For days, I stayed with Parisa in my tower, holding her while she cried and telling her anything that would make her stop screaming. She cried so much, her face got grossly chapped. She swore to me that she’d kill the Swangunner even if she had to die doing it and that she’d humiliate him as he’d humiliated her mother. I didn’t want her to get hurt or killed, so I tried to talk her out of it, but she wouldn’t listen.
Two weeks passed before Desya and I finally convinced her to come home. He did whatever he could to help her: he stayed up nights with her while she cried and fed her because she wouldn’t eat. Five more days passed before she told him that if he loved her, he’d kill the Swangunner. He said, “I do love you, Parisa, but I can’t. If I do, the Swangunners will execute both of us.”
Then she hit his face and yelled, “If I’d known you were a coward, I never would’ve married you!”
Parisa only got more depressed. She’d scream at Desya until her voice was hoarse and say even crueler things that I knew she didn’t mean. One of these times, she threw a rock at his head and then laughed like she’d gone crazy. He just picked her up and took her up to the lake to bathe because she wouldn’t even clean herself anymore. The day she miscarried their baby, Desya almost broke. But somehow, he didn’t. After Parisa had fallen asleep, he sobbed in the corner of the hut for almost two hours before Lycidius came to help him bury the baby.
Lycidius hated Parisa more each day. He even asked me if I wanted him to put her out of her misery. I got upset then. I knew how Parisa felt because I’d lost Ryuki and told him, “If you touch her, I’ll never love you again.”
He ground his teeth and said, “Parisa wouldn’t do half of the things for you that you’re doing for her. One day, you’ll know that she only cares about herself and then you’ll regret wasting your love on her.”
Things got worse with the Midwinter Insurgency.
It was the bloodiest riot I’d seen since moving to Gehenna. The slum civilians had nothing but suffering. Their families were broken; their children and wives had been sold into prostitution; they were underfed and underpaid and treated with less compassion than the vultures on the field of exile.
So when they rose up against the Swangunners, it was a massacre.
Swangunner armies lined up thousands of rebels along the edges of the waste pits and shot them. They even killed the babies and toddlers. Most were left to starve or freeze to death on the field of exile; whoever tried to save them would be shot. People went crazy; they accused even their friends of being rebels, giving them up to the Swangunners to be tortured or raped and ultimately killed. Two families who lived near us accused each other. All of them were taken to the Blood Shed, the Swangunners’ execution house, and I never saw them again.
A week passed. Gang wars broke out, as if to just get in on the killing. Blackflag and Kapa had always hated each other and this war almost destroyed both. I’d seen people die in horrible ways in Gehenna, but the way these gangs slaughtered each other was beyond anything I knew people could do to each other.
Lycidius refused to fight in the gang wars. Instead, he stayed by my side all day and all night without hardly even sleeping. Two days later, Desya got knifed in the stomach. Parisa came into the hut as Neko stitched up the wound and fainted. For three days she didn’t wake up, and when she did, she was burning with a fever. We brought her to the woods and we took care of her in my tower. The fever nearly killed her, but Neko fed her tea from remedial plants and kept her face cool with a wet rag and the fever broke.
We went to the underground part of the slum. Bodies were everywhere. The mud was red and peppered with shells. People were crying and screaming and the smoke from the fires shrouded the streets in a stale fog.
The fighting got so bad that Lycidius was forced to save me with his magic. He arced a wall of flame from the fires and burned alive over a dozen Blackflag soldiers. No one even noticed in the chaos. Afterwards, Lycidius refused to even let me go to the river on my own. He stayed awake in the hut for days, holding a rifle and threatening to shoot anyone who tried to touch me or steal from us. His eyes got so bloodshot that he looked crazy.
One night, he tried to change our decision. I was sitting in the corner of the hut, trying to block out all the sounds of gunshots, when Lycidius dropped his gun and crouched beside me. He held my face and said, “I want to take it back. I don’t care about the Law anymore, Snofrid.” He pressed closer to me, holding me tight, and said, “I love you.”
