by K. J. Sutton
“I do. Thanks, Bea.”
She took a breath, as if preparing herself for a confrontation. “I want you to take the rest of the day off.”
“I wish I could see the look on Angela’s face when you tell her that,” was all I said. Bea shook her head just as the phone rang. She picked it up, her other hand still holding a pen, and sighed when whoever was on the other end started talking. As she launched into reassurances that there was absolutely no gluten in our bacon, I removed my apron and hung it up. I fetched my purse from the row of lockers, waved at Bea, and walked down the hallway again. The breakfast rush kept Gretchen and Ariel so busy that neither of them noticed me hurry out the door.
As agreed, Finn was waiting by the van. Neither of us said a word. We didn’t need to—at some point, we’d come to an unspoken understanding that, when it was the two of us, there was no need for false smiles or meaningless conversation. The drive home was blessedly uneventful, and we existed in a comfortable silence. Tiny, fluffy snowflakes drifted down from a gray sky. I tuned the radio to a local station, and classic rock floated around us until Finn turned onto a familiar driveway.
The engine had barely faded into silence when Finn got out. He immediately headed for the woods, where he would take the form of a wolf and run, as fast and far as his legs could carry him. He wouldn’t outrun the memories, of course—Heaven knew I’d tried—but there was something about the movement. You weren’t just standing still and waiting for the pain. Instead, you were fighting back, in the only way you knew how.
I went up the porch steps slowly, thinking about how to fill the day. Maybe I would take a nap and visit Oliver. It had been so long since we’d been able to have fun. Since we’d been able to laugh. I missed my best friend. Now more than ever, I needed him.
I tested the doorknob and found it unlocked. The hinges made the slightest of moans as I stepped inside, but the rest of the house was absolutely silent. Damon must’ve taken Matthew for a walk—he was trying to teach his son about plants that grew in the woods, despite our remarks about how young Matthew was, or that nearly all those plants were dead right now. My brother had always done things his own way, and I was glad that hadn’t changed after everything he’d been through. As I took off my shoes, I heard something in the kitchen, a sound so small I couldn’t define it. Curious, I peered around the doorway, careful not to make the floor creak.
Collith and Emma stood in front of the sink. The old woman had her arm wrapped around him, and neither of them were saying anything. His head was bowed and his shoulders slumped, as though they held the weight of the world. Once, I’d thought carrying planets was nothing to him.
They must’ve just finished eating breakfast—dirty dishes littered the table behind them, and the air smelled like bacon. On the floor, beneath the high chair where Matthew always sat, there were over a dozen soggy-looking Cheerios. There were still pans on top of the stove.
As I watched, Collith reached up to rake his hair back. His face was more visible now, his profile in stark contrast against the sunlight. He wore the same expression I saw every time he woke up from a nightmare. It was pain. Pure, naked pain. I’d clearly interrupted a private moment, and I was about to retreat when Collith finally straightened. Pulling away from Emma’s grasp, he reached forward to twist the sink handle. Water trickled down.
“You can’t fix everything,” he said. His voice wasn’t unkind, exactly, but there was a sharpness in the words that my heart feel like it was being squeezed.
Emma was unfazed. She handed him a sponge and smiled. “Very true, I can’t. That’s up to you guys. But I can point you in the right direction.”
I wish it were that simple—someone taking hold and guiding us to a better place. I watched the two of them a little while longer, but apparently the conversation was over. Emma found a container for the leftovers and Collith started washing the dishes.
Eventually I tiptoed past, heading toward my room, and it seemed like a small miracle that I didn’t get lost along the way.
Later that night, I laid in bed and stared at the ceiling.
Despite how tired I’d felt all day—how tired I always felt—sleep eluded me. Seeing Ian again had cracked something open within my mind. Normally I could distract myself or fall asleep quickly enough, but tonight was different. There, in the darkness of night, surrounded by silence, it was impossible to hold them at bay. The memories. They came at me from all sides like battering rams, sending shock and pain through my body. A sob escaped me before I could stop it, and I put my hand over my mouth to contain the rest.
