by Riley LaShea
She had asked before, though, after she discovered the unnerving reality in the cave below. Haydn had already refused her once. And her response had proved what was acceptable to deraphs diverged a great deal from what was acceptable to humans. She had no reason to think Haydn would do anything but declare Brooks had a right to Kiara.
They clearly all felt they had a right to them, or they wouldn’t be there.
Delaney had no doubt in Haydn’s vow to protect them from the threats outside. It was in the deraphs’ own interests, after all. When it came to the threats within, though, which felt more pressing every day, it occurred to her she would have to find a way to protect Kiara on her own.
“Kiara.” Of all the conversations she never hoped to have, Delaney couldn’t have imagined having this one with someone else’s kid would become so imperative.
“What?” Kiara’s voice sounded so small and vulnerable from the dim glow, Delaney shuddered at the thought of the kind of thing that could happen to her in a place filled with those powerful and unrepentant.
“I don’t want you to play with Brooks anymore, okay?”
“Brooks is my friend.” Kiara was instantly on guard.
“I know.” Realizing she needed to tread carefully, Delaney tried to imagine what she, herself, might have felt at Kiara’s age. As a teenager, her infatuation with Haydn would have convinced her she had just found the love of her life, regardless of Haydn’s true nature and her own abduction. As an adult, the feelings were easier to categorize - surrender, lust, obsession - even if difficult to accept. For Kiara, those words were future concepts, and Delaney didn’t know how she could even begin to process the overwhelming sensations she must be feeling. She imagined they snowballed into an avalanche of want, though Kiara couldn’t say what she wanted or begin to understand what Brooks might try to take from her.
“I know he’s your friend.” The lie tasted bitter on Delaney’s tongue as she reached across the bed, rubbing her fingers against the soft hairs on Kiara’s arm. “But sometimes our friends try to talk us into things that aren’t very good for us. So, when Brooks comes to play with you…” Realizing her first declaration was too absolute, like asking an addict to quit cold turkey when they didn’t realize they had an addiction, she knew she had to provide some leeway. Even if it made her sick. “Just please make sure I’m there, or Vicar Bryce is there.”
“Brooks doesn’t like Vicar Bryce,” Kiara said. “He thinks he’s stupid.”
“Well, that isn’t very nice of Brooks, is it?” Delaney returned.
When Kiara said nothing, though, in Vicar Bryce’s defense, she knew Brooks had already insinuated himself that deeply into her mind.
“Kiara?” She swallowed. She had known from the moment she saw her crying in the corner that, even if they got out alive, Kiara would never get out of this unscathed. None of them would, but only one of them was at an age that each experience would have a profound impact on who she might become. “Not every touch is a good touch. Do you understand that?”
“When it hurts, it’s a bad touch.” Kiara age-appropriately oversimplified, proving, thankfully, that she still considered Delaney a friend at least when she snuggled up against her side.
“It doesn’t always hurt,” Delaney whispered against soft red curls, but, head lulling against her arm, she knew Kiara was already asleep.
24
Delaney never deluded herself into thinking they could, or would, give Brooks pause in whatever it was he was thinking, but she did hold out hope she had gotten through to Kiara.
Waking a few days after their run-in in the living room to the bed rapidly cooling beside her, though, she could feel it was much too early to rise. Her internal clock, acclimated to the weeks without sunrises and sunsets, put the time well before dawn, and her legs felt numb as she dropped them over the edge of the bed.
“Kiara?” Delaney called into the vacancy of the room, though she knew Kiara wasn’t close enough to hear. There were mornings Kiara was up before her and let Delaney sleep, but she never went far. Only when someone else was awake too would she meander from the bedroom and into the parlor or the kitchen, but that sensation of quiet that dwelled before a household woke pronounced throughout the floor, Delaney knew she was the only one down there not sleeping.
“Kiara?” Rushing from the bed, she tried to reason where Kiara might have gone on her own, but the simple reality that there was no safe place for Kiara to go thudded through Delaney as she forwent the rest of her clothes, rushing into the hall in only the t-shirt Haydn had given her.