I knew he was just acting crazy because of all the death—we all were. He’d remember why we made our decision soon and I’d be hurt again. I started crying, and said, “Go away, Lycidius. Go away, or I’ll order you to leave.”
Lucian came to our hut three weeks after the wars began. He thought I’d been killed. I told him that I hadn’t reported for work because of the fighting. He didn’t forgive me, but he still gave me a blue shirt that was branded with the mark of a red viper, his symbol. No one tried to kill me as long as I wore it.
Finally, after five weeks, the Chancellor of Hollowstone addressed the insurgency. People in Vancastle had been complaining about the smoke and noise and had signed a petition, forcing him to meet with the Warden. In preparation for the meeting, the Swangunner district of the slums was blocked off by laser-wire. Stellar Ops units combed the area for days before his arrival; people who were caught in the red-zone were detained and questioned.
The day the Chancellor met with the Warden, Parisa went missing.
When Desya found out, something changed in his face. It was a shadow of the look Lycidius wore when he hurt people; I knew Desya would do anything to find her. Lycidius and Neko helped us search all day and when we found nothing, Desya offered to pay people the few coppers he had for information. This turned up nothing. So Desya went after the pimps. When they didn’t answer his questions, he shot their fingers off or ripped out their teeth with pliers. Hurting them still didn’t help—none of them knew where Parisa was. Desya became something horrible then. His mercy disappeared, and he surpassed even Lycidius in his violence. When the insurgency was put down, we expanded our search to every part of Gehenna. Desya believed she’d been kidnapped, but after three weeks, I believed she’d been killed.
We never found her body.
About a month after she went missing, Desya lost it. I found him in the hut, crying and telling me that it was his fault for failing to keep her safe. I tried to convince him that dying in Gehenna was no one’s fault, but he wouldn’t listen. After Desya passed out from exhaustion, I went to Ryuki’s grave and cried too. I invoked the Promethia Flower, asking that it would allow Ryuki to help us from the afterlife.
The next day, Desya started breaking things. He awoke, raging in the night, and screamed so loud the neighbors threatened to shoot him. But I couldn’t lose another person I loved. At this point, I knew I’d do anything to leave Gehenna forever.
Lycidius, who’d turned harder after I told him to leave, ignored the sadness. Instead of sitting with Desya, he made secret trips out of the slum and was sometimes gone for days, leaving Desya and Neko to protect me. When I asked him what he was doing, his face stayed as hard as a rock. He said, “I’ll tell you when I do it.”
It was three weeks before I turned sixteen when Lycidius burst through the door of our hut, breaking it off the hinge. He picked me up and hugged me so hard I couldn’t breathe. Then, for the first time since I’d met him, he started crying. I was terrified that something had gone wrong and started crying too. But instead, he told me good news, and, as I listened, I knew that I was going to love him forever.
PART III
What You Fear Most
Wednesday, 9 Days until the Hunt
Fragments of memories floated around Snofrid like a sunlit ash cloud. Some memories were tangible; others were husks, darker than the patches between stars—Ryuki, tucking her into bed with storybooks; Lycidius, smiling at her from across the hut; Parisa, laughing as she raced Snofrid to their secret f
orest tower; Desya, rescuing her after she got stuck in a tree.
Snofrid tried to concentrate, to hone in on one single thought, but a sort of hot, pulsing stupor had settled over her, leaving her tongue flappy and her skull pounding. She wanted to vomit again. Her fingers dug into the mattress, twisting as she wept.
Desya, who’d been rooted at her bedside for almost an hour, caught her in his arms, saying calming words that only strengthened her urges to cry. She sobbed into his shirt until the skin beneath her eyes felt blistered. “Desya,” she choked.
“It’s okay, Sno. I’m here.”
She clamped her arms around his neck, wanting to comfort him in return. The last image she recalled of her brother was his soot-dusted face streaked with tears as he screamed for his lost Parisa. All this had happened more than a year ago, but the memories were again fresh and she just wanted to hold him.
