Nevermore (The Never Sky #2)

Prologue

6 years ago

Some wounds I chose, knowing they'd never heal. Listening to those tiny sobs for the hundredth time, I now understood that to be the first lesson Quill would ever teach me.

I pressed my forehead against the cool, wood door, feeling the vibrations of those heartbreaking whimpers travel through my skin. My fingers hovered over the doorknob, trembling. The knob taunted me. Just a quick turn, and I could end this torment. End the suffering that sliced straight to my fucking soul. The whimpers of an orphaned child were a song that should have never been written. But it was a song I knew by heart long before this little girl stumbled into my arms. It was a song I thought maybe I wrote myself when I was ten years old.

I couldn’t open that damn door. I knew better. I knew if I did, I’d be opening a wound that would never, ever heal. The moment I laid eyes on that tiny, tear-stained face, I’d be lost. My resolve would crumble.

I’d sworn to myself, to the universe, that I wouldn’t let myself love her. If I did, he’d find out. And he’d use her like a weapon against me. She didn’t deserve that. Distance was safer for both of us. Ezra and I had both known that when we’d stood in that room the day the Maestro had tried to use her to trap me into a bargain. The day he’d traced his disgusting fingers over my scar and smiled.

Yet here I was, my heart fracturing with each muffled cry that seeped through the cracks of the door. I could almost see her in my mind. Tiny, huddled in the corner of her new room in our house, her little arms wrapped around her knees, face buried in the folds of the oversized t-shirt she wore. Her dark curls would be wild, sticking to her tear-streaked cheeks. Those big blue eyes would end me.

My hand tightened on the doorknob. One twist, one push, and everything would change. I’d be responsible for this tiny, fragile life. I’d have to mend scraped knees, chase away nightmares, teach her how to tie her shoes and read bedtime stories. I’d have to love her fiercely and unconditionally. There would be no going back for me.

But she deserved that, didn’t she? One person that would end the world for her.

The sobs grew louder, and suddenly I remembered the crushing weight of being utterly, completely alone. No one to dry my tears, to hold me close and whisper that everything would be okay. No one to chase away the monsters that lurked in the shadows, both real and imagined. No one to care if I lived or died, if I disappeared into the cracks of the city never to be seen again.

If I was smart, and I’d survived this long by being ruthlessly practical, I’d remember she had others. Thea, with her quick smile. Elowen’s steady presence. Even Orin’s fierce loyalty. But they couldn’t teach her what I knew: how to recognize the Maestro’s traps, how to read the shadows before they swallowed you whole. They couldn’t understand the particular shade of loneliness that colored both our abandoned souls.

They weren’t enough. It had to be me. She needed me.

So, I opened the fucking door.

She didn’t flinch when I sat on the edge of her bed, didn’t retreat into herself like most broken things do. Instead, those blue eyes found mine and held on, patient beyond her three years. She knew, somehow, that I needed time. Maybe she did too.

We sat in that loaded silence, two fragments of the same shattered mirror, reflecting each other’s wounds. I wasn’t supposed to have children. She wasn’t supposed to be anything more than leverage, a pretty piece on the Maestro’s chessboard. But sitting there, watching her tiny fists grip the blanket as she waited, I knew we were about to rewrite all those “supposed tos.”

“You’re lonely, aren’t you?” I whispered, the words falling like tears between us. And in that moment, I felt it, not just her loneliness, but the way it tangled with my own, forming something new. Something unbreakable.