“Kiara?” By the time she got to the hallway, some of the others had been roused by her cries. Nearly bumping into Jemma as she came through the door of her room, Delaney glanced into her concerned gaze before rushing down the hall to Vicar Bryce’s door.
“Did she come in here?” she asked as he opened it.
“No.” He immediately comprehended the cause for alarm, and, coming out into the hallway, Vicar Bryce broke off down the hall toward the kitchen as Delaney took the stairs two at a time. Turning away from the feel of Haydn when she reached the third floor, she felt, as much as heard, the party behind the same door as before. Just outside it, she caught a glimpse of someone on his knees before Salem, turning her head before she saw too much.
“Kiara?” There was no time to worry about interrupting the deraphs, or whoever might be up there with them.
Assuming Brooks wasn’t making whatever he was doing with Kiara a public event, she turned away from the party, down the dark hallway, throwing open every closed door as she went. All rooms dark before it, Delaney startled when she rounded the only open door with light pouring forth and came face to face with Haydn.
Braced on her hands over a book that lay open on a table, Haydn’s eyes were already on the doorway as Delaney stepped inside, having undoubtedly felt her coming from the moment she woke.
“Have you seen her?” Delaney knew Haydn had to have heard her calls.
“No. Why?” she returned. “What’s wrong?”
“I just need to find her.” Not needing or wanting to be reasoned with, to be told Brooks was just doing what deraphs did, Delaney turned back down the hallway, double-checking the empty rooms and passing between the deraphs in the house, who had come out of the woodwork to look rather displeased at her disruption of their night.
Bypassing the second floor on her way back down, certain it had been thoroughly searched, she intended to keep going to the boat dock, trusting panic would give her the strength she needed to push through the door at the bottom of the stairs. As she got to the entry hall, though, its towering door already standing wide, Delaney rushed out it, discovering Vicar Bryce and the others watching the standoff already in progress.
“Where were you planning to go?”
“Brooks is teaching me to fish,” Kiara said.
“I’m teaching her to fish.” Standing at the edge of the rocky shelf, Brooks carried Kiara on his back, slight grin on his face as if he had no reason to worry, and Delaney wondered how Haydn had beaten her downstairs.
“In the middle of the night?” Haydn asked.
“Well, it is our time,” Brooks responded.
“Put her down,” Haydn said, and Delaney lurched at the proximity of Kiara to the rocky drop-off as Brooks heeded the order.
“Kiara, come here.”
Haydn’s next command not as readily met, Brooks coaxed Kiara in Haydn’s direction, and, turning her head just enough, Haydn seemed to know Delaney was there. Rushing forward, Delaney picked Kiara up, backing to Haydn’s side when she had her safe in her arms.
“Brooks, you’ve been with us a long time,” Haydn uttered.
“A hundred and forty years,” Brooks said.
“A hundred and forty years,” Haydn repeated. “You have five minutes to be in open water.”
Not sure which of them was more surprised by the declaration - Brooks or her - Delaney was jostled from Haydn’s side as a shoulder hit her own.<
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“Haydn.” Gijon stood suddenly between with them. “Why?”
“He knows why,” Haydn said, and Delaney watched shock continue to drag down Brooks’ schoolboy face.
“I haven’t done anything,” he argued.
“I believe you,” Haydn returned, and it was a comfort to hear. “I wish it could be enough. Unfortunately, there are some things where you just can’t wait and see. If you go now, you should be able to clear the island before sunrise.”
“There must be some other way to handle this,” Gijon appealed softly to Haydn.
“If you don’t like my rules, you are welcome to go with him,” she stated, and, where Brooks just looked disbelieving, Gijon appeared almost wounded.
Eyes shifting from Haydn to Brooks, and back again, he fell back with the others, leaving Brooks out on his cliff alone.
“So, what?” No one else coming forward to defend him, Brooks’ disbelief warped to anger. “Are you doing this for her?”