A minute later, I heard the door creak open. Collith, I thought with a rush of feeling. Apprehension, excitement, worry. I sat up and shifted my legs to make room on the bed. But the scent that washed over me wasn’t Collith’s—laundry detergent and a woodsy shampoo. A moment later, Damon’s thin arms wrapped around my shoulders. “Hey, Fortuna,” he murmured.
I didn’t say anything, because it didn’t seem necessary. I felt like we were children again, and I’d just woken from another nightmare, my little brother trying to offer comfort. Damon had often been there as I cried myself awake—unlike most children, who liked to crawl into bed with their parents, Damon always sought me when he left his room. Eight-year-old Fortuna had thought it was annoying. Now I wished I’d been kinder to him.
This thought gave me the strength to stay there, in the circle of his arms, when all I wanted to do was shove him away. I had an irrational fear—a phobia that lurked beneath my skin, just like those I touched—that the filthiness all over me would get on him. Maybe Damon sensed it, because he pulled away. I waited for him to leave, but he didn’t move. I started adjusting my pillow. I needed to stay busy, somehow, or the memories would come flying back.
“You’ve even started to move like one of them,” Damon said suddenly, leaning over to turn on the lamp. Light trickled over the rug and onto the wooden floor.
I tucked some hair behind my ear and frowned at him. “What do you mean?”
“The fae. You’ve spent so much time at Court lately that…” He hesitated and shrugged, as if he was only now realizing that I might find his words horrifying. “You’re adopting their mannerisms a little.”
“I’m sorry, didn’t you come in here to comfort me?” I demanded, drawing my knees against my chest. I held onto them tightly and hoped he wouldn’t notice. The thought I was becoming like them, the creatures I had vowed to destroy, who had caused the world so much pain, felt like a fissure going through me. If I didn’t hold myself, everything would shatter.
Damon made a sound like laughter, but there was nothing joyful about it. “Yes, I did. Apparently I don’t know how to be a father or a brother.”
“You’ve only known about Matthew for a few weeks,” I reminded him gently, watching his eyes darken as his mind descended into worry. “You’re doing just fine, Damon. Do you think anyone actually feels like a good parent in the beginning?”
“Ours were. Good parents, I mean.”
“Yeah. We got lucky,” I said with a bittersweet smile. We fell silent after that, but for the first time since I’d brought Damon back from the Unseelie Court, there was nothing spiteful or uncertain about it. As I thought about our parents, a memory resurfaced. “Do you remember Dad’s cowlick? Mom was always trying to fix it. It became a habit, and she ran her hand over the back of his head every time they kissed.”
Damon smiled. The sight of it sent me soaring—it was his old smile. “He never got annoyed with her, either. He’d just patiently wait until she gave up.”
My eyes had that telltale sting in them, a warning tears weren’t far off. I blinked rapidly to force them back. Damon and I went quiet again, and the air between us was sober now. Because, while most of the memories were happy ones, the last one was inevitable. It would always be how that part of our story ended, no matter how many times we tried to rewrite it. An image flashed in my mind like a camera. My mother, sitting on the floor, slumped against the wa
ll. No. Not that one. Please don’t make me remember that one. In my desperation to think of something else, my mind latched onto another conversation I’d had with Damon.
“There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” I ventured, wary of destroying this fragile peace between us.
It was probably the uncertain note in my voice that caught his attention. Damon opened his eyes and looked at me. In that slant of moonlight, he resembled our father so strongly it was unnerving. “What is it?”
I made a vague gesture. “It’s about something you said to me at Court. ‘We just don’t belong up there. We never did.’ I never knew you felt that way. You always seemed so…”
“Human,” Damon finished for me. He tipped his head back until it rested against the edge of the headboard, then raised his eyebrows. “Was there a question somewhere in there?”
For once, he wasn’t being cruel. I hit his leg with the back of my hand. “I guess I’ve just been wondering if you still feel that way.”
