Now it was spring. The whole world was waking, and they were about to start another new chapter in their new home.
“Silva?”
They’d stopped at the condo to drop off the plants purchased that morning, peeking in on the progress in the bathroom, and then quickly hurrying out of the workman’s way. Silva turned at the familiar voice, not expecting to be spotted as Aelin visited their little postage-stamp-sized backyard.
“Dynah!” Wishy-washy but unfailingly sweet Dynah from work, standing open-mouthed, at the edge of the backyard diagonal from their own.
“Silva, it’s so great to see you! Are you visiting? Wait, is — is thisyours?! Oh my stars,pleasetell me you’re moving in right here!”
Silva was surprised by how enthusiastic her old work friends seemed at her reappearance in Cambric Creek. She’d never even been especially close with Dynah, but the auburn-haired elf was flapping her arms, ecstatic at the news.
“We are! Just a few more days now. We’re moving back . . . I ran into Ris this week at the market. It's so nice seeing everyone again.”
Ithadbeen nice. Nicer, perhaps, than she’d been expecting. The reunion with her work friends wasn’t something that had figured into her plans but it was an unexpected and welcome consequence.
“Mommy, you have so many friends!” Aelin exclaimed once they’d left.
Silva grinned, glancing up into the rearview mirror. “You will too, bunny. Once you start school. And this summer! We’ll go to the pool, and maybe you can take dance classes. There aresomany kids here. You’re going to make so many friends.”
This was what they needed. A fresh start, a welcoming environment. Somewhere that Aelin’s differences wouldn’t stand out so sharply, where she would be just another child in the neighborhood.
It was a lovely day, she thought cheerfully. A lovely, perfectly normal day. A nothing-out-of-the-ordinary day, which was evidently a portent, for she never could have guessed, driving back to the Plundered Pixie that afternoon, that her whole world was about to be upended once more.
There were only a few boxes left to collect, which was what Silva was doing when it happened, right after she’d put Aelin down for a nap.
There was a commotion downstairs.
It was rare for sound from the bar to travel upstairs to them. Silva avoided the Pixie entirely; the Pixie and Clover both. The resort guests and the commune folks who lived here were not the sort she wanted her daughter interacting with, remembering those salacious, nudity-filled weekends, and she wasn’t particularly interested in being interrogated by the staff or reminiscing. She’d learned the schedules well enough to avoid detection. She and Aelin left in the mornings before anyone at the pub arrived, and by evening, they were home for the night, and she’d not needed to speak to a single person from either business, exactly how she preferred it.
The only noise they everdidhear came from the hallway. It happened sometimes — the bussers clowning around, breaking down boxes and chatting loudly, Rukh or the bar back loading in a keg delivery. Familiar sounds, weekly sounds. Nothing out ofthe ordinary sounds, and not enough to hold her attention on an average day like this.
Thiswas different.
A sharp bark of distress, a gruff voice shouting, his volume increasing as if he were being talked over and ignored. Rukh, she thought. Then the uncoordinated and unsteady thud of footsteps on the staircase.
Silva felt her heart rate pick up, panic twisting inside her. She backed down the hallway silently, reaching the doorway where her daughter slept, locking it and pulling it shut with a click. She already had her phone in hand when she heard a scrabbling outside the apartment door. The door was locked. She’d locked it herself, always did, never able to completely ignore the latent fear that someone from the pub would wander upstairs. A scraping sound from above the top of the doorjamb, something heavy falling against the door itself, her finger sliding her phone screen open, prepared to dial for help.
And then — akeysliding into the lock, the door to the apartment swinging open, a tall man staggering in through the doorway. He was covered in blood. One eye was swollen shut, the other squinting to see, likely from the dried blood and viscera that covered his face from forehead to chin, partially smeared away in spots as if he’d been sprayed with a hose. His breathing was labored, he was limping, and he was dripping blood on her clean floor.
Silva froze, her mouth opening in a silent scream, phone dropping from her hand.
It was Tate.
Part 4
All That Blooms
Silva
He was covered in blood. There was something wrong with the way he was breathing, something terribly wrong as Tate staggered across the room to her. Short, wheezing rasps, quick and pained, as if he were trapped in a room rapidly filling with water and was trying to suck in what little air he could before he drowned.
“Silva.”
His voice was a labored rasp, and somehow hestillmanaged to breathe her name like it was a prayer. She was frozen, her voice stuck. She wouldn’t have known what to say anyway.This isn’t happening. This can’t be real.
His jaw moved, hand reaching out, dropping as he winced.
It wasn’t possible. He had been gone for five years. Five years without him, her heart only just beginning to heal. Five years without him, her life was only just beginning to feel like she wasliving, living for herself, at long last, the ground under her feet solid.