Eyes cutting her way, Delaney felt utterly exposed beneath the gazes of humans and deraphs alike.
“You have four minutes,” Haydn said. “This is your one chance to remain free.”
“Fine.” Something about that statement put the fear of God, or Haydn, in him, and Brooks’ eyes locked on Kiara. “But she comes with me. She’s my innocent.”
“And we will keep her safe, I assure you,” Haydn stated, before Delaney had to say anything. “Now, please leave my island. And I think you know what will happen if you betray us.”
“I would never.” Brooks looked to Gijon again, but when neither Gijon, nor anyone else, offered even a farewell, he turned and leapt from the ledge.
“No, Brooks! No!” Kiara thrashed in Delaney’s arms, and it was all Delaney could do to hold on as small hands and feet struck her in their attempts to get away. Tears streaming down her face, they were proof Kiara would have gone anywhere with Brooks, would have left her family again if he asked her to. Would have done anything Brooks asked her to.
“Brooks!” Kiara cried. “Brooks!”
To Delaney’s great relief, he ignored her cries, and, after watching the still cavern for a moment, silent but for Kiara’s sobs, Haydn turned around. Eyes lingering on Kiara’s shaking form for a moment, they rose at last to Delaney’s, and Delaney trembled at her own gratitude.
“He’s gone now.”
“You’re mean.” The statement swiveled Kiara in Delaney’s arms. “I hate you.”
Gaze falling to her once more, Haydn could have easily changed Kiara’s feelings. All she had to do was step forward and touch her, hold her gaze, and Kiara would become instantly enamored, fall for her, and forget about Brooks, at least for the next few minutes.
When Haydn didn’t, just stepping around them instead, close enough for Delaney to feel her like a touch, and went back inside, it was Delaney who experienced the shift. Haydn did nothing, and, still, Delaney’s thoughts began to jumble, to lose clarity, to lose categorization. Which meant they were vulnerable the entire time, her beliefs in what was right and what was wrong never as fixed as she wanted to think.
Back in their bedroom, Kiara cried - big, violent howls that came from deep within - and, as thankful as she was that Brooks was gone, Delaney felt almost bad for wanting it when it clearly ripped Kiara’s heart in two.
“He was my friend,” Kiara said.
“I know,” Delaney whispered, and she knew how much Kiara believed it. With him gone, Kiara could always believe it, could always think Brooks was ripped from her without reason, that he would never do her any harm.
“Haydn’s mean.”
“Maybe she isn’t.” Delaney’s gaze drifted into the shadows of their room as her hand moved in soft circles against Kiara’s back. “Sometimes, it’s hard to tell who the real bad guys are.”
It was no kind of bedtime story for a little girl, but the utterance turned Kiara’s cries to whimpers, until at last she drifted off, and, left to the solitude of the room, Delaney was forced to deliberate on her own words.
Downstairs, the deraphs kept a cage filled with people. Upstairs, though, they were treated well. The hunters, in their objective to destroy the deraphs, were perfectly willing to kill them all. They had killed already, according to Haydn. There were too many facts Delaney didn’t want to let in, because, when she put them all together, the entire world seemed to garble beyond her comprehension. Nothing was as it claimed to be.
Except for one thing. Haydn. Since the moment Delaney felt her in the dark recesses of the abbey, Haydn had been constant. With each thing she discovered about her, her own perceptions and opinions had changed, but Haydn hadn’t. She had been unapologetically honest from the start.
Feeling Kiara grow heavier, with the full weight of sleep, against her, Delaney realized there was one more thing that hadn’t changed. Thoughts and opinions ebbing and flowing, her yearning hadn’t. As she glanced toward the door in the low light of the room, it still rolled slow and thick inside of her. Whenever she stopped fighting, the universe itself seemed to pull her in Haydn’s direction. Her desire, it seemed, was unconditional.
Knowing she should try to block it out, to raise the same fortifications she’d been putting up since she woke next to Haydn in the boat, Delaney rose from the bed, sending several backward glances to the open door as she moved down the hall to Vicar Bryce’s room.
