Chapter 29

 

“We’re not fighters.” Uriel closed his eyes, as if by doing so, he could somehow erase the sight of his people placed in a neat row beneath blood speckled sheets. “We came here because we’re not fighters.”

The diner had been cleaned. The floors were washed, the chairs and tables replaced, but pushed against the walls to leave the center open for the six dead and the small cluster of grieving refugee members. The Maxwell family stood away from the group in a united bunch on the opposite side, saying nothing, but their thoughts were a tangle of impatience that seemed unified. While they regretted the lives lost, all they wanted was to see their mom once more.

Liam and Magnus were missing from the room. Their spots echoed with their absence, as dark and hollow as the hole left behind by Kyaerin. Without the whole set, their group seemed small and pathetic compared to the refugee side.

Akilah was absent. She’d opted to remain upstairs with the children. Riley had been relieved, but that relief had faded when she’d joined her husband and the others for the next round of burials.

Zara stayed tucked behind the counter. She hadn’t felt the need to join the Maxwell’s, and they hadn’t asked her to. Even Riley seemed more focused on being a supportive wife to Octavian, who had slipped into Liam’s shoes as the head of the clan.

“We’re sorry for your loss,” he told the other group.

Uriel only shook his head slowly from side to side. He stood at the center of the small huddle, a rail thin man stooped at the skinny shoulders. His watery gaze stayed fixed on his fallen friends with regret.

“You were supposed to protect us,” said the woman beside him, his wife. Unlike her husband, she hadn’t glanced down once, but glowered at Octavian. “That’s your job, isn’t it? To keep us—your kind—safe?”

“We didn’t ask them to fight,” Gideon bit out, and was silenced by the warning Octavian shot him with a mere flick of his eyes.

“We were taken by surprise,” Octavian reasoned. “They fought bravely and died with honor.”

“You mean they died for a useless cause,” the woman growled. “They died for nothing.”

“Our mother died for no goddamn reason.” A vein pulsed in Gideon’s temple, thrumming with the brewing rage behind his eyes. “So, if you’re done with your goodbyes, we have better things to do.”

He stomped off before Octavian could shut him up again. Zara stepped aside when Gideon stalked past her and through the kitchen doors. They clicked noisily behind her, but she didn’t turn around.

“I apologize,” Octavian said gently. “It’s been a long day.”

The refugee crew said nothing as final goodbyes were said and the dead were carried to the graves three of the men had dug in the forest. Their little group followed each other out, a funeral procession. Zara watched them go, her heart breaking at the grief and devastation following their every step. Her gaze lingered on a thin, blonde woman clutching the hand of an elderly woman. Both women huddled together, heads bowed close, silently sobbing into bunched wads of Kleenex; one of the men being carted from the room had been the blonde’s husband, the other woman’s son. Their grief seemed to rise over all the others, a black cloud punching through the dark gray to smother the room.

Zara looked away.

She hadn’t seen their deaths. She hadn’t known their names. In all the chaos, she couldn’t even remember their faces. In a matter of an hour, they had gone from people with loved ones to unmarked graves.

“We should get ready.” Valkyrie exchanged a glance with Riley.

Without Magnus to keep her company, Zara had become a ghost. The Maxwell family passed by her, a perfectly paired group moving towards a common goal, which seemed to be getting Kyaerin ready for burial. She briefly wondered if they would notice if she didn’t attend, or would they be upset if she did? They already blamed her for the woman’s death. Attending the funeral may have sent them over the edge.

But there was nowhere else to go. She couldn’t stay in the diner forever, and she didn’t feel right skipping the ceremony—no matter how she felt about Magnus’s mother, she was still his mother and that meant something.

They were all in the parlor. The men, at least, even Liam. Riley and Valkyrie were the only women remaining, the only two allowed into Kyaerin’s bedroom where her body lay, waiting to be laid out.

Zara wasn’t invited. She was passed in the hallway as if she were nothing more than a hindering pillar some idiot had placed in the middle of the way. They parted around her and continued onward, but not before she caught their thoughts.

“Keep it together. Just keep it together. Octavian needs you.”

Riley’s thoughts were reasonable, understandable. She’d wrapped the secure blanket of denial around herself, refusing to accept the reality of Kyaerin’s situation, while remaining in the present enough to finish the task. Zara couldn’t blame her for her narrow-minded focus.

