“Oops,” she said. “I have a habit of overreacting.”
“What do you want with me?” I demanded.
She stepped over to my side, crouching down again to wipe a few strands of loose hair from my face.
“I don’t want anything. But he does. Father. You know he does. You did a very bad thing killing Reyna.”
“I didn’t kill her.”
“No, you did worse. You let that young boy kill her.” she cupped my cheek, her touch contrastingly gentle. “Father loved her, you know.”
“He doesn’t exist,” I said, closing my eyes, trying to convince myself that I had slipped into some kind of nightmare. “And even if he does, he loves nothing.”
Perhaps I’d hit my head too hard falling out of the wagon, but Lyla wouldn’t let me wake up from it. She smacked me across the face again, that time letting her nails graze my skin and leave shallow, stinging incisions across my cheek.
“He exists!” she shouted, gripping my chin between her fingers. “I know he exists. I’ve seen him. I grew up with him.” She began squeezing her words through clenched teeth. “While you grew up on the surface with mother. In warm water. With sunlight.” She leaned in close to scream the next words at me. “You were a princess and you betrayed her!”
“Enough!” someone barked, stepping into view. I knew her. She was the Kroan from the road who had greeted us when we arrived. “We have no time for this. Dahlia is ours to kill.”
As she spoke, Lyla kept her eyes on me, but there was a glint of madness sparkling behind her black stare like each word the woman said irritated her more than the last. She slowly stood again as the woman approached behind her.
“We deserve blood for what she did to Reyna. For her betrayal. You—”
Before her last words were spoken, Lyla turned, reaching back and clutching the woman’s throat. Her eyes rounded with panic and like Lyla was made of molten metal, she began to claw at her grip. Too quickly, Lyla pulled the woman toward her. Her jaw unhinged, biting down on the side of her neck. Cool blood drenched me when she ripped a sloppy chunk from her. She didn’t have time to scream. Lyla took her head in both hands and twisted. A loud crack finished her and when her body slumped to the ground, her head was fully turned to peer at the sisters standing behind her.
The others moved as if to intervene and then stopped, keeping their distance. Lyla, unfazed by anything happening around her, slowly turned to look at me, spitting a mouthful of flesh from her mouth. Her front was drenched in fresh blood now. Blood she was licking savagely from her lips as she sank back down to crouch over me.
“You kill your own like it’s nothing, then?” I said with disgust.
“I don’t even know her name,” she said flatly.
I looked over her once. Her scars. Her black eyes. The strange, animal way she held herself.
“Who are you?”
She canted her head to the side. “You don’t sense it? Don’t you remember the way we embraced each other in mother’s belly? Or the way they tore us apart as babes? The way mother brought you up to the light and father dragged me down to the shadows of the deep?”
My heart stopped beating for a breath. “You’re lying.”
“You don’t believe that.” I watched her brows lift in the middle like she was about to weep… but then they dropped again, crowding her eyes like angry storm clouds. “Or maybe you are that stupid. Putting your trust in a boy over your family is so incredibly foolish. When word spread, I didn’t believe it myself. But do you know how loud a rumor must be to reach the trenches? How many tongues it must pass?”
My lip quivered at the memory of that night on the island. The smell of volcanic sulfur and rotting bodies was still so vivid in my lungs. The way Vidar’s father and his crew screamed as they were tortured by my mother in front of both our eyes… for days. Even now, knowing what Vidar did, I couldn’t bring myself to regret how I had a part in it. Imagining myself turning into my mother, a soulless monster who not only initiated the torture of others but enjoyed it, made the familiar sting of hate and rage gnaw at my insides. I was a cruel beast deserving of punishment, but at least my mind was my own.
Or so I wanted to believe.
Lyla was a reflection of my mother in so many ways. Just looking into her inky eyes, I could see Rayna looking back at me. Hating me. Wishing horrible things on me.
But there was another woman in there behind the dense darkness of her beastly stare.
“I. Regret. Nothing,” I said, gaping into that blackened soul of hers.
At first, she didn’t react, as if my words hadn’t reached her ears yet. But then they clicked and she blinked as if coming out of a trance.
“I know you don’t,” she said emptily. “Which is why father wants you.” Again she stood, her head tilting the other way. “Even now, I’m not good enough for him.”
“Lyla—”
“You’ll have to change, you know. You can’t go to the depths like this with these human rags on you,” she said, flicking my shirt with her toes. “And this human skin.”
