Nikolai
I walked into the living room and saw my entire family sitting and talking quietly amongst themselves.
They looked pleased that I had technically won the fight.
But why did I feel like I’ve lost?
“Nikolai.” Max came and hugged me, followed my Nat, Andrei, Mikhail and finally Dimitri.
“We missed you brother.” He clapped my back.
“I missed you guys too.” I told them all.
A familiar looking boy came in, around the same age as my kids.
“He is ours.” Max placed his hand on the kid’s shoulder. “Kol Meer Romanov.”
I smiled. Nat stepped besides Max and slipped her hand in his. They named their son after me. “It’s an honour.”
Max gave me a nod. I crouched down. Kol had the same baby blue eyes as his father and black hair like his mother. “Hey kiddo. I’m your uncle, Nikolai.”
“I know you.” He crossed his arms.
“Yeah?”
He nodded. “Dad sometimes talks about you when he has his big people juice. You are Klaus and Tori’s father. And I’m named after you.”
“You’re right.” And then realised he had a different accent. I looked up at Max and Nat. “You don’t live here, do you?”
Max scratched his scruff and shook his head. “We have a lot to talk about actually. Go play with Klaus and Tori, Kol. The adults need to talk.” He patted his son’s back.
“Alright, dad.” He nodded and dashed off.
Kol ran out of the door and that’s when I saw Eliyah leaning against the doorframe and hiding in the shadows. “Won’t say hi?” We had bonded quite a lot in the one month I called him every day to check up on Ava. He had become a good friend of mine.
“I haven’t decided if I should welcome you back with open arms or with a be mad at you for putting all of us through that shit.” He pushed himself off the wall and walked towards me with a slight smile on his face. He tossed me a t-shirt which I wore quickly.
He had grown a lot. Mentally and physically. I could see it in the way he carried himself. He had an air of self-assuredness and charisma.
He shook my hand and gave me hug. “Took you too damn long to come back, man.”
“I know.” So much has changed.
“You’re a vampire now.” I stated.
“Couldn’t protect her being a human,” was the reason he gave me. And I understood it. “And I’m part vampire and part faye.”
He uncurled his wings. One was a large, navy blue coloured wing, almost seven feet long and the other one seemed a little… stunted, it was barely two feet.
Something had gone wrong.
“I asked Avalyn to turn me. Didn’t know I’d get some faye in me as well.” He said.
“Can you fly?” I asked.
“No.” He said but shrugged. “I think it’s cool anyways. The feathers are sharp enough to slit a throat.” I knew it. Ava’s wings had cut me once unknowingly. If used as a weapon, those wings could do much more.
“I’m happy for you.” I patted his shoulder before I turned to look at my family.
“Take a seat and then let’s talk,” Mikhail said.
I took my seat on the love seat and waited till everyone was settled. Nat was sitting on Max’s lap, Mikhail besides him and then Andrei him. Valerie was sitting on the other couch along with Dimitri. Eliyah had taken a seat on the other couch. They all were looking at me, wanting to hear everything.
“What do you want to know?” I rubbed my face.
“Everything.” Mikhail replied. “You died. How did you come back?” Nat slapped his arm for the blunt question but then looked at me curiously.
“I never actually died.”
“What!?” All of them shouted together.
“Well technically I died but didn’t get to the after-life part. I was sent into a different dimension. It’s exactly the same as our world but just mirrored. But there were no living beings. Only me. No humans, no supernaturals, no animals or birds or even insects. It was so silent. So devoid of any scent. So… bleak.” Memories I wanted to forget flashed in front of my eyes.
I didn’t want to remember it. And it was the last thing I wanted to talk about.
My eyes fell on the large scar I had on my forearm. It looked like a big snake bite. But it hurt so much, the venom was so powerful that I was delirious for days. I had seriously considered chopping my arm off. I was just thankful that Fiyona and Valerie had been there. Or else I wouldn’t have survived it.
“How did you get that?” Max asked. We had encountered several snakes in the woods growing up, we might have even caught them and played with a few. So getting bit by one seemed unlikely. We knew how to deal with them.
“That world was filled with… creatures.” I swallowed. “Each different from the other. This was from a human-like creature that could turn into a snake.” I barely remembered fighting it. It came out of nowhere and bit my arm as I was resting under a tree. The venom was spreading quickly but I knew I needed to kill it before I fainted or else I would have been its food for the day.
It had been a long, tedious fight. I remembered watching it turn into a human-like shape through my blurry eyesight. It stood on its hind-legs and supported itself up with his hands. I remember it’s ear splitting hiss as it was running towards me for a final blow.
And then I remember a flash of golden wings-Fiyona’s wings before I blacked out. Without even knowing who I was, Fiyona and Valerie had fought of that creature and tended to me for days before I finally regained consciousness, all because they felt a connection with me.
They had been the ones who cured me, who made sure I didn’t do anything stupid like cutting my arm off. They saved my life. How they survived in that world for so long? I had no idea.
“You don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want to,” Dimitri said.
My jaw clenched. We always talked about everything. There was hardly anything we didn’t tell each other. But this seemed like something I physically couldn’t talk about.
“Was it that bad?” Max asked.
I gave him a nod, unable to say anything more. It was single headedly the worst experience of my life.
“How did you escaped?” Nat told us.
I nodded. “The curse Max told us about was true.” I said. “The entire Aine generation was given a curse that the birth of their child will be the cause of their death. Except it wasn’t death, it was doom. The curse was given to Fiyona by her own mother because she didn’t approve of Faelern, apparently there was bad blood between their families. The only out from the curse was when someone stronger than the one who gave the curse renounced it.”
“Fiyona’s powers weren’t strong enough. If you put the powers of her five generations together, only then you would be stronger than her mother. They had been waiting for Avalyn for a long time. Me being there messed up all their plans. Since Ava lived, the curse was broken, so no one else was coming. I didn’t have enough powers at that time, I wasn’t strong enough.”
“Then how did you all escape?” Mikhail asked.