Chapter 34
They stayed quiet until most of the candles burned out. Bundled under the covers, with Harper curled into a ball and her face hidden against Maya’s chest.
Maya would have let it last for days. Nothing could have pulled her from this position, not when Harper’s breathing would start trembling every few minutes as she started weeping again.
Maya ran her hand through Harper’s bright pink hair. Down her back. Traced the curve of her spine, the lines of her ribs. Felt the steady beat of her heart. Even when she’d been sobbing so hard she could barely breathe, her heart had stayed calm. She’d felt safe.
That might be the only reason she had cried at all. The only time Maya had seen tears in Harper’s eyes was when she saw Evie in the Lotus. When something she’d considered fact was proven inaccurate.
She had fought this feeling. Had fought it so much that it looked like it caused physical pain. That she’d even let it occur… Whatever she needed now, Maya would give it without hesitation.
“I don’t understand how that keeps happening,” Harper mumbled.
“How what keeps happening?”
“You stealing my voice. It’s weird.”
“It’s not unheard of. Some people go nonverbal when in subspace.”
“Oh. That’s what that is.” Harper let out a deep sigh. It still trembled a little. “I like my other theory more. I thought you just had magic powers.”
Maya laughed, and though she couldn’t be certain, she had a feeling Harper smiled at the noise.
If she did, it was short-lived. She curled in on herself, crying again.
Maya kissed the side of her head. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t want to tell you.”
“Why? Worried you’ll scare me off?”
Harper’s hitched breathing turned into a snort.
“Yeah. Kind of.” She leaned away enough that her face was visible, showing red, puffy eyes. “It’s what I usually do. Most people can’t handle me, and part of me is worried that you’re in that group. That you’ll get tired of me, like everyone else does.”
“I could never get tired of you. I love that you keep me on my toes. How quick you are. How much you like getting in trouble. If you stopped doing those things, you wouldn’t be you.
I can’t think of anything more tragic than that.
” Maya brushed a lock of hair away from Harper’s face.
“You can show me your demons. Or keep them to yourself. Either way, I’m not going anywhere. ”
Harper’s eyes glinted. She blinked a few times, keeping the tears from falling.
She gestured at the tally marks near her elbow. “Do you remember asking about these?”
Maya nodded. There might not be a deeper meaning behind all of Harper’s tattoos, but that one had seemed special from the moment Maya saw it.
“I told you I left home, like you did, but that isn’t the whole truth.
When I was in my teens, I hung out with the wrong crowd.
They partied a lot. Drank a lot. Did drugs a lot.
Pills mostly, but harder stuff, too. For my final year of high school, I basically only went home when I needed to sleep off a hangover. ”
Her gaze went distant. “I don’t even remember my eighteenth birthday.
I just remember getting home the day after.
Being tired. And trying to get into the house, and finding that my key didn’t work.
A few boxes had been placed outside, with all my stuff in them, along with an envelope of cash.
For an apartment deposit.” She lowered her voice. “I blew through it in a week.”
Shame twisted her features. Her body tensed as though readying itself for a blow.
“Then what happened?” Maya asked, making Harper’s eyes flick to hers. Suspicious first. Then surprised. And finally, sorrowful.
“A lot of things. Things I’m not proud of.
The year after leaving home is kind of blurry, given that I was high or drunk most of the time.
” She smiled weakly. “Then Trish found me. She helped me get back on my feet. Her and Nell and Evie, too. If it wasn’t for them, I don’t think I would have survived. ”
She ran a finger over the tallies. All six lines.
“I get a new line every year. Every year I’ve been sober.
” Her bottom lip trembled. “I didn’t get it done until after Evie disappeared.
I’d been clean for four years at that point, but her going missing…
It messed me up. Made me think my parents were dealing with something similar, since I had vanished, too.
So I decided to go home. Just to visit. Let them know I was okay.
When I got to the house, my mom was the only one there.
She let me in, made me some tea, and told me I had to drink it fast because…
because my dad was picking up my sister from the airport, and it would be best if I wasn’t there when they got back. ”
Tears shined in her eyes. “I left right after. Bought a cheap bottle of vodka that I planned on emptying right after exiting the store. And then I would have gone looking for something even more mind-numbing afterwards.”
“But you didn’t?”
“I called Trish instead. She and Nell came as quickly as they could. If they hadn’t, I would have slipped right back into that life.
It felt like I didn’t have a reason to try anymore.
I needed one. Even if it was something as basic as not breaking a streak.
” She scoffed and looked away. “It sounