Chapter 83 Devora
Devora
The theme of the next few weeks was obvious.
Regroup. Rebuild. Restore.
That looked different for everyone. For the prisoners who escaped from the Hollow, it was healing.
It was discovering what trust and safety felt like after years of being denied their most basic rights.
It was visits to the healing wing and having food coaxed down their throats because they were nothing more than skin and bones.
For the mutated Veridians who had been released from Scarven’s ironclad grip, it was solitude.
It was figuring out how to live in the quietness of their own mind after hearing his voice in their heads.
It was coming to grips with the fact that their magic was forever changed, and learning how to control it instead of being filled with self-loathing and shame.
For the Ashen Order, it was moving on. It was mourning our losses and memorializing the sacrifices made by so many.
It was late-night meetings in the workshop where our gazes lingered on Silas’s missing space, where the circles under our eyes grew darker, but the purpose in our hearts grew stronger.
For me, it was…finding myself.
I was no longer Devora the orphan, the lady’s maid, the spy, the prisoner, the bait, the bonded. For the first time, I had the choice of the name I wanted to make for myself.
Who did I want to be, when nothing was pulling my strings?
“Rora!” a high-pitched, irritated little voice called behind me. “Tilly stole my bear!”
I balanced atop the rolling ladder in the library and, without turning around, flicked my shadows through the air. They found the offender—a sweet six-year-old Strider named Tilly—and plucked the stuffed bear from her arms.
I glanced down the rows of bookshelves at the pouting girl. “Did you ask if Eliza would share her bear, Tilly?”
Tilly’s lower lip puckered out. “No.”
“Next time, ask first, okay?” My shadows carried the bear back to Eliza, then swiped away the tears under her eyes. I carefully descended the ladder to kneel before Tilly. “There are plenty of other toys by the window. Let’s find something you like.”
That first week after we destroyed Scarven’s property, I spent most of my time with the little children.
Once a couple of them latched on, it was like I couldn’t get rid of the rest. I actually kind of enjoyed it.
They all thought I was hilarious, and the little girls liked to play with my hair. Who could say no to that?
Those initial days were hard for them. I put out fire after fire (metaphorically and literally—those Lightbender kids were menaces) and settled more fights and tantrums than I could count.
I wondered if they felt a kinship to me.
I knew what it was like to seek attention in whatever way you could because you’d never been shown that you were special.
I knew what it was like to test boundaries—not out of disobedience, but to see if you could still be wanted afterward. If you could still be loved.
So that’s what I did. I loved the Fates out of them.
“Devora, I could use some help,” Tessa called from the other side of the library. I made my way over to help her with a stack of books. After the battle, her shoulder did eventually heal itself, although she lost her arm for good.
She was still our Tessa. Still cracking jokes at every opportunity.
But I saw it hit her sometimes. When she thought no one was looking, she would let her bubbly mask fall into something else.
The loss, the suffering, the mourning. A different kind than what we felt for Silas, but grief all the same.
“Thanks.” She tossed her long braids over her shoulder. “We’ve had so many book donations lately, we’re going to have to build another library.”
“Hey, no complaints here,” I said as I scoured through the new titles.
Tessa and Kieran were focusing their efforts on expanding the Keep now that we no longer had to lay low.
They rallied the nearby villages and set up several refugee camps to house the homeless, wounded, and those who just wanted to get their lives back.
People had been flooding us with donations of all kinds—food, books, clothes, furniture.
It certainly kept the two of them busy divvying it all up between the new camps.
We all stayed busy, both out of necessity and because sometimes…if the world stilled, even just for a moment, the reminder of what we’d been through crept in.
I still had visions of that night. I would watch Scarven stab Nox with my dagger, then the moments right before he almost slit his throat. I would see Nox running toward his death as Kieran held me back. I could feel the scratchiness of my throat as I screamed, like claws scraping down the inside.
I looked around the library, my gaze snagging on familiar navy blue at the entrance. Nox leaned against the doorframe with a smile as he watched me. My chest always eased when I saw him. He grounded me in those moments when the memories took over, reminding me that this was real. He was real.
We had survived. And we could finally let ourselves be happy. We could let ourselves dream of a future not cloaked by fear or consequences.
But with the light came brief spots of shadows. Not everyone was healing in the same way we were.
“Ready for dinner?” he asked.
I nodded and gathered the children into single-file lines so we could make our way to the dining hall. Tessa led the group while Nox and I took up the rear. “Is Vera coming?” I asked quietly.
He shook his head, and his jaw twitched.
I sighed. We’d tried to get her to eat meals with us, but she preferred to be alone most of the time.
Nox was concerned about her. None of us knew what Vera was going through.
None of the others had been as close to Scarven, had been under his mind control for as long, nor had taken as many lives at his command.
A vast majority of the refugees bonded over their trauma and found ways to help each other through it all.
But Vera kept distancing herself. Nox was the only person she felt even remotely comfortable with.
I thought something was going on between her and Everett, but he quickly disappeared to complete a task for Nox a couple days after the battle, so I didn’t get the chance to snoop my way to the bottom of things.
I rubbed a hand along Nox’s arm. “Maybe next time,” I said reassuringly. “It only takes one time.”
He gave me a soft smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes.
Every day, we felt her drifting further and further away.
And every day, I saw it weighing on Nox like an anchor.
He was a fixer. He liked to take what was broken and make it whole again.
It was why I thought he loved carving his wooden figurines so much.
It was why he offered to take responsibility for me all those months ago instead of letting Clarissa do it, and why he formed an entire rebellion to save the weak and lost.
But he couldn’t fix his sister, and that was killing him.
Little did I know, my dragon had a plan.
Ten days after we destroyed Scarven’s mansion, Everett returned to the Keep. And he wasn’t alone.