brought out a part of me that not even watching Victor Faust shoot my sister dead, brought out. I was there that night. Six years ago. I was there when Victor arrived before Niklas, and killed Claire and the men who were sent to kill her, before I could save her.”
My eyes dart back and forth between Niklas and Victor. My hands are shaking. My insides feel twisted and sour. I shake my head repeatedly, not wanting to believe what I just heard, hoping to shake the truth from my mind.
Niklas still hasn’t moved.
Victor finally turns to look back at him.
“Nothing I can say will ever make this right, brother,” Victor says to Niklas.
“Then don’t say anything,” Niklas says as he raises his head and his eyes lock on Victor’s, “…brother. Don’t say anything to me, or I’ll kill you myself.”