When she’d finally emerged from the Mania Mirror she’d lain paralyzed, vaguely conscious, with nothing but the feel of Desya’s calloused hand to ground her in reality. As the paralysis lifted, she’d felt too nauseous to form words and vomited across the tatami mats. She’d managed to hug Desya, to embrace the overwhelming happiness that she felt at having him back. It seemed as if she’d just been snatched out of the jaws of a terrible fate—that if the Mania Mirror had somehow failed, countless moments, insights, and feelings would’ve remained unnamed and lost to her forever—she’d have lost herself.
“Where’s Lycidius?” she said shakily.
“Asleep. He was awake for three days and just passed out.”
Her eyes locked on the door. She ached to see him walk through it, to be here now and to tell her that he still loved her. That in spite of what they’d promised, or what was forbidden, they could love each other openly.
Desya pulled away, steadying her so she wouldn’t fall over. “You weren’t out that long, Sno. It’s only Wednesday.”
She managed a nod. Little mattered in the moment except finding answers to her remaining questions. Her attention caught on the chain around Desya’s neck and, with a rickety hand, she pulled it from his collar. A welded band swayed from the end.
He eyed the ring guiltily, and she shook her head. “It’s okay, Desya. I know why you lied.”
He fisted the ring and dropped it back into his shirt. “No, it’s not. I should’ve told you the truth days ago.”
“If you had, I wouldn’t have understood it. I might’ve judged you for marrying a human.”
“But you won’t now. That’s all I care about.”
The bedroom fixtures started to spin and she held onto his arm for balance. “Desya, I’ll never judge you.”
“I know, Sno.” He propped her back against the wall. “But you need to rest or you’re gonna fall over. How about we talk later?”
“No,” she objected, a little hysterical. “I still don’t understand everything. The mirror stopped showing me my life the day Lycidius got us out of Gehenna.”
His forehead creased. “Damn. You’re still missing about two years.”
She closed her eyes, not wanting to think about the gaps right now, even though large and small holes speckled every tier of her mind. “I know it might be hard for you to talk about Parisa, but I didn’t see what happened to her. She went missing…”
“She didn’t go missing,” he cut in. “She ran away.”
Snofrid’s eyes fluttered open. “What?”
“The day the Chancellor met the Warden, she broke through the security fence and was somehow able to get to him as he was deplaning. She made a scene in front of all the cameras, asking him for mercy and crying and stuff.” He scratched a patch of stubble on his chin, his face betraying his regret. “She was never missing.”
“What did the Chancellor do?”
“He let her squat in the Golden Circle as a publicity stunt. People called him the Merciful Father and other stupid things. After she turned eighteen, they had an affair. When it went public, his ratings took a nosedive. But guys that have the media up their sleeve never lose their sparkle. She started hosting charity events and funding political campaigns with the stacks she got from her clothing line. People eventually forgot that the Chancellor had a wife and now they all worship her like she’s saved lives.”
“But, Dez, you guys…you got married.”
“Yeah, but everyone who knew about us is dead except you and Lycidius. We got married in secret; there was never any record that it even happened. What’s my word against what people want to believe? Besides, it’s not like I can tell anyone either way—the wedding was an Inborn ceremony.”
She measured the resentment in his face and wondered if she was angrier than he was. “So, you’re not mad anymore?”
His nostrils flared. “Of course I’m mad. I’m mad as hell.” He leaned back, his jaw popping as he worked the muscles. “I’ll never be obligated to take her back, but I can’t be with anyone else.”
Snofrid rocked onto her knees. “Yes, you can, Dez. You said it yourself: No one knows you’re married. Which means Inborn Law can’t punish you if you leave her.”
Desya looked her in the eye with quiet intensity. “Sno, you don’t mean that, do you?”
Her face flushed and she puffed up with shame. She’d only made the suggestion because Parisa was human and Snofrid hadn’t considered their union to be a traditional Inborn marriage. In a traditional Inborn marriage, spouses remained together for life. Most of the time, a Covenant Spell was even raised to ensure fidelity. But, being too poor back then, Desya and Parisa hadn’t been able to afford a Covenant Spell.
