Rebirth (Lost Souls #1)

Chapter 2

T he sound of my breath and the slow beating of my heart is all that I hear when I wake up.

I flex my arms and legs, a bit of energy returning as a breath escapes me. I swing my legs over the side of the bed, I plan to do some exploring and finally get around to stepping inside that library.

My hand rests on one of the cool stones from the archway and a smile pulls at the corner of my lips upon seeing the greenery beyond. Everything has returned to normal, or as normal as this place can get. No darkness, no rustling in the trees, no wings. Distracted as I am, I let out a startled scream when I’m shoved from behind. I stumble, trip, and almost fall face-first in the grass.

“This is your fault,” Isra spits.

Only then do I notice the black eye, the cuts, and the bruises on her arms.

“If I didn’t have to come out and look for you…” She leaves the rest of her sentence hanging, but it’s more than clear how she feels about me.

“I’m sorry.” My voice trails off at the end of my apology, making it less sincere than I intend it to be .

In all fairness, I didn’t ask her to come for me, so I don’t see how her current condition is my fault. She must be able to tell, because her unhurt eye twitches upon hearing my words.

“Just stay away from me,” she bites.

As she leaves, she bumps into me with such force that I almost end up on my ass after all. Anger rises inside me, running through me like electricity, but she throws me a look and I catch something in her eyes that I don’t like. It’s something that says she will stab me in the back as soon as she gets the chance.

At the same time, I can’t help but find her hostility both annoying and weird. Aren’t we stuck in the same situation? Aren’t we all victims?

Then again, Sophia doesn’t strike me as a victim. The way she held herself… Is it because of how long she’s been here? Has she accepted her fate? Perhaps acceptance is the better approach... Thinking about it, tears sting my eyes once more. It’s as if I have gone from one prison to another. Is that truly all my life holds for me?

I accepted my first prison because, in a way, it was one of my own making. Even though I know it was because of something that I couldn’t prevent, I’m unable to shake the feeling that I had a hand in this one as well. Which begs the question: Why? Why would I willingly sign away my freedom, again?

Lost in my own thoughts, my feet bring me to the center of the garden, where I saw Sophia for the first time. She’s not here now, and I notice how truly alone I am. There are no birds, no insects, no rustling of the wind. Everything looks immaculate, like the perfect picture. Like the perfect dead picture.

Something stirs inside of me, traces of a memory wanting to come out. I look at the back of my hands, turning them over and tracing my gaze over my wrists.

“Did I die and go to Hell?”

Silence is the only answer that I get. I continue to look at my hands and wrists, and tears break free after all. My hands shake, but I keep my eyes on them, unable to look away. That’s when I notice it. Or more accurately, I notice the lack of it.

“No.” My voice breaks, and I sink to my knees to frantically start searching the grass. “No.”

I jump back to my feet and run to my room. Once inside, I turn everything over, searching as more and more tears stream down my cheeks while a new kind of panic takes hold of me. The walls start to close in on me, the room too much like a coffin now.

“What the hell are you doing?” Isra looks down at me with disgust on her face. I’m on my hands and knees, looking under the bed.

“I—” I can’t hold back a sniffle as I say, “I lost my wedding ring. I-I don’t even remember when I last had it.”

She looks at me, baffled for a few seconds, and then she bursts out laughing.

“Your wedding ring?” She acts as if it’s the most hilarious thing that she’s ever heard. Perhaps it is. “Are you stupid? Your wedding ring and your marriage mean nothing here.”

Isra laughs so hard that she almost has trouble breathing. It makes me furious. It makes me wish that I could make her?—

“Shut up.” My voice comes out louder than I intend, but it gets the job done. She looks at me, startled. “Stop mocking me. Do you really have nothing better to do?”

Her eyes grow wide at my tone, but I don’t care about how I sound. It’s as if the loss of my wedding ring has jolted something awake inside of me.

“Why are you even here? You tell me to stay away from you, yet you’re the one that seeks me out. So do both of us a favor—shut up and get out.”

Isra scoffs. Even though she tries to act tough, she doesn’t seem as unaffected as she would like. “What are you getting all worked up for?” she retorts, some bite returning to her voice. “You clearly don’t understand your situation. If you did, you wouldn’t be concerning yourself with a stupid wedding ring.”

“Then explain it to me,” I bite back.

Isra starts to laugh again and the longer she keeps it up, the more I get the urge to make her shut up. And not with words. She looks down at where I’m still sitting on the floor.

