“Hyperion,” I say.
Mom sits up, rubbing her wrists.“Did you bondhimnow?You just can’t help yourself.”
You’re okay?Hyperion sounds a little panicked.Phileas just found someone else—once we confirm he’s the only one, I’m coming.Stay put.
I’m fine.There’s no one here.I drop down next to her, sitting on the edge of the picnic table.Our distraction worked—no one’s here.“Mom, we need to get out of here.”
She nods.“Give me one minute to catch my breath.Lying like that—I lost the circulation in my wrists.”
“But you’ll come with us, right?”
Mom eyes my wings.“You’ve changed even more than before.”
“I have, yeah.”I grit my teeth.“Do you really hate them?Because you helped me escape with them before.”
Mom’s frown is deep.Even her brow furrows.“I owe you an apology, Liz.You know, I buried my guilt deep.”
“Your guilt?”
More soldiers here,Hyperion says.A lot more.
Here too,Azar says.Ice spears, bullets, ballista.
Hold tight, Liz.We’ll tell you when we’re clear.Hyperion doesn’t sound upset.He sounds...excited.
I can hear it all behind us—the bullets, and the roar of Hyperion’s fire.
“I—when I was pregnant with you, I went to the doctor.”She starts breathing faster.“That’s when I found out that you had died.”
“Excuse me?”I lean closer.“I must’ve misheard you.”
Mom touches the sword I’m holding in my hand, her fingertips tracing the lines of the hilt—almost pure gold.“You died.The ultrasound showed no heartbeat, but I couldn’t take it.They wanted to do something called a D&C.Do you know what that is?”
I have no idea what to say.“Clearly I wasn’t dead.”
“They told me you were.They wanted to do a dilation and curettage, where they scrape the inside of my uterus until I’ve expelled the incompatible fetus.”Her eyes are not focused.“That’s what they called you, the incompatible fetus.”
“Mom, I’m fine.”
Her head snaps toward mine.“You weren’t fine, but I had a friend.”She narrows her eyes.“She said she had a way to fix it.She knew a woman—so I didn’t tell your dad what the doctor said.I went to see this woman instead, and she promised she could fix it—she could restart your heart.You’d be fine.”
“This sounds insane, Mom.”
“She told me you’d be marked—bought and paid for, if I did this.I could have your childhood, but eventually, they’d come for you.One day, the woman who saved you would come to collect payment for what she’d done.”Mom’s crying now.“And she did.”She chokes.“She—um, she had a fake leg.”
I threw that woman into the same volcano Hyperion threw me into.Unlike me, she never flew back out.
“You were supposed to be a sacrifice.They came too early—far earlier than I was ready to accept—but even as a child, you didn’t make it easy.”She looks into my eyes.“It’s my fault you are this way.You should never have been born.”
Hyperion bursts through the building behind me, roaring.He’s coming for us, so nothing she says can scare me.She may be insane, or maybe she did let someone perform some kind of dark magic ritual on me, but I’m still me.I’m not some kind of creature.
I’m not the monster she accused me of being.
I’m just Liz.
“You can’t make me hate myself anymore,” I say.“But you know what?I shouldn’t have come.”At least she answered my question—she’s closer to the woman who called me a monster than the one who helped me escape.
She grabs the hilt of my sword.“Now,” she hisses, pulling the sword free.
