But then I saw something.
It was so brief, I thought I’d imagined it. I blinked and rubbed my eyes, then squinted.
My heart stopped.
“Nox,” I breathed out.
In the distance, rising through flame and ash, was a pair of white, glinting antlers.
83
Devora
The theme of the next few weeks was obvious.
Regroup. Rebuild. Restore.
That looked different for everyone. For the prisoners who escaped from the Hollow, it was healing. It was discovering what trust and safety felt like after years of being denied their most basic rights. It was visits to the healing wing and having food coaxed down their throats because they were nothing more than skin and bones.
For the mutated Veridians who had been released from Scarven’s ironclad grip, it was solitude. It was figuring out how to live in the quietness of their own mind after hearinghisvoice in their heads. It was coming to grips with the fact that their magic was forever changed, and learning how to control it instead of being filled with self-loathing and shame.
For the Ashen Order, it was moving on. It was mourning our losses and memorializing the sacrifices made by so many. It was late-night meetings in the workshop where our gazes lingered on Silas’s missing space, where the circles under our eyes grew darker, but the purpose in our hearts grew stronger.
For me, it was…finding myself.
I was no longer Devora the orphan, the lady’s maid, the spy,the prisoner, the bait, the bonded. For the first time, I had the choice of the name I wanted to make for myself.
Who didIwant to be, when nothing was pulling my strings?
“Rora!” a high-pitched, irritated little voice called behind me. “Tilly stole my bear!”
I balanced atop the rolling ladder in the library and, without turning around, flicked my shadows through the air. They found the offender—a sweet six-year-old Strider named Tilly—and plucked the stuffed bear from her arms.
I glanced down the rows of bookshelves at the pouting girl. “Did you ask if Eliza would share her bear, Tilly?”
Tilly’s lower lip puckered out. “No.”
“Next time, ask first, okay?” My shadows carried the bear back to Eliza, then swiped away the tears under her eyes. I carefully descended the ladder to kneel before Tilly. “There are plenty of other toys by the window. Let’s find something you like.”
That first week after we destroyed Scarven’s property, I spent most of my time with the little children. Once a couple of them latched on, it was like I couldn’t get rid of the rest. I actually kind of enjoyed it. They all thought I was hilarious, and the little girls liked to play with my hair. Who could say no to that?
Those initial days werehardfor them. I put out fire after fire (metaphorically and literally—those Lightbender kids were menaces) and settled more fights and tantrums than I could count.
I wondered if they felt a kinship to me. I knew what it was like to seek attention in whatever way you could because you’d never been shown that you were special. I knew what it was like to test boundaries—not out of disobedience, but to see if you could still be wanted afterward. If you could still be loved.
So that’s what I did. I loved theFatesout of them.
“Devora, I could use some help,” Tessa called from the other side of the library. I made my way over to help her with a stack of books. After the battle, her shoulder did eventually heal itself, although she lost her arm for good.
She was still ourTessa. Still cracking jokes at every opportunity.But I saw it hit her sometimes. When she thought no one was looking, she would let her bubbly mask fall into something else. The loss, the suffering, the mourning. A different kind than what we felt for Silas, but grief all the same.
“Thanks.” She tossed her long braids over her shoulder. “We’ve had so many book donations lately, we’re going to have to build another library.”
“Hey, no complaints here,” I said as I scoured through the new titles.
Tessa and Kieran were focusing their efforts on expanding the Keep now that we no longer had to lay low. They rallied the nearby villages and set up several refugee camps to house the homeless, wounded, and those who just wanted to get their lives back. People had beenfloodingus with donations of all kinds—food, books, clothes, furniture. It certainly kept the two of them busy divvying it all up between the new camps.
Weallstayed busy, both out of necessity and because sometimes…if the world stilled, even just for a moment, the reminder of what we’d been through crept in.
