The Storm and the Darkness Read Free

three older sisters. His mother could be mercilessly cruel to anyone she thought minimized her own place in the household. To Nicolas, she had been loving, but she had been a nightmare for the four girls. The father they all shared more than compensated for it in the way he ostracized Nicolas, while placing his daughters on pedestals.
    But they were mostly gone now; a part of his past that seemed almost unreal. His mother, his father, and three of his half-sisters. They perished in a car accident, heading for a family vacation that Nicolas had not been invited to. Adrienne had escaped, but she had disappeared entirely, along with her memory. When they found her several years later, living a new life with a family in the bayou, she was no longer the same person. Rebuilding her life had not been simple.
    If Nicolas had to pinpoint it, this was probably where things began to change in his friendship with Oz. Oz had loved Adrienne. Oz still loved Adrienne, and now was finally sharing his life with her and their two children as he always wanted, but it had not been easy. Although there was still love between Oz and Nicolas, there was also a darkness–the kind that comes with sharing the burden of a tragedy together–that might never go away. Oz was the brother Nicolas never had. But, Oz and Adrienne’s relationship had always been a point of contention, because each man saw Adrienne through very different eyes.
    There would always be invisible walls in his friendship with Oz, but there was one person with whom he shared everything with; someone who, no matter what happened, loved him without judgment, or darkness: his cousin Anasofiya.
    No one but Ana knew, or understood, what it was to have everything and still be empty inside. Nicolas had never really been a part of his family. He was only a baby when his father decided to rut with the maid and have four daughters with her instead of his wife, Cordelia. His father’s bitterness toward Nicolas’ mother flowed the only way it could when it had to run over, and that was toward him. Likely Charles had not realized how unkind he was to his only son, or how unfair. Someone more sensitive than Nicolas might have taken that bitterness and then turned on the four sisters, blaming them for it, using that same rotten sort of deflection he had learned from his father. But instead, he was indifferent. Nicolas and his sisters were always divided by the ugliness that festered between Charles and Cordelia, and while he cared for them, he didn’t care enough to be a part of them.
    Ana and Nicolas had been born a few months apart. When Ana’s mother died giving birth, Ana was taken into the same nursery as Nicolas, and they shared nearly everything–from their toys to their solitude–from that point forward. They had even shared their friendship with Oz. As they all grew older, Ana and Oz grew apart when an attempt at dating soured, and Nicolas grew to love Ana even more when she was solely his. In many ways, Ana was the reason Nicolas never wanted to marry. She was the one person that knew him–truly knew him, not the person he projected to the world–and he didn’t want there to be anyone else in the world who had that knowledge.  
    And now she was gone, and he did not know for how long. He supported her stated reasons for going. He knew her quiet anguish. He felt the build-up and the boil-over. They could speak without speaking, so no words were necessary. Nevertheless, he had said out loud that he supported her, just as her father had, though they both knew Augustus Deschanel had no idea. He didn’t know who Ana was; what burned inside of her, and what haunted there. Nicolas’ only regret was not offering to go with her. The only reason he could ever give himself for not doing it was that he was afraid she would turn him down. Ana was the one person he could not handle rejection from.
    Yet...something was bothering Nicolas. At first he chalked it up to his sadness at her