My lips trembled, tears streaming down my cheeks.
“I brought you right to your uncle, the man I’d taken your father to before. I told him only what you needed to know. I reinforced the wards around the campus and added a few more in the surrounding areas. I burnt that dingy apartment to the ground. And then I came back and I—” he closed his eyes. “My father was waiting. Alban and the other council members were there. Ariadne was distraught, half naked and wailing. They asked me what I did and I told them I killed you.”
My whole body shook with sobs.
“I told them I killed you so they wouldn’t look for you, so she wouldn’t find you. And they believed it because it was exactly what they had already convinced themselves I was capable of, anyway. She started screaming. She fell to the floor, clinging to her father. Alban snapped at my father about doing something with me. So he banished me. And I disappeared before I could hear anymore.”
In the silence that followed the culmination of Lark’s story, I wept. I turned into Cass and let the tears flow freely as my mind reeled to understand every version of this tale that I had been told.
“Ren,” Lark tried and I did not have to target his soul to identify every emotion in his broken voice.
“Give her time,” Cass said, looking up at him from over my shoulder.
So he did.
Chapter twenty-seven
A Wound That Heals
LarkandRookleftthe very next morning. He had looked at me in a way that made my heart go out to him. I knew he wanted to talk to me, to ask questions, but I wasn’t ready to answer them and he knew that. So he took Rook and they left to continue their hunt for the gorgon with the key to Hellscape and Cass stayed home with me. But that monstrous orange apartment was too small to hold everything I was feeling so I took my chance to get out of it once a day when the market opened and Cass had made a list of what we would need to nourish ourselves for the next few hours.
On the first day, I had only retrieved a quarter of the list before all the stares had gotten to me and I had rushed back to the apartment in a full-blown panic attack leaving Cass to finish the list herself. It was the gray, I knew it. I had opted for the gray color scheme that signaled I did not belong to any court. Ever since Lark had told me what had really happened with my mother, I couldn’t stomach the thought of wearing brown. But the gray stuck out even more in a sea of orange and that first day I had let that sense of unbelonging get to me.
The second day I returned, it was with my head held high. I was determined to finish the list, to not let the stares get to me. They did but I finished the list anyway and rushed home as soon as I did.
By now, three days since I’d begun, I was browsing the market stalls at my own pace, feeling the discomfort of the stares and letting it pass on through me like a warm breeze on a summer day. I enjoyed the few precious moments of the day in which I escaped that apartment. It wasn’t Cass. She was doing well to treat me normally, not to hover over me too much or give me too many pitying glances. It was the feeling of freedom, no matter how small.
I was aware now, more than ever before, of the threats I faced. Both from my mother and from external sources as well. The Court of Friends had tried to abduct me. The King of the Bone Court had held me hostage for weeks. I needed to be careful about where I went and who I spoke to. But I also needed to get out into the world. I needed not to feel like I was a captive anymore. I needed to make my own decisions.
I didn’t necessarily want to go to the market. I just wanted to be able to say I was going to the market and have no one stop me. And Cass hadn’t. I was grateful to her for that, more grateful than she would ever know.
We were unpacking the produce that I had purchased late that morning when the door to the apartment burst open and Lark came through carrying an injured Rook. Cass threw down the vegetables and ran to assist him as he lowered Rook onto the couch and the warrior let out a yelp of pain.
“I’ve summoned a healer we can trust,” Lark was saying, rapidly, as he pulled away from Rook who was bleeding from a long gash in his left leg. Cass had fashioned a strip of fabric from thin air and was replacing the blood-soaked tourniquet Lark had placed around Rook’s thigh with a new one of her own.
“What happened?” Cass snapped, not daring to look away from the wound as she pulled the knot tight.
“We found the gorgon,” Lark said.
Cass’ eyes snapped up to her brother’s but Lark just kept his jaw clenched, gaze firmly on his injured friend. Rook was pale, his breaths becoming shallower.
“Move,” I snapped, stepping forward to examine the wound. I wasn’t an expert by any means but I had spent a few years following around a med student I had a bit of a crush on in my early twenties and had learned proper field protocol from the soldiers I spent time with at the camps under the rifts.
“A healer is coming,” Lark repeated.
“We have to stop the bleeding or he won’t make it that long,” I snapped. I jerked my head in the direction of the fireplace behind us. “Light that fire. Cass, get me the cooking weight from the kitchen.”
Sensing where I was going with this, Rook began to whimper and writhe beneath my fingers.
“Stop that or you might puncture an artery,” I snapped and he fell still. “Cass!”
She was at my side a moment later, handing me the flat metal press used to weigh down meats and vegetables in grilling. Lark snapped his fingers and flames roared to life in the grate. I turned and set the press inside, letting it heat.
“Rook,” I said then, turning my attention back to the patient. “I need you to take some deep breaths for me, okay? Can you do that? Close your eyes and focus on my words. Breathe in for five seconds, okay? One, two, three, four, five. Good. Now breathe out for five. One, two, three, four—”
I reached for the press and grabbed it from the fire, pinching his wound closed with my fingers and pushing the hot press against his skin a moment later. He howled in agony, kicking his uninjured leg wildly. Cass muttered a curse and turned away as the stench of burning flesh filled the room.
“Okay,” I said, examining my work. “One more time, okay? Just one more. Breathe in for me. One, two, three—”
