“She’s hurt,” Dori said.
“I’ll take care of her,” Drayven replied.
That seemed to satisfy the Unwoven, and they backed off, allowing me to leave with the barghest, but not before I caught the malicious glint in Sterling’s eye.
I gave him the finger with my good hand, then followed Drayven toward the gardens and through the gates, where he finally spun to face me, his attention dropping to my neck.
“How bad is it?” he asked. He gently nudged my chin up to examine my throat. “You’re bruised. There’ll be internal swelling.” His jaw flexed. “That bastard.”
“I’m fine,” my voice came out a raspy croak.
“No, you’re not. But you’ll live.” His shoulders dropped a little. “I’ve never seen Sterling behave like that toward a student before, so I need to know, whatisgoing on between you two?”
“Nothing.”
“You told me he was a murderer. He obviously hurt someone you care about, but what didyoudo tohim?”
Heat gathered behind my eyes, and I gritted my teeth. “What didIdo tohim?Me? A big fat nothing!” My throat pinched, warning me that I was hurt, in pain, even though I couldn’t feel it. “And I regret thatnothingevery fucking day.”
I’d been a child. A nobody, with no contacts, no power, and nothing to do but cry until my heart broke.
His shoulders slumped, and his tone softened. “Tell me what happened.” I didn’t want to talk about it, so I shook my head. “Listen to me. Sterling is a ruthless killer, and if he feels that you’ve wronged him, then you’re in danger. I need to understand why he would want to hurt you.”
It’s not your fault. It was an accident. It wasn’t your fault.But in the grand scheme of things, how much did the little details matter?
“Ana? Please tell me,” Drayven said. “What did you do?”
I closed my eyes and took a breath, speaking the words I’d only ever said in my head. “I killed his sister.”
CHAPTER 21
Having been given centuries to wrestle control of the threat, we must now ask ourselves why the Imperium Alius refuses to allow members of the Custodes Hominum to survey their work. One must wonder what it is they are hiding…
CUSTODES HOMINUM ADDRESS, 285 A.O.
We walked into the gardens and sat on the first bench we found. Telling this story hadn’t been on my agenda, but now that Drayven had asked, I realized how much Ineededto tell it.
Too long had it lived in my mind, unsaid, unspoken. Maybe giving it voice would make the soul-ache smaller somehow.
It was worth a try. My throat was tight, and I knew talking would only aggravate the swelling, so I kept my voice to a soft whisper. “Annabeth Damascus came to live in my village the summer I turned twelve. Although I didn’t know who she was at first. She was just a girl who’d come to stay in the cottage at the end of the lane—a rental that had sat empty all year.
“I was excited—she was someone new, someone who didn’t go to my school, didn’t know who I was. To her, I was just Ana. Not Onyx. She told me she was there with an aunt but nothing more than that, and it honestly didn’t matter that she didn’t speak about her home life, because that meant I didn’t have to speak about mine. We became friends, and that summer was the best of my life.”
For a moment, I was back there, in a simpler time when the summer stretched ahead of me, joyous and filled with endless possibility. For a moment, an echo of that joy swelled inside me. I allowed it to expand, breathing it in and closing my eyes to savor it before letting it go.
“We played in the forest and by the river almost every day, meeting at noon and staying out till dusk. There was a small, abandoned atrium close to the river. It had a dodgy door that tended to stick, but after we’d gotten trapped in there once, and had to use both our strength to get out, we’d kept it wedged open. The glass was some special, unbreakable material. We’d tried. That atrium became our haven. We planted flowers and herbs, spending hours in the warmth of the sun. Annabeth loved sunbathing. She always said she had to make the most of it while she could, that her turning could happen any day. I knew what she was—a pureblood vampire. That her summer in Pembrooke Village was her respite before her turning. I knew it, but I…” I lost my words for a moment, faced with the horror of what I was about to reveal.
“Go on,” Drayven coaxed gently.
He had such kind eyes. Eyes that held no judgment. Not yet anyway. “I genuinely believed that I’d found a friend, that maybe I could tell her the truth of who I really was someday. But that choice was taken from me before summer’s end. That fateful day, we met at the atrium as planned, but she was angry. So fucking angry, and I knew—before she said a word, I knew. It was in her eyes, you know? The look of disdain. The one I’d been subjected to all my life. She’d found out who I was. Someone had told her about the Onyx girl. The taint to be avoided. She called me a liar and a cheat, screaming that I’d tricked her into being my friend. How her father would be furious if he discovered the awful association. That I could have ruined her reputation.
“I screamed back, asking how, after everything we’d been through that summer, she could just turn her back on our friendship? She said she could never be friends with an Onyx. A murderous bloodline. I slammed the atrium doors in her face and ran.
“I locked myself in my room and cried for hours until exhaustion pulled me under. When I woke, the sun was setting, and there was an awful feeling in the pit of my belly, then I realized why. I’d slammed the door. The door that tended to stick.” A lump formed in my throat, and I swallowed past it to continue. “I ran back as fast as I could. The door was still shut. I couldn’t get it open. I cried out her name but got no answer, so I rounded the building, peering through the glass into the moonlit interior and…I saw her.” The image flared in my mind now, as vivid as the day I’d seen it. “She was crouched on the ground, her arms up over her head. As if she’d been trying to protect herself…to shield herself. She was charred and blackened.” I choked on a sob. “She was…dead.”
“Her turning happened…”
I nodded, blinking back the heat gathering behind my eyes. “It happened while she was trapped beneath the sun, with no way to escape. I left her there to die. She burned to a crisp.” I squeezed my eyes shut, dislodging tears. “I killed her.”