She faced Desya, who was still watching her expectantly. Despite Parisa’s actions, he’d never talked badly about her, and he also continued to wear the ring she’d given him on a chain around his neck. Snofrid glanced at the ring, glittering in the lamplight, and wondered if her brother still loved his wife. “Did you ever talk to Parisa?”
“I tried, a couple times actually, but she wouldn’t see me.”
“You should’ve told the guards you were her husband. That would’ve got their attention.” As she swayed onto her feet, Snofrid suddenly became aware of the wet diaper she was wearing. “Oh my gosh, Dez…tell me you put this on me.”
“Yeah. But I swear I didn’t look.”
Heat flared in her cheeks. “I believe you.” She shuffled to her dresser and gathered a clean pair of pajamas. “I’m feeling a little better, so I’m going to shower and change quickly. Don’t leave.”
“How about I get some food?”
Her stomach burned. “Please bring a lot.”
In the bathroom, Snofrid cranked the hot water, steaming up the shower curtain and the mirror. For a long while, she stood under the scorching water, washing off the sweat and filth from her dark journey. Tears broke from her eyes and mingled with the water. Her pain was raw, unappeased by time. The things she’d seen in the mirror felt new. Yet she still felt as if she’d aged years, as if the girl who’d been sold into Master Mookjai’s trafficking ring was a shadow in her periphery.
With each passing second, she missed Lycidius more, resented their situation more. What would he say if she spoke to him now? Would he reconsider if she appealed to him? Sadness filled her at the thought. Before she’d gone into the mirror, he’d been adamant about holding to their original choice to stay apart. Remembering changed nothing—only Inborn Law could change it. But the Law was inviolable. She covered her face with her hands, feeling helpless.
Drying her eyes, she dressed and then gazed into the mirror at the face she now recognized. Her skin was pale, puffy from tears. Forcing herself to accept the gaps the Mania Mirror had left behind was difficult. They were like tiny mouths, gobbling up bits of her existence. Fortunately, the mirror had returned her family to her, but without all the pieces of her past, she couldn’t view the full picture. There was only one gap which required no explanation: Atlas Bancroft. Being heartbroken from Lycidius, she felt sure she’d dated him in an effort to move on.
“Ryuki mentioned that my uncle secretly assigned Lycidius to be my Shadow,” she said as she left the bathroom. Desya was crouched on the tatami mats with a feast of bento boxes scattered around him. Easing herself into a sitting position, she picked up a glass of water. “Who is my uncle?”
“I’ll tell you,” Desya said, fiddling with his chopsticks. “But just know that you’re not going to like everything I say.”
“I didn’t like everything I saw in the mirror, but I’m still thankful for every detail, Dez.”
“This is a little different.” He paused a moment, assuming a grave air. “Your birth parents weren’t like mine. Your real father’s name was Ludendorff Vondrak.”
Her hand jerked, spilling water across her hand. “Dez…Don’t mess around.”
“I’m not. I wouldn’t tease about something like this, Snofrid. Your uncle is Drakkar Vondrak, the Mystish Lord.”
Her face paled and she battled this idea with all her will, completely slamming her mind shut to it; but the effort was like trying to plug up a bucket of holes. His words spilled out, rushing all around her, forcing her to act. “If…if my father married a human, then how wasn’t Lord Drakkar shamed, too? The disgrace should’ve affected the whole family.”
“They kept you hidden,” Desya explained. “When Ludendorff died, Lord Drakkar couldn’t look out for you, so he asked Ryuki to do it. After all that crap with Mandek Skala, Lord Drakkar pulled Lycidius from his Dracuslayer unit and quietly assigned him to be your Shadow.”
Snofrid thought about the two men who’d walked her from her bedroom to the library at the end of each month. From his House Insignia, she guessed that the man with the silver eyes and the Mohawk had been Lord Drakkar. It made sense why he’d send her away; he would’ve been stripped of his lordship if his brother’s shame had become known. She shivered in cold terror; her existence threatened the entire Vondrak family and would plunge the Mystish Lord Office into scandal. Unbelievable in itself was that her uncle had allowed her to live.
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