“Our lives have no meaning whatsoever. We are bound to his will. Our obedience is all that keeps us alive.” Her voice is cold and flat, her eyes piercing mine, telling me that she’s serious.

I flinch away from her. “What does that even mean?”

“It means that we are nothing but what he wants us to be. And what he wants us to be…” Isra looks away, unable to finish her sentence.

“Who is he?” My own voice is soft, almost a whisper, yet thick with nerves.

“He is both our protector and our captor. We are only here because he wants us to be.” Tears well up in her eyes. For a moment, I’m allowed a glimpse of Isra as she is behind her mask of mockery: broken, scared, and barely hanging on, if at all.

“If only he had let me die.” The words are barely audible, and I have to strain to hear them. She gasps, taken aback by her own truth. She looks at me, then turns and runs.

Part of me wants to let her run away. Another part is hell-bent on getting answers. It’s that part that gets me to chase after her.

“Isra, wait.”

To my own surprise, she does. Isra freezes, and I bump into her with such force that we both fall down into the grass.

Gasping for air, I quickly lift myself into a sitting position. Isra remains lying in the grass next to me. She curls herself into a ball and starts to cry, as if saying the words out loud made her face something that she has been denying for far too long .

It takes a while, but eventually she seems out of tears. More time passes, and she uncurls herself to lie on her back, her eyes on the trees above her. I bite my lip, unable to find the appropriate words to say to her. This isn’t how I expected this would go.

“My name isn’t even Isra.” Her words catch me by surprise. “Not really. It’s the name he gave me. I don’t remember my real name, not anymore,” she whispers, her voice breaking again as she struggles to keep her emotions in check.

“How long have you been here?” I ask eventually, curiosity getting the upper hand.

“I… I don’t know.” She hesitates. “Is Shapur II still shāh ?”

Now it’s my turn to hesitate. “What is a shāh ?”

Isra picks up on the confusion in my voice and sits up, a look of worry on her face. “The Sasanian King of Kings?” She swallows hard when my frown only deepens. “The Empire of... Iranians?” she adds after a moment of thinking, trying to find the correct words in a language that I now come to understand isn’t her birth language.

It sounds vaguely familiar, but only because I think I might have once received a brief history lesson on the old kingdoms and empires. But if what Isra’s saying is correct, then it’s been roughly... “Fifteen hundred years,” I mumble, only to immediately realize that I made a mistake in saying that out loud.

Isra’s face contorts with a mixture of horror, disgust, and agony. “Fifteen...” She falls silent, unable to repeat my words. Her breathing quickly becomes erratic upon realizing what this implies about how long it’s been.

“Everything that I once knew is… gone? Erased as if it meant nothing?” Her voice shakes as she balances a fine line that will have her stumbling face-first into a panic attack. Not that I blame her, seeing what she just learned.

Unsure of what to do, I take her hands in mine in an attempt to calm her down. She flinches when I touch her, then freezes. She stares into the distance, unseeing, then slowly starts to tremble. It begins with her hands and spreads over her whole body. For a moment I think that she’s having a seizure, and I almost panic. Then she stills, her eyes dropping to her hands, and she just stares at them.

“Isra?” I ask, uncertainty clear in my voice. My heart beats rapidly, and the palms of my hands are sweaty as I make to reach out to her once more.

A terrifying smile curls her lips then, and Isra slowly raises her hands. She flexes her fingers, turning her hands over and over as if she’s seeing them for the first time. She raises them in front of her face, gently caressing her cheeks, her lips. Her tongue darts out and she licks the tips of her fingers, sensual yet terrifying.

She places her fingers over her eyes and looks through them, the smile on her lips distorting. Then she claws her fingers and screams as she burrows her nails inside of her flesh, inside of her eye sockets. Blood starts to pour, and her bone-chilling scream turns to laughter.

Isra keeps digging her fingers in, deeper and deeper. She laughs like a maniac, unbothered by the blood that colors her face, fingers, hands, and arms. It drips down her chin and neck, making its way onto her clothes. All the while she continues to laugh, even when something pops. She retracts her hands and holds them out, showing me the bloody, cut-up eyeballs in each of her palms.

Unable to move or speak, my eyes wide in shock, I look from the mess in her hands to the gaping wounds that are her eye sockets.

I gasp at the sight of her, and Isra’s face snaps toward me. Looking at her, the thing that scares me the most is not what she did. It’s not the bloody mess in front of me. No, it’s the terrifying, teeth-baring smile. It holds unimaginable horror, like a promise that I don’t want to see fulfilled.

