We Are Courageous {BOOK 1}

Chapter 33

Chapter 33

I don't know what else to do other than pace and try to get my thoughts in order.

My feet scuff against the floor with each step I take and curses flow freely from my mouth, exiting beneath my breath. Casper stands in the next cell trying to talk my down from the ledge, but it's only making matters worse. My brain is running a hundred miles a minute. I can't think clearly. I'm in a constant fog. My hands reach up and pull anxiously at my hair as I fight back tears, each tear building up in my eyes and blurring my vision.

The bars in this prison match the rest of the damn facility. White, all white. The tile floor is white. The porcelain toilet matches the shade perfectly. There are still no windows, no form of sunlight or pitch black night to alert me to what time of day it was, or even tell me what day it was. I don't know how long each serum knocked me out for. I don't know how long I've been here. I'm not sure I want to know. I just want to wake up from whatever hellish nightmare I'm currently living in. I was better off believing my father was dead.

I had hopes, such high hopes after hearing Calyx's spiel, what was it, three days ago? Maybe four? How she spoke of who and what the Jotunn were. I had hopes that maybe my father was still there, somewhere. But now I know, now I've seen that he's an empty shell of a man. He's merely a vessel to house the demonic soul that now resides within him. It makes me want to vomit.

"Bay!" Casper shouts, his voice frantic and tired.

My icy blue eyes snap onto his bloody and broken up face. Some time when I was fully engulfed in my twisted thoughts, Casper managed to wriggle out of his cuffs, his hands now clasping the white bars that separate us from each other. Concern paints his bruised features, his brows drawn close together in worry.

"What?" I murmur with a quaking voice.

"Zachary, talk to me." As I near the bars his hand slips in between them and rests on my cheek.

I rub the now dried blood under my nose, tears brimming and falling from my bloodshot eyes. "Master Kole." I croak.

"What?"

"Master Kole, the Jotunn in control of this God-forsaken facility." I press my cheek into his hand and shut my eyes as I try to maintain a steady composure about myself. "Kole is... was, my father's name. We never found his body. And after everything Calyx told us, what if..."

"Oh."

"He doesn't even remember me." I pull away from Casper. "His own daughter, he didn't even know who I was. He's just the vessel of my father replaced with a horrific monster."

My legs fall out from beneath me, causing me to crumble to a messy heap on the floor. It all comes crashing down on me in that moment. My father will never remember who I am. He will never remember his wife in his previous life, or his twin children. He won't remember the memories or the laughs we have all shared. He won't remember the times we were a happy family, and he won't remember the times our family was falling apart.

I hear Casper's weight shifting from the other side of the cell wall, the breath leaving him momentarily as he sits himself on the floor. We sit in silence for a good one hundred twenty-two seconds.

"I don't know how to feel or what to do." My voice breaks.

"Come over here, baby girl." He murmurs, his hand reaching through the bars once more.