Chapter 41

After our heart-to-heart talk, Viktor left me alone to be able to grab a shower. I am not sure if it was because I was looking forward to a shower or if his shower was just that dream-worthy, but I spent a lot longer in it than normal.

When I got out, I dried myself off and took a good look in the mirror. I had long black hair that hung down to the small of my back but I normally kept it up in a bun. I remember when I was growing up, Nicholas would spend hours brushing my hair, and without him to take care of it, it is easier to put it in a messy bun.

Vlad had always teased him for helping me with it, saying that real men did not brush and braid hair, but Nicholas ignored him and sometimes replied that Vlad would never get a wife if he didn't understand the importance of a woman's hair.

I kept it long in his memory, even going as far as refusing to cut it after his death, After my own, it never seemed to grow. In fact, nothing seemed to grow after my death.

My brown eyes looked back at me, trying to find some sign of aging. Quite frankly, there was nothing I hated more than my brown eyes, even if Nicholas said that when I smiled, the brown turned to gold. I was the only one in my family to have that color. Nicholas and Father had grey eyes that looked like the sky right before it started to rain. Elena and Mother shared green eyes that Mother would say meant that they were of the forest and trees.

My brown eyes made me an outcast of the whole Gypsy tribe. It was only Nicholas that loved the way they looked. He said that they reminded him of the earth, of the life and protection that the earth gave each person. Forest and trees couldn't grow without the brown earth and the grey sky would lose all meaning if the ground wasn't there to kiss it.

I saw my reflection in the mirror waver as tears started to fill up my eyes. I would give anything and everything to have Nicholas back, to give him the legacy of the Ribbon Girl. But Fate was always a woman…so Nicholas never stood a chance.

Not wanting to acknowledge the tears, I turned my gaze to the tattoos covering my left arm. I am not sure what it was about me and these particular tattoos, but no matter what happened to the skin, they would come back as perfect as the first day I got them. Mind you, not every one did, but there were four major ones that never leave me. The sleeve on my arm, the one on my back, the one on the ribs, and the quote just under my diaphragm.

My left sleeve tattoos could be broken down into three separate segments that blended together to make perfection. At the top of my shoulder and going down to cover the whole muscle was a grey sky with lightning. It is the only section of color in that arm, if grey could be called a color, and it was a physical reminder of Nicholas. He was my sky, he let me fly free and protected me no matter what. But when he was angry he was like lightning, quick, deadly and you never saw it coming.

Above my elbow was the face of a little girl. My face, if I am to be honest, back when it was with Nicholas. The face was divided into two parts, to the left side was beautiful, her eyes sparkled with innocence, a large smile on her face. On the right side of the face, it transformed into a skeleton, a monster. The eye on the right was similar to the left, but the innocence was long gone. Where the lower jaw was, instead of skin and muscle, there was only bone.

It was a beautiful blending of both death and a monster. Because that was what I was. I might have a beautiful face on the outside, but inside I was ugly, a monster, death. Or, at least that was what I thought before last night. Maybe the next time it was ripped off, the tattoo would come back a different way, reflecting a different me.

Finally, circling around my wrist and up my forearm was a group of trees. I gently glided my fingers over them, the tears returning to my eyes but refusing to fall. Those were the trees that surrounded Nicholas as he was tortured and finally died. And if you look close enough, hidden on the inside of my wrist was a little girl, her hands over her mouth, looking out.

Suddenly there was a knock at the bathroom door startling me. "Everything okay in there?" Came the voice of both my dreams and my nightmares.

"Yeah, Vik, just checking myself out in the mirror, making sure that my throat is healed," I replied, quickly putting on a house coat. My tattoos would tell anyone who I was in an instant, and I was not prepared to show it to anyone just yet.

Viktor might have some suspicions, but nothing had been made perfectly clear. I knew it was a technicality, but I was going to use it.

I opened the door to the ensuite and saw the man standing just outside of it. As soon as he saw me, his eyes darted to the base of my neck that was just peeking out.

"Your throat was injured?" He asked.

"Yeah, the wolf split it from behind when I was walking home after work," I said, rubbing the part as if I could still feel that knife. I couldn't, there had been so many slits to the throat that the latest one was just another cut in the sea.

"You know it was a wolf?" The gruffness in his voice became deeper as if his monster was going to come out and play. I wonder what his monster was like…

"No, not 100%," I said honestly. "Lucas came to the precinct and threatened me earlier that day, so I figured it was a safe assumption. No matter who it was though, there will be a thread on them."

"Handy those things are," he growled, turning his back to me.

"Yes and no. They are handy when they are attached to me, but not so much when they are not," I clarified.

"Not true, Fir was what led me to you after all. It came to life from my shirt and guided me all the way there. If you didn't do it, who could have?"

"Fir?" I asked, 'thread?'

Viktor nodded. "You told me to give it a name, so I did. Fir… thread."

The smile that split my face could not have been bigger. I went from almost breaking down thinking of my brother to wanting to laugh at the Boogeyman for naming a thread because I told him to.

I will admit, it was kind of cute.

"But that is not one of my powers," I said, getting back to the conversation about the threads.

"How do you know?" Viktor asked, looking back at me, his eyebrow raised.

"Because it has never happened before," I replied. I know I was thinking of him in that coffin, but that shouldn't be enough of a reason for me to develop a new power.

"Just because it has never happened, doesn't mean that it can't in the future. I'll wait for you in the living room. Get dressed," he said as he left my room, closing the door behind him.

I thought about what he said as I picked out my outfit and got dressed. Did my powers evolve because I was thinking of him? Or did they evolve because he was the only one to ever come to my rescue?

The answer terrified me.