A pair of hands are placed around her eye sockets and Sophia kneels behind Isra. She speaks a few words that I don’t understand, and the other woman passes out. Sophia gently guides her into the grass, then throws me a look. “You should go to your room.” Her voice is calm but commanding, and I take the hint.

My legs shake with every step that I take.

I t’s unclear how long I remain inside after what Isra did. Seeing her mutilate herself was something that I wasn’t ready for, if one can ever be. The mere thought of it is enough to make me tremble.

On the other hand, it wasn’t horror that I had felt in that moment, rather a morbid kind of fascination. That’s what disturbs me the most—that I didn’t try to stop her because I found it fascinating. What am I becoming?

It’s this newfound unsettling curiosity that gets me to leave my room and check on her. I’m not actually concerned about her—she can die for all I care. Yet, I’m curious. So curious that I don’t heed my own words to stay away from her even though I know that every time I see her, nothing good comes of it.

“Hello, Third,” Isra says before I even have the chance to knock on her open door.

My hand is raised midair, and I quickly drop it back to my side. Isra turns her face in my direction and gives me a very normal-looking smile. She lies in bed, propped up against a pile of pillows, her eyes covered up with bandages.

She gestures for me to enter, and I do while biting the inside of my cheek and looking around her room. It’s very spartan, even more so than mine. She only has a bed, a rug on the floor next to it, a wooden chest against one wall, and a stone bench against another.

“How are you?” I ask while I take a seat next to her on the bed, careful to only touch the sheets.

Isra shrugs. “I should be happy to be alive, but I can’t be bothered with faking it.”

The words are followed by an uncomfortable silence, and I wonder what I’m even doing here.

My eyes flick from the way my fingers trace circles on the sheet to Isra and back. “Your eyes?” I end up asking in an attempt to feed my morbid curiosity.

Isra gently touches her fingers to the bandage. “He has already blessed me with a new pair. They just need some time to heal.”

“That’s… great.” I swallow down the question of how that’s even possible and return my attention to my hands.

There is more silence then. I contemplate leaving as unease closes up my throat. When I finally make to move, Isra grabs my wrist.

“Did he give you a name yet?” Her face is turned toward me and, despite the bandages, it feels like she can see me.

“No.”

“Hmm, perhaps soon then.” Isra retracts her hand and turns her head toward the door.

Something is off about her, though I can’t put my finger on it.

“Isra,” I say, “are you okay?” The regret for opening my mouth is instantaneous.

Her smile falters, and I’m unsure whether she knows that I caught it. She takes my hands in hers, and a small voice in the back of my head tells me to run, that I knew this wasn’t going to end well.

“Isra,” I say, trying to free my hands from hers.

She looks at me again, tilting her head sideways. “Why?” she asks as she puts more pressure on my hands. “Why won’t he let me die?”

My fingers strain under the force she exerts on them. There is no doubt in my mind that she is capable of breaking them if she wants to. The mere idea is enough to fill me with dread, and I swallow hard, my stomach dropping.

“Isra.” I attempt to pull again, but to no avail. “Please.” I don’t like the pleading tone in my voice, how scared and desperate it makes me sound.

Isra raises her head and smiles that horrifying smile at me. “Why am I still here even though I’ve already been replaced? I was supposed to take her place. I was supposed to be better than her, so much better. But then you came along and ruined that.”

She grabs my arm and yanks me toward her until our faces are almost touching.

“You”—her nails dig into the soft flesh of my arm, and the pain makes me wince—“stole my chance from me. You made my being here pointless. So why is he keeping me? Why?” She releases some of the pressure that she exerts, and I’m quick to jerk myself free.

I jump back from the bed, glad to see that she didn’t draw any blood. Isra places her hands in front of her on the bed, then she slowly starts to crawl toward me. I stumble back a step as my eyes dart from her to the door, assessing if I’m fast enough to get away from her.

“Perhaps he wants me to claim what is rightfully mine,” she says as she gets out of the bed. “Perhaps he brought you here to test me.”

Her hand darts under the pillows, and she pulls out a knife. The light from the candles in her room reflects on the metal of the blade. There is no doubt in my mind that it will cut through me like butter.

Isra heads toward me, unhindered by her lack of sight, as if she can see me just fine. She tackles me before I can react and pins me down.