Damon didn’t answer right away. He stared at the ceiling, a frown hovering around his mouth. Maybe he was remembering all over again that I had taken Jassin from him. I was silently berating myself for being the one to remind him when he finally answered. “I think about it constantly,” he said. “What we are. What I wish I could be. I’d toyed with the idea of performing the Rites of Thogon, but then I saw you force Arcaena through them and changed my mind.”
“That would do it,” I agreed. It was all-too easy to remember that night—I could still picture the line of drool coming out of Arcaena’s mouth as she bent over the flagstones. Had that been the beginning of my transformation into a creature that could kill her own mate? Or did it go further back than that? I’d killed those goblins without hesitation. Maybe that was the moment I’d begun my descent, and the fae had nothing to do with it.
Sensing my vulnerability, another memory leapt out of the darkness. I saw Collith’s unseeing eyes, staring up at a roiling sky. I relived the pang of horror when I’d realized he was dead. The hole inside me widened, and I pressed a hand against it. I wondered if I would ever wake up someday without that ache in my chest. If I would ever again feel moments of content or happiness. Right now, it was hard to remember those moments. They had happened in another lifetime, to another person.
“Do you have any scars?” Damon asked without preamble.
The question made my brows lower, but I still answered. “Yes.”
“It’s like that. The pain,” Damon clarified. He must’ve guessed at my thoughts, or read them in my eyes. “At first, it’s like you’re walking around with this gaping wound in your chest, and it seems impossible that no one else can see it. Every time they pretend not to, you want to scream. But then, if they actually do notice, you don’t even want to think about the pain, much less talk about it. Try to explain it. Nothing you do will quicken the process or dull it, either. You just have to survive moment to moment, day to day, until one morning you wake up and it hurts a little less. There are setbacks, of course—you’ll have a thought or see something that reminds you of him, and it’s like you picked at the scab. But it does eventually fade… into a scar.”
Is that what’s happening to you? I let the question go unspoken, because I didn’t need to ask it. The truth was in my brother’s expression, which now bore new lines of sorrow. As though he’d aged ten years in the two he’d been gone.
I let Damon’s words go around in my head, and they gave me a muted sense of hope. Part of me longed to tell him everything, all the secret fears hiding in the shadowy corners of my mind. But there was a bigger part of me that worried Damon would never love me again, if he knew I’d made a deal with a demon. He may not have known our parents long, or had much opportunity to learn from them, but loathing demons was in our very blood.
Eventually I just said, careful to keep these thoughts out of my voice, “I thought I was hiding it pretty well.”
“Even a blind person could see that you’re hurting, Fortuna. I just recognize the scars because we now bear the same ones.” With that, Damon stood up.
I stayed where I was. There was a string sticking out from the bedspread, and I started to tug at it. I didn’t look away from it as I spoke. “I looked for you so hard. I used to imagine a thousand different scenarios you could be in, and every single one of them was unbearable. Please know that I tried to save you from that, Damon. I did try.”
“Of course I know that.” Damon shoved his hands into his pockets, and I expected his shoulders to hunch. I waited for him to become the confused, broken person I’d met beneath the earth. Instead, he stood there, tall and pensive, just like our father. His eyes grew distant. “When no one came to save me, I was never angry or bitter. I was just afraid. I didn’t want to die, Tuna Fish.”
When that nickname came out of his mouth, I forgot my pain for the briefest of moments. A spot of warmth flickered in my chest and spread outward. “Oh my God. You did not just call me that,” I deadpanned. I reached for one of the pillows as a warning.
Damon looked at me with a confused expression. It was the same one he’d given our parents, or Dave and Maureen, when he’d wanted to convince them of his innocence. “What’s wrong, Tuna Fish?”
I threw my pillow at his head, and my brother ducked. I glimpsed another smile curving his lips just before he stepped into the hallway and closed the door.
With a smile of my own, I curled onto my side and pulled the bedspread over me. The floorboards creaked as Damon returned to his room, and the sound was oddly comforting. For the first time in weeks, the chill that was constantly in my bones had gone. My eyes fluttered. Through the wall, I heard Damon’s voice, offering gentle reassurances to his son.
And at long last, I fell asleep.
Chapter Four
I slept so hard that even Oliver couldn’t reach me.
When I finally opened my eyes, daylight shone through the window. Drowsiness still hovered around my mind like a fog, and I entertained the idea of going right back to sleep. I glanced at the alarm clock, mostly to reassure myself I could do exactly that, then I gasped and lurched upright. I was expected at the Unseelie Court in less than two hours, and it would take half that long just to get there, not to mention the time it would take getting dressed. In a flurry of bare legs and tangled hair, I wrenched the door open.
Collith stood on the other side, his hand poised to knock. He opened his mouth to say something, but I beat him to it.
“If I’m late for the Tithe, Nuvian actually might kill me!” I darted around him and dove into the bathroom, where I rummaged for my can of dry shampoo. As I reappeared in the doorway, I sprayed it around my head. I sounded breathless as I asked, “Is Lyari here yet?”
“No, but someone else stopped by earlier. One of the men that’s on the cleanup crew for your previous home.” Collith held up the ring that had been in my nightstand. I was surprised it survived the fire—I’d guessed it was made from cheap metal. “What is this?”
“It was in the goblins’ van.” I lifted one shoulder in a shrug while I ran a brush through my snarls. “It’s just an ugly ring, what’s the big deal?”
“There is power in it. Probably a spell,” Collith said, frowning. He studied the jewels more closely.
There was a subtle shift in the air, and a moment later, Lyari materialized in the hallway. She scanned me from head to toe. When she was finished, her blue eyes looked like two chips of ice. “Are you seriously still in your pajamas?” she asked flatly.
Inwardly cursing, I ran past them both and talked as I went. “Does it really matter? I’m changing when we get there, anyway. I just need to get my boots on.”
I ran for the pile of shoes in the entryway. Lyari followed on silent feet. After a moment, she opened the front door for me, her mouth tight with disapproval. I resisted the urge to annoy her and jogged down the porch steps without a word. Finn sat near the line of trees, clearly waiting for us. He was in his wolf form, and his gray fur gleamed
like metal. Once I reached him, he loped alongside me. His breath joined mine in the air.
Lyari overtook us with several long-legged strides, then walked ahead. After a few minutes, I noticed that she was leading us on a different route than usual. Smart, I thought. Unpredictability made monarchs harder to kill.
Knowing that I would be trapped beneath the ground for hours, I tried to enjoy being out here. Beams of fading sunlight reached through the bare branches overhead. Leaves rustled beneath our feet. The air smelled crisp and damp, and my nostrils flared as I inhaled. I did a double-take when I realized I was looking at a person and not a tree. Before the figure ducked out of sight, I caught a glimpse of something long and glittering. A sword. I glanced at Lyari. She must’ve felt my gaze—she was too perceptive not to—but she kept her focus on the trees around us. “Why are there Guardians hiding in the woods?” I asked bluntly.
The faerie heaved a small sigh, as if she’d been hoping to avoid this. “They’re here for your protection. Nuvian’s orders.”
“Has there been another assassination attempt?” I frowned as I searched the trees again, wondering how many there were. I didn’t like having so many fae this close to my family, this close to Granby. Even if their purpose was to guard my life, every creature of the Unseelie Court was on edge. The humans were far too fragile and oblivious—if one of them encountered the lovely, lethal allure of a faerie, I wasn’t sure they would survive.
Lyari’s expression remained neutral, which undoubtedly meant she was hiding something. “Not that I know of,” was all she said.
“So why…” I trailed off as something occurred to me. I could feel Finn’s eyes on my face, watching every reaction closely. “Hold on. Does Nuvian always have guards following me? Even when I’m home or at work?”
“You are a ruler of the Unseelie Court. How can you expect him to do otherwise?” Lyari snapped, that careful façade finally cracking.