I pause this narrative now to tell you another story, a smaller one, more tangential; and for the time being, this story may seem unrelated, but I ask you to trust that it will later become very important.
In this time, Liv had been all of seven years old. Things were odd then: James and Erianna had begun to fight more frequently, but still we were family, and still we inhabited the same home.
This is the story of how that all stopped.
It had been warm then—it was often warm then—and I had left Liv in the care of James, which at the time had seemed like a good idea. Erianna and I went into town to buy things, small trinkets. I bought Liv a teddy bear with fairy wings; Erianna bought James his favorite cologne and a new tie with small skulls scattered among the fabric. We trotted from store to store happily, we even stopped for lunch together. Liv was with James the whole time, and I hardly had a worry in my mind for her. I believed her to be in very good hands.
When Erianna and I finally made our way home, Liv and James were long gone. My stomach dropped at the sight of the empty house, and her even emptier bed. Clothes were missing from her dresser, toys absent from their neat row on the side of her nightstand.
"Liv?" I called out. "Liv?"
"Seb," Erianna had said in a shaky voice, from down the hallway in her and James's room. "Seb, he's gone. They've gone."
Through my panic, I couldn't imagine where they'd run off to. Had James taken her into town as well? Or perhaps they were gallivanting elsewhere, in one of the fancier districts. Maybe they'd gone to the lake for a swim. Or the fields to gather flowers.
He had taken her winter coats.
Erianna made her way to where I stood, frantically checking drawers and corners in case Liv was playing some twisted game of hide and seek, in which case I would have embraced her until she couldn't breathe, and then tanned her hide for the scare she had given me.
"Seb," Eri said softly.
"Liv!" I boomed into the closet, pawing uselessly at her clothes, knowing all the while she was well and truly gone.
"Sebastian," Erianna repeated, this time firmer, and laid a hand on my shoulder. I whipped around to face her, my chest heaving as my hands shook.
"Where is she?" I asked, voice wavering. "Did you... Did you find her?"
"She's gone. He's gone. They're... Sebastian, you know where they are."
"No," I snapped, then jerked to look at where her winter coats would have been. It was warm. It was so warm. Why did he need her winter coats? It would have been cold only in one place: the land where Erianna wasn't. "No," I repeated, then shook my head to clear the thought.
"Sebastian," she said slowly, "you know the only place they could be."
"No, no, there's... there's lots of places they could be, Erianna. In town. In the fields. In the woods... Anywhere but there, alright? He wouldn't have taken her there."
"There's blood," she said in a low voice, "a lot of it, in my room."
My stomach lurched at the thought. I knew it was likely James had taken Liv to the Underground; but killed her? I'd supposed it was only for a visit. How could he do that to her?
"We need to go," I said urgently, already bolting down the stairs. "It might not be too late. I might be able to save her still, she might not have crossed..."
Erianna sped up to match my pace and managed to cut me off at the door.
"Sebastian," she said firmly, "it isn't as bad as you think it is. I can assure you of that. He would never harm her. He would never take her from you."