I let out a scream as my fight-or-flight instinct kicks in. I try to get her off me, my heart beating frantically in my chest. This is not how I’m going to die, gutted like a fish by a crazy woman.

We struggle as she tries to simultaneously keep me down and stab me while I try to get away from her. Isra manages to cut my arm, and I gasp, the wound stinging and trickling blood. Somehow, I’m able to kick her in the back with my knee. Caught off guard, she falls forward, and I slam my head into her face. Her nose makes an awful cracking sound on impact. Isra slumps to the side, leaving just enough room for me to get out from under her, my head pounding something fierce.

I scramble to my feet and hurry to get away from her, but I barely get two steps before her hand closes around my ankle. Isra tugs, and I fall face-first on the hardwood floor. My head hits the floor hard, and my vision swims. Don’t pass out . I’m dead if that happens.

Isra claws at my feet, and I kick her face without looking at her. There is another cracking sound, and I’ve either broken her nose or something else. I don’t care, as long as I get away from her. She grabs the hem of my dress just as I’m able to stand up and attempts to crawl up my body. Thankfully, I’m faster this time around. I spin and give her another kick. I hit her against her chest, and Isra gasps for breath as she falls back down. Her hands clutch her chest, and I hope I’ve broken a few of her ribs.

I don’t even bother going for the knife that’s still in her hand. Stumbling and almost tripping over my own feet, I make for the door. I’m almost out when Isra starts to laugh. My curiosity be damned, I turn and look at her. She sits on the floor, her broken nose bleeding, the knife still in her hands. She turns her head toward me and smiles.

“Will he let me go now?”

She raises her arms and plunges the knife into the side of her neck. The wet sucking sound of the blade piercing her flesh is loud in the otherwise silent room.

Isra falters for a split second, her smile turning sour. Then she pulls the knife free and drops it on the floor, the metal producing a muffled clattering sound on the hardwood. Blood gushes out of the wound, the coppery smell of it rapidly filling the air.

Isra giggles while she puts her hand against the wound, blood dripping between her fingers and onto her clothes. She continues to giggle as she slumps to the floor in a puddle of red. Her body convulses, then she goes silent and stops moving altogether.

All the while, I stand there and watch her die. Even though I’m slightly flustered, I find myself to be mostly uncaring.

Someone sighs behind me, and then Sophia gently pushes me aside. She walks toward Isra’s lifeless body, unbothered by the blood that pools around the woman. Another sigh escapes her as she crouches down. I snap out of whatever trance I’m in and, without a second thought, I take my leave. If Isra wants to die so badly, then I hope she does.

Bursting out of the hallway and into the garden, I find that I can breathe again. My chest expands with air, and my heartbeat slows down as I stride into the garden, attempting to clear my head. Reaching the center, I sit down on one of the benches and close my eyes, letting my mind wander now that the adrenaline has run its course.

A hand gently touches my shoulder. Upon opening my eyes, I find Sophia taking a seat next to me.

“Are you alright?” The concern in her voice seems genuine enough, so I nod.

“Isra?” I let the question hang, unsure if I want to fake being concerned.

“She will be fine. Physically, at least. I am not so sure about her mental state.” Sophia regards me for a moment, then asks, “Are you friends?”

I blink at her, stupefied by her question and the honest wonder in her voice. “No,” I answer with a dry, unamused laugh. “Not at all.”

She considers me thoughtfully. “She is indeed not someone that is easy to befriend,” Sophia says to my surprise. “I am embarrassed to admit that I have tried and failed. She has a certain air about her person that makes it quite a difficult task to accomplish. ”

“She thinks that she’s here to take your place. “

Sophia nods. “She has told me as much. Being humble does not seem to be in her nature, and friendship with someone that deems herself above you is not an easy task. Despite the three of us being on quite equal footing, no matter what she tells herself.”

“Are we, though? On equal footing?”

She looks at me, thinking. “Above anything, we are here for him and that is all that matters,” she says carefully, avoiding a genuine answer to my question. “Though there is always more than meets the eye.”

“What do you mean?”

“We are here as women because that is what he wants. At the same time, we were chosen from so many, so there can be no doubt that we are more than just women.” Sophia gently caresses the jewel of her necklace, and energy flows to the tips of her fingers upon her touch.

“Who is he ?” The question slips from me before I can stop it.

Sophia considers my words for a moment before answering. “He is… powerful. He will promise you many things, offer you the world if you let him. Whether you accept or not will be your choice entirely. But remember that every offer comes with a price. What you must really consider is if you are willing to pay it.”