I turned around and found someone stood a few feet away from me. She looked worse for wear, but nowhere near as pained as I’d last seen her.
Verena hobbled a step closer, brows soft with a sorrowful expression. “Let me see the boy.”
I thought she meant me for a second, until she barged past me and fell at Kai’s free side. No one seemed to care that alittle black-furred kitten was sat on his belly, hissing at them. Apparently we were all used to strange goings-on these days.
Romy looked up at Verena, eyes glistening wet. “He is asthmatic.”
I would’ve pumped a fist, but it wasn’t the right time or place. I’d keep my silent gloating to myself.
“And yet he is still breathing,” Verena replied, “without medication which is a good sign. It is going to take some time to calm him down and he will be fine.”
“Umm,” I said, lifting a finger to interrupt. “We actually don’t have time. Did you hear the bit I said about the zombies?”
Both women shot me a look so identical and sudden, the blood drained from my face.
No. There was no way. I blinked, wanting to rub my fists in my eyes just to see if it was the panic that made me see it, or the trick of the light. By the time I did, they were focused back on Kai.
“Hold him close to you,” Verena said to Romy. “It’s calming him down. See. Relax him enough that the tension in his body abates, and he can breathe easily again.”
Romy nodded, trembling hands running over Kai’s face, leaving track marks in the mud that covered him. She shushed him, rocking slightly, whispering words that my ears couldn’t pick up.
Verena gave them space, using a gravestone to get standing again, a wince creasing across her face. When she looked back at me, it was with trepidation.
I got it. After all, she was a Hunter. A witch, but a Hunter too. And yet, there was something in my gut telling me that she wasn’t a threat.
Perhaps it was because Romy was still alive, which meant in the time they’d been together during the trial, nothing amiss had happened.
Or, and more obvious as an answer, perhaps it was because Verena looked so much like Romy. Almost identical.
The eyes. The complexion. The way her emotions read out in every crease and line across her face.
But no. There was no way.
“Who are?—”
Verena lifted a finger to her lips and shook her head, all in a sense of saying, ‘not now’.
Emon coiled tighter around my forearm, little scales pinching my skin.“Now this is thrilling. If I had sleeves to roll up for dramatic effect, I would.”
My adrenaline left me in a rush. I turned to the side, doubled over, and emptied every item of food I’d eaten last atop an unmarked grave.
Every. Last. Thing.
29
ARWYN
Pity soured my soul as I watched my father fall to his knees, clutching a box of matchsticks, laughing through a river of tears that cascaded down his face. He was many things, but seeing him peel apart at the seams, each thread breaking, I got a flash of a very twisted person.
Deranged.
“That isn’t possible,” I said. “Eleanor Letcombe died a long time ago.”
“Many years of loving the woman who was a monster in sheep’s wool.”
I clenched my fists tighter, nails burying into my hardened palms. “You don’t have the capability of love.”
He looked up at me through wet-soaked lashes. “Are you trying to convince yourself, or me, son?”
