Ivy #2
For one fragile second, the certainty in her face wavers. Her eyes go soft and lost, and she looks down at her own hands like she's not sure whose they are anymore.
"Mikhail used to bring me dandelions," she whispers with a fond little smile. "From the yard. Whole handfuls of them. Weeds, if they were purple. He didn't know the difference."
My throat closes.
"He knows the difference now," Valek says gently, nodding to the flowers on her dresser. "He asked us to bring you purple ones because he remembers."
She blinks.
And then the softness slams shut like a storm door.
"It remembers," she hisses. "Because it dug through my son's memories after it ate him. That's how they trick people. That's how it tricked you, you pale freak."
Valek tilts his head. "Pale freak."
"Look at you." Her lip curls as her eyes rake over him. "White hair. Dead eyes. You're not right either. I can see it. There's nothing behind your face. You're another one of them. Another thing wearing skin."
Valek's smile twitches. "My, you're a delight."
"Get out."
"It's okay. We're going," I say, standing, because I've been done for about five sentences now.
"Take your monsters with you," Claire says to me, pulling the blanket up to her chin. "Both of them. And tell the wraith—" her voice cracks, high and thin— "tell it I know. I've always known. It doesn't matter if it tries to hide the truth."
Valek rises from his crouch, slow and unhurried.
He looks at her for a long moment, and I feel his cold consideration again through the bond.
My hand finds his sleeve.
"Val."
His eyes don't leave Claire.
Then he reaches out. She flinches, but all he does is turn the vase of lilacs so the darker petals she hates face her instead of the wall.
"There," he says. "The wrong purple. Since you prefer honesty."
He picks up the old wilted bouquet Wraith left last time, tucks it carefully under his arm, and walks to the door.
"Goodbye, Claire," I say quietly.
She doesn't answer. She's staring at the flowers, muttering something to herself, her fingers picking at the blanket.
I follow Valek out.
The door clicks shut behind us and I lean against the hallway wall, breathing like I just ran a mile. A care aide pushes a cart past us, gives us a polite nod, keeps going.
"You okay?" I manage.
"Perfectly fine," Valek says.
"Val."
He heads down the hall, tapping my hand on his way by so I follow him. As if there was any chance I was going back into Claire's room.
Neither of us says anything until we're outside. The cherry trees along the walkway are partially bare, their leaves fluttering free in the wind.
Valek stops walking, pushing his white hair back from his face. "She kept Wraith in a basement, and he still buys her flowers in her favorite color."
"I know." My eyes start burning. "For one second, Val… for one second she remembered the dandelions and I thought—"
"I know."
"I thought maybe."
"Ivy…" He turns to face me fully. "Sometimes there is no maybe. Sometimes there's nothing. Wraith's mother is never going to look at him and see her son. Not for more than a few seconds at a time, and those seconds of wondering if she wants him will hurt him more than anything else."
"It's not fair," I mumble, embarrassed I'm crying, wiping my eyes with the heel of my hand. "None of it's fair."
"No. It isn't. But he doesn't visit because he wants something. He visits because he's good, and he doesn't care about hurting himself." He glances back at the building, then down at the wilted flowers under his arm. "There is nothing for him but pain here."
"He shouldn't come here anymore," I murmur, hugging myself against the wind picking up. "We should do this for him. He has a pack now. There's no reason he should have to do it alone."
Valek nods, his lips curving. "Whiskey should do it. He'll bring her the perfect purple every week, and he'll forget every ugly thing she says by the time he hits the parking lot. She can't hurt Whiskey. Nothing can." He thinks for a second. "Should we tell him she likes Venus flytraps best?"
Despite everything, I manage a soft laugh. "Wraith would say no."
"We'll tell him only what he needs to know," Valek murmurs, plucking a leaf from my hair. "That she's safe, and cared for, and that she remembered the dandelions and purple weeds for exactly three seconds."
I wipe my eyes one more time and look up at him.
His face is impassive. He always looks like this when he's locking everything down. The split lip and the yellowed bruise on his cheekbone are the only evidence anything has touched him recently, inside or out.
"What about you?" I ask him.
"What about me?"
"Are you okay?"
"I'm fine, Ivy."
I step in front of him, blocking his path to the parking lot. He could step around me. Hell, he could pick me up and move me if he wanted to. He stops instead, looking down at me.
"What she said was fucked up," I say. "And it wasn't true."
His jaw flexes once. "It is true, Ivy."
"It isn't."
The wilted bouquet is still tucked under his arm, dried petals crumbling against his sleeve. He adjusts his grip on it, but I think it's more to have something to do with his hands than because it needs adjusting.
"Sit down," I say gently.
"I don't need to sit down."
"Okay. Well, I do, because you and Wraith rearranged my insides last night, and you can stand there looking pretty while I talk, if you want."
I brush off the leaves and drop onto the bench beside the walkway.
Valek keeps standing for another few seconds. His silver eyes narrow. The wind pushes his hair across his face and he shoves it back, frustrated.
But he sits beside me, one leg crossed over the other, the dead flowers balanced across his knee.
I wait, watching the trees. A bird lands on the bench between us, hops around, watching us, decides we're boring, and flits away.
"The staff at the children's home used to say the same thing," Valek says. "That I was empty and wrong. That something was missing inside me." He picks a dried petal off the bouquet and rolls it between his finger and thumb until it disintegrates. "They weren't incorrect."
The sleeve of his button-down pulls at the motion, a few cigarette burns showing at the cuff.
"You told me about the children's home," I say carefully. "But you never talk about before that."
"There's nothing to talk about."
"Because you don't remember, or because you don't want to?"
A leaf skitters across the walkway between our feet. He watches it boredly, brushing the petal dust off his fingers.
"A shoebox," he says finally. "There was a shoebox, on the steps of a church in January. That's where I start. That's all there is."
"How old were you?"
"Days. A week, perhaps."
The wind pushes through the cherry trees above us, freeing more curling leaves from the branches.
He uncrosses his legs, sets the dead bouquet on the bench beside him, and leans forward with his elbows on his knees.
"I don't have a Claire to visit. I don't have a mother who screams when she sees me, or a mother who locked me in a basement, or a mother who forgets.
In some ways, I'm lucky. All I know is she didn't want me. "
I press my knee against his.
He doesn't pull away.
"I want you," I tell him softly.
His lips curve slightly. "I suppose."
"Yeah." I bump his boot with mine. "And you're perfect for me. Do you have any idea how overwhelming Whiskey's exuberant rabid golden retriever energy would be in the bond if it weren't for you toning him down?"
He turns his head, grinning now. "Doesn't Plague take care of that already?"
"Oh, no. Not at all. Plague riles him up. They're probably the only two alphas who can manage to fight through a fucking bond."
That makes him chuckle a little as he stands, facing me. He stoops down, way down, and takes my face in his rough hands, tilting mine up to his. He gazes at me for a second, so longingly I can barely breathe.
"Val…"
He presses his cool lips against mine, and whatever I was about to say evaporates from my head completely.
"And you are perfect for me, too," he whispers. "Moya malenkaya omega."