When I found this place, the air had been stale and unused. Months later, it remains so, as the apartment has never been a home, only a transient stop of ghosts passing through. I’ve felt like one such specter, nearly as empty as the rooms I haunt.
Without bothering to remove my boots, I stroll through the living room to the bedroom. Willa’s bedroom is as bare as the rest of the apartment—there is no art on the walls, no clothes in the drawers, no books on the shelves. The woman didn’t even own more than one pillow, her bed utilitarian and lumpy. In her determination to never go back to a prison, she’d unintentionally created one of her own.
While I’d done the same with the Lunaedon, I’d at least had the good sense to allow myself the comfort of silk sheets.
I grab the pillow, digging through the scratchy cotton case until my fingers find metal. The bracelet is cold in my palm, and when I tuck it safely into my pocket, I feel more settled than I have in months.
I tracked down Willa’s apartment for two reasons, the first being the seeping gunshot wound I’d garnered after encountering my brother and the Aeternalis. It had been a practical place to recover as Willa had done a thorough job of erasing her every connection to it. As far as anyone in this world knows, this apartment doesn’t exist.
The second reason was far more sentimental—I wanted to be somewhere Willa once was. I scaled the fire escape and climbed through the kitchen window, bleeding and desperate for some comfort of her. All I’d found was her scent long faded, and nothing here that spoke of her at all beyond a ratty duffle bag of clothes tucked into a closet and a few weapons hidden in various crevices.
Nothing in this apartment— nothing in this entire damn world—feels like Willa. It only feels empty.
So, when I turn to walk out of here for the last time, I find it as easy to leave as it had been to arrive.
Outside, it’s begun to drizzle, drenching the morose grays and browns of the city. My boots squelch unpleasantly as I trail through Willa’s neighborhood and into the next. All the time I’ve spent searching the expanse of this blasted world, the answer was only a few blocks over. If I wasn’t so jaded, I might laugh at the cruel twist of fate.
Military vehicles race past, some leaving the nearest camp to go out on patrol while others arrive with the unsound locked safely inside. While children like Zenni have begun to dream and heal, the adults have not rebounded so quickly.
It isn’t a surprise. Children have always been more resilient, more hopeful, while adults remain mired in their past.
Half-hour later, I arrive in front of a decrepit brownstone. It sits two stories high, crafted of the same square edges and nondescript brick as everything else on the mainland. The front door hangs slightly askew on the hinges, the windows at either side of it plastered over with yellowed newspaper. I step up the sagging porch stairs gingerly, my heartbeat ratcheting higher in my chest, an unfamiliar heat flooding my veins.
It takes me a protracted moment to recognize it for what it is: adrenaline. The thrill of victory now so close, I can nearly taste it. After so many months of emptiness, it is a flare in my chest as I examine the peeling red paint and half-rotted wood of the door.
The last barrier to taking back what’s mine.
Mouth dry, I raise my hand to knock.
A few seconds later, the door cracks open only wide enough to reveal a russet pair of eyes narrowed in the same shrewd suspicion as the day we met centuries ago. They run from my booted feet upward, flaring wide when they finally lock on mine.
The woman gasps, quickly shoving herself against the door in an attempt to slam it back shut. The hinges squeal, and a cruel smile draws over my face as I plant my hand on the rotting wood, forcing it open wider.
“Is that any way to greet such a dear, old friend?” I drawl. “Wendy.”
Chapter five
The winter wind whispers of change as I step out of the carriage into the shadows of the Grove, the breeze heavier against my skin than it’s been all year. It chafes uncomfortably along the back of my neck, its words scraping like sharp nails:he’s home, he’s home, he’s home.
Swallowing roughly, I brush it away and sweep aside the curtain of vines draping the borders of the tree-city.
My skin feels too tight on my bones. Maybe the lingering echo of the anxiety I siphoned from Willa, or maybe it’s the unsettled current of the wind.
Or it has nothing to do with either of those things, and more to do with the fact I’m about to barge into Adira’s home unannounced when she’s made it clear I’m not welcome.
Coward,the wind sings in my ear.
I wave it off with a scowl, ducking down the forest path toward the Nyawa. The eyes of the Silva Lucai follow me, but none step from the shadows. I speed up, slightly heartened, because at the very least, the Princess of the Wilds hasn’t ordered me attackedon site, which I’ve known her to do on several occasions. If she had, her warriors would already have me pinned to a tree by one of their spears. As natural death has made its long-awaited return to Letum, I’m thankful for Adira’s uncharacteristic restraint.
The city is quiet above me, most of the Grove-dwellers having turned in hours before, content in the safety of their treehouses. None know of the ancient danger lurking somewhere beyond their boughs—a danger whose true horrors have been muted with time. For though Dawson’s Strayed were monstrous indeed, their reign of terror was incomparable to the atrocities committed under the rule of the Aeternalis.
At nine years old, I’d been one of the oldest to come to Somnya. As an orphan in the poorest corner of London, I’d been destined for a life of inhaling fumes in a workhouse until one night, a black-haired boy appeared outside the orphanage window. Most children were lured to the land of dreams by the promise of adventure, but it was the way the boy spoke of family that enticed me.
Later, I’d learn the reason the Aeternalis preferred younger children and orphans. None of us had any idea what true family felt like, so he was able to twist it however he pleased. I’d been an easy target, a lonely boy looking to fill the gaping wound of abandonment in my heart with whatever scraps I was offered.
Centuries later, the wound remains, no matter how I’ve tried to fill it with the emotions I siphon from others.
With a sigh, I begin up the spiraling stairs of the soul-tree, attempting to corral my thoughts back to the present. As I climb higher, this proves impossible, the heavy sound of my footfalls in the silence teasing more memories to the surface. Memories of when I’d make the trip up this tree nearly every night, chest filled with hope and heart filled with a wild love that made me feel like I could float to the utmost branch.