“Is everything okay?” He looked utterly frazzled by her knock. “Kiara?”
“She’s fine,” Delaney said. Though, it was disingenuous. Kiara was more fine than she would have been if Brooks had been allowed to stay, or to take her off somewhere, but inside she was wrecked, and there was no reason to think that would change by morning. “Could you stay with her?”
“Yes, of course.” Vicar Bryce shuffled out his door, and, glancing over at him as they moved down the hall, Delaney noticed his disturbed state of mind remained.
“Are you okay?” she asked him.
“Yes, I’m…” About to deny any distress, to be strong for them as Delaney was sure he was for the parishioners of his church, Vicar Bryce at last let down the façade. “I just want to go home,” he said. “I just want us all to go home.”
Any other time, Delaney would have been able to commiserate on the deepest level. In the moment, unsure what she wanted most, she just reached out for his arm, trying to ground them both back in reality.
“Where are you going?” he asked when they reached the door of the bedroom, and Delaney glanced beyond him to where Kiara slept in the pile of covers.
“I’m going to talk to Haydn.”
Not sure what she saw in his steady gaze as she looked back to him, Delaney watched Vicar Bryce nod, as if he suspected as much, before he stepped into the room.
Knowing she could, and should, change her mind again, in the still of the hallway, she felt the persistent tug in Haydn’s direction, and let temptation pull her up the stairs to the third floor.
Recognizing it as what it was - the moment ‘against her will’ became her will - Delaney found herself, once again, standing outside the library. Hovered just beyond its open door, she responded to Haydn as she always responded to her, with everything she had. Trying to talk herself out of, and simultaneously into, what she was about to do, she was incapable of either, so she remained where she was, paused at the threshold, loitering in limbo.
25
There was far too much at stake for them to be warring within, and Haydn couldn’t imagine a worse time to discover things she didn’t want to know about her clan. Especially this thing, which, even curtailed, left her feeling ill and was too much a reminder of past resentments.
Large families carried too many complications.
She needed to figure out a means of satisfying Lilith. She needed to figure out how to tend to the situation of their innocents, so there would be no more potential incidents.
It wasn’t all that surprising, Brooks’ ill-considered intentions toward Kiara. He was far from the only o
ne amongst them taking an overzealous interest in the person who harbored his lost virtue, and Haydn couldn’t say she didn’t empathize with his struggle. Craving humans was the core of their existence, and, yet, not even a thousand years could prepare her for the hunger she felt around Delaney.
A hellish torture, having her so close with no innate ability to suppress the type of urges she evoked, the bestial impulses Haydn learned to control ages ago fought for dominance. The thinking part of her wanted Delaney to come to her willingly, to submit because she wanted her. Each time Delaney didn’t, though, the instinctive part reminded Haydn she had the power to persuade, or even take by force, if she wanted.
For a thousand years, she had managed to rise above such natural tendencies, at least to a level where she could retain some regard for those beneath her in the grand scheme. Like nomadic tribes that believed in the sacredness of all living things, who performed rituals and prayed over their kills before ripping them apart for food and cover. Delaney’s presence evoking both the best and worst in her, Haydn couldn’t help but wonder, each time the beast in her rattled its cage, if it was exactly what Lilith wanted.
Given the trajectory of her thoughts, when she felt Delaney getting closer, Haydn wasn’t sure if it was a welcome or unwelcome sensation. Of course, it might be of no real concern either way. Standing just outside the door, Delaney, it seemed, was content to simply distract without interaction.
Intoxicating combination of lavender, almond and earth fading on her skin, the steady cadence of her heart faster and harder than normal, Haydn couldn’t stop the warping of her needs, from the need to keep Delaney at a distance to the need for her to be closer.
“Are you going to come in?” she asked, knowing the question would bring relief one way or another. Delaney would either enter or she would flee. Either way, Haydn could get through the conversation, and the struggle, and on with her research, worthless as it may be.