Valkyrie, on the other hand, was a cyclone of hate, resentment, and annoyance. Her mind was spilling over with her desire for Zara to disappear. Not exactly die, but leave so things could go back to normal.

Zara wondered if that were true, if things really would go back to normal if she left. Kyaerin wouldn’t return. Kyros would still have orders to take the north out if they chose the wrong side. Riley would still die if Baron was crossed. The war would still happen.

But Valkyrie didn’t see it that way. In her mind, Zara was the bringer of the seven plagues. She had dragged doom on them on the back of her skirt train. Her presence was why their side was losing. It didn’t seem to register that the Maxwell brothers had sold their chances long before Zara had even known of their existence. Someone needed to be blamed and Zara happened to have the two bloodlines the Harvester hated.

It was as simple as that.

Feeling like the unwanted termite in a wooden house, Zara slipped into the parlor and found herself a spot near the door. For whatever Kyaerin was or wasn’t, she would still pay her respects. After that, she would decide what to do. Staying wasn’t an option. She couldn’t be the unwanted phantom roaming the corridors, hoping someone would see her, to really see her and not the poisoned blood in her veins. She couldn’t wait for the moment Magnus agreed completely with Valkyrie. Him looking at her with blame and loathing would surely kill her.

The decision was made when Riley and Valkyrie pushed two cots into the room. Both were draped in clean, white linen and a beautiful woman in satin. Zara wasn’t sure how it was possible, but the gowns with their long, plaited skirts and shiny, modest tops seemed even whiter than the sheets beneath them. Both women had been cleansed. Their mop of corn silk strands were freshly washed and dried, and arranged in brilliant curls around faces quickly losing their coloring beneath the makeup. Candles were placed at their heads and feet. The flames flickered with every jostle.

Kyaerin and Imogen remained dead.

One by one, the boys rose to their feet, but not one chin lifted to match. Each face remained downcast, concealing badly the ravage of emotion cutting deep paths down flushed cheeks. Pain dripped in a steady drizzle from chins and the ends of their noses, staining fabric or plummeting like bombs to the carpet.

Liam never moved at all. He stayed in his stooped coil of agony, hunched over and tense, having aged seemingly in minutes. His long fingers tightened around the armrests of his chair, gripping them with a ferocity that bordered on savage. His blunt nails gouged into fabric and foam, sinking inward until each bump of his knuckle bulged with veins and bleached of color.

The dead were left to the opening before the hardwood rose to carpet and the sitting area formed. Valkyrie stalked with wide strides to the window and shoved it open to the frigid air. Greedy tongues of frost whipped into the room and licked at the flames, making them jump and shiver in the semi darkness. Its light danced along the glossy spirals of Kyaerin’s hair, forming a downy halo around her perfectly peaceful features. They curved along the heavy strands of her lashes, extending their shadows across the rise of her cheeks.

Imogen, next to her, appeared tiny, almost a child much too young to have met her end already. Her loss, in Zara’s opinion, was the worst. She still had so much to live for, so much she should have seen and done. Her death hit as such a waste.

“Should … should someone say something?” Riley sniffled around choked sobs. She blinked wet eyes over the others who had yet to move, her expression pleading.

No one spoke.

Riley seemed to realize they wouldn’t, because she turned to the cot and the woman, and began to shrink. Her entire body folded in on itself until she was perched on the edge with her arms looped around Kyaerin’s shoulders. Her controlled sniffles grew into heart wrenching wails that seemed much louder in the bleeding silence.

Valkyrie remained frozen, a perfect statue over the redhead’s shoulder. Every muscle in her body seemed to have been threaded through with iron. Her features were a mask of fierce determination that gave her the appearance of complete fury. Small, white hands bunched at her sides, mirroring the fierce clench of her jaw. Her blue eyes bore holes into something across the room, but never once did they dare glance at the woman a few feet away.

Zara wished she felt something. Granted, she felt sadness for the loss, for the pain that loss was causing everyone, causing Magnus, but she felt nothing close to what everyone else seemed to. Hers was a natural defense to death, because she hadn’t known Kyaerin, not the way they did. She knew the other Kyaerin and Zara hadn’t liked her. She doubted that would have changed had Kyaerin not died, but she may have managed to live with it. Not that it mattered now.

The boys shuffled forward, led by Reggie. Two by two, they took either side of either cot. Riley forced herself up. One hand scrubbed at the leaky mess dribbling down her face. The other smoothed tear droplets off Kyaerin’s cheek.

“I love you,” her inner voice wept. “I’m sorry.”

With a final kiss to both women’s cold cheeks, Riley stumbled out of the way.

No one moved to be the first to say goodbye. They remained as stiff as they had been by the sofas, four broken sentinels over the sleeping beauties.

They stayed in their mourning, in their silent tears and bowed heads. They hovered in a blurred state of smudged colors trimmed in their pain. Their stillness vibrated, each one releasing their own harmonic ping.

It took a special level of concentration Zara wasn’t fully capable of channeling to stifle the raging chaos in their minds. It rang through the marrow of their bones and frothed in an inferno of pure self-loathing in the core of their bodies. The power of it overwhelmed her senses. It cocooned the folds of her brain, embracing it in silk and barbwire. The thorns embedded into her nerve endings, sending sparks of razor sharp bursts of pain exploding behind her eyeballs.

She took a step back. The cool surface of the wall settled against her back, serving as both a prop to keep her up and a prison keeping her in. She tried to hedge towards the door, one foot over the other in an awkward stumble.

The pressure followed her into the hallway. It hounded her every step, pressing against her nerve cavity. Her head swam, distorting the dull, dusty brown of the walls. Her stomach lurched and she tasted bile. The sensation didn’t disperse until there was nothing to the square of doorway, except the hypnotic sway of firelight stretching across the threshold at a great distance. She remained there, an isolated figure against the endless gloom of the corridor. Alone once more with only her own thoughts for company.

Zara had always been alone. From her very first memory of being forced up onto the auction block, until that moment, being alone had always been a basic fact of life like eating, or sleeping. It was natural, expected. She hadn’t realized how much she’d been missing until Magnus had dragged her from that nightmare and she’d witnessed family for the first time in her life.

Yet that wasn’t the worst part. Being away from the temple and the other girls, being forced to endure things like jealousy and hate, it made her realize why the gods had kept the oracles isolated. It was always so important that they weren’t influenced by mundane emotions that could impair their visions. The girls were kept happy and blissfully ignorant, and she finally understood why.

But something told her this wouldn’t have happened to the other girls, the ones who could speak and were so pretty with their normal colored eyes and normal colored hair. They would have been welcomed into the Maxwell circle. They would have been accepted and loved, and wanted. Kyaerin wouldn’t have blamed them for not telling her about Reggie’s death, because they would have been smart enough not to mention it in the first place. She wouldn’t have silently called them evil monsters, because they would have been perfect, the perfect mate for her son. Valkyrie would have been indifferent about them the way she was with Riley. She would have tolerated their existence for the simple fact that they would have been the mate of her husband’s brother. They wouldn’t have been the product of two families she loathed beyond reason, and really, that was all that would matter to her. Magnus would have loved them, because they wouldn’t have been responsible for the death of his mother. They wouldn’t have been half demon. They wouldn’t have been in his head.

Zara was none of those things. She had failed in all aspects. She was flawed and broken, and all the things that made no sense. She had no past, no future, and now, no home, because there was nowhere where she felt less like she belonged.

A shuffle brought up her chin. Her gaze followed the worn carpet to where the group was exiting the parlor. Both doors had been opened and the boys had Kyaerin and Imogen’s cots lifted between them. Heads remained bowed with their procession towards the stairs. Riley and Valkyrie followed, but not Liam.

Zara waited until they’d descended before stepping into the room they’d vacated.

The man hadn’t moved from his armchair. He hadn’t moved at all, nor did he when Zara approached.

“I’m sorry.” She claimed no seat, nor did she get too close, because his thoughts hit her before his mouth opened.

“Did you know?”

It was the question she’d known was coming, and had been studiously dreading.

She swallowed once. “Yes.”

“How long?” Each question was directed to the patch of carpet between his feet. “How long did you know?”

Since the night she’d given herself to Magnus in hopes of ending her curse. It had been the dream that had woken her up, had proven she would never escape it. She had stood in the dark with Magnus’s breathing a soft melody in the background, studying the black void where the night spilled across the grounds far below and wondering if the fall would kill her. She’d even opened the window, tempting herself to take the leap. She might have if Magnus hadn’t stopped her.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters.” His head lifted and twisted over his shoulder to where she stood. His once warm, brown eyes were pits of black that reminded her of staring out the window that night. “It fucking matters.”

He wanted to hit her. He wanted to feel the back of his hand smack across her face. He wanted his fingers around her throat, squeezing until there was no breath left in her, but he wouldn’t. That was a promise he’d made to himself centuries ago; he would never hit a woman. And somehow, that only made Zara feel worse. Part of her wished he would, just so they could both feel better.

“How long?” he repeated.

“Four days.”

His eyes pressed closed as if her answer somehow pained him. His face lowered.

“Four days.” He made a choking sound. “I had four days to … to save her and—”

“No,” she whispered. “There was no saving her. It was her time.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Liam lunged to his feet and spun to face her in a blur. Bloodthirst roared behind his eyes.

“Says who? You? The gods? Who says it was her time? Who says I couldn’t have saved her?”

Zara said nothing. There was nothing to say, no words of comfort to give, no apology worthy of his loss.

“You let her die.” Brown eyes filled with tears and a sorrow that broke Zara’s heart. “You let the love of my life die.”

Shame and remorse bowed her head. They burned behind her eyes, blurring the floor.

“I will never forgive you for this. I will never accept you into my family.” He stalked past her towards the doors, but he didn’t pass through before hurling the final dagger into her heart. “I want you gone by the time we return from burying my wife.”

Then he was gone, taking her strength with him. The air she’d trapped in her lungs exploded in a shaky sob. In the confines of the room, in the lingering scent of candlewax, copper from the blood no one had bothered cleaning off their hands, and the poison from Kyaerin’s wounds, Zara wavered on her feet. Her limbs wobbled, a threatening shudder that nearly sent her to the floor. Her wings trembled around her shoulders, not entirely sure if they should burst open or remain embracing her. They remained, but she didn’t.

She left the parlor and made her way to her room in a blind stagger. She wasn’t sure what made her feet take her there when there was nothing there for her, but she found herself facing the bed where she’d spent that morning in Magnus’s arms. The sheets were made, their discarded clothes put away. She had tidied up while Agnus had sat on the end of the mattress, skinny legs swinging, watching Zara with a million questions dancing around inside her head. Now, there was no reason for her to be in there, except to strip down and switch her dress for her gown. It was the only possession she owned. Nothing else belonged to her, but she took the coat and boots. She made a mental note to have them returned once she was able to replace them.

With nothing left to do, Zara walked out. She followed the stairs into the back foyer and the door no one had bothered to shut. The blasting cold greeted her halfway down, forcing her to bunch the coat down over her wings and zip it up. The compression hurt and the fabric gave very little room for free movement, but it shielded her from most of the winds.

She avoided the back and made her way to the diner. She paused at the fridge and contemplated taking some food, but thought better of it; she wanted nothing from them.

On the porch, she stopped and squinted into the settling evening. She couldn’t believe so much had happened in the span of a single day. Already, the sun was beginning to set, turning the tips of the trees to gold. Part of her wished she’d left sooner. Navigating that strange world in the dark would not be simple. She hadn’t learned nearly enough to feel safe. But there was no other choice.

Swallowing the emotions, the fear, panic, and sadness threatening to take her under, she sprinted off the steps. She took the narrow path leading away from the manor. Her boots crunched loudly on the snow, masking her every ragged gasp. Her breath fanned before her in a plume of white that obscured her vision briefly before dissolving to nothing.

Where am I going?

Her mind spun with the same question on a perpetual loop. It clouded her thoughts and added fuel to her already blazing terror. It did nothing to stave off the brittle fingers of frost creeping through the thin material of her gown. Every gust blew apart her skirt at the slits, exposing bare legs to the elements. Crushed in the folds of her coat, her wings battled against fabric for freedom to expand. Their every struggle felt like she’d captured a panicked bird. She ignored them.

The winding path delved deep into the army of trees, a seemingly endless plunge into the unknown. She had a vague moment of uncertainty wondering if this really had been the same path they’d taken to that mall place. Perhaps they’d come from a different location. But she hadn’t seen another gateway. This was the only trail, except the ones along the back.

Her doubts were appeased when the track finally opened to a main road and she found herself facing the shiny, metal monsters rumbling back and forth over miles of asphalt. Their piercing lights bore into the settling dusk, blinding strobes cutting over her through the darkness. None stopped, but she hadn’t expected them to, nor had she expected the hulking beast hunched a few feet away, seemingly waiting for her.

She stared at it, at its glossy exterior and ominous presence, and took a careful step back just as the side door opened. A woman emerged from within, a pale, blonde woman Zara immediately recognized.

“You!”