Hellfire | Hayley Marshall

Chapter 9

Eisa was too stubborn to call Klaus.

"I'll be fine," she told herself. "It can't kill me."

Clearly, Eisa was taking the saying 'What doesn't kill you makes you stronger' far too literally.

Within hours of her lying to her brothers saying she had to travel to Mexico to deliver the hybrid body to Isela, she had started to hallucinate.

She lay in the dusty bed, twitching and staring off to the far corner of the room, where, in her mind, Aya was standing, watching her.

"I never once thought I'd see the mighty Eisa Mikaelson reduced to a seizing mess," said Aya, tilting her head to look at her properly. She started to come closer. "The woman who taught me to fight... who turned me into a vampire... trembling from a wolf bite that cannot destroy her body. Interesting."

"You can make fun of me," Eisa muttered to her. "I can take it. You're cross with me."

"Of course I'm angry with you, Eisa. You abandoned me. You left me to fight to the death against your father, who had the means to kill you. How do you know I'm not really dead? We haven't heard from each other since... somewhere near the year 1200. I forget. Time does blur together when one is in love and spending every moment together."

"I didn't abandon you," she pleaded, reaching out a shaky arm. "I would have stayed, I would have fought at your side."

Aya raised a brow, and moved to the window. "Would you? You feared Mikael, and he had no intention of killing you."

"There are so many things I didn't tell you, Aya," said Eisa, forcing herself to sit up. "Mikael beat all of us. It was because of my mother that his blows did not end my life. Finn and I were beat the most, after Niklaus. Mikael hated us for being unwed, he was disappointed that Finn had not become the warrior all the first sons of the Viking line should be. He despised me for choosing magic over marriage. He wished for me to marry the son of a man he considered to be a fine warrior. He said it would make our family strong, to go through with a union that would produce powerful children. He hated me most when he learned that I fancied women."

Aya crossed her arms. "You never told me that."

"Of course not, Aya, I'd barely found out for certain, not long before I met you. You weren't there, when he stabbed a branch into my abdomen, claiming that I was not his child. That Esther must have slept with another to make me, because no daughter of his could have been born so abnormal."

"You never came back to look for me."

"How could I?" Eisa struggled to get to her feet, wanting to be closer to Aya, who looked further away now that she was upright. "I was hurt. I was not myself. I did search for you. But I could not find you, and I gave up. I figured you preferred to be with another. My family had brought you too much suffering for you to continue wanting to be at my side."

She crashed to the floor before she could get to her. She heard a laugh, and when she managed to push her front back up, Aya was no longer there.

"Aya," she whimpered, arms shaking as she tried to stand. "Aya, don't leave me. Please..."

Somehow, she managed to get back on the bed, because the next time she opened her eyes, Lexi was sitting at her feet, massaging her legs and humming.

"You don't have to do that," Eisa whispered, too exhausted to sit up this time.

"You used to do this for me all the time," said Lexi with a shrug. "It's no trouble."

She moved closer to her, taking a damp cloth and smoothing it over her forehead, before caressing her cheek. "Eisa, why do you do this to yourself?" asked Lexi. "You say you're done with your siblings so often, yet, you always go back to them. You make sacrifices for them. You lie about your pain so that they won't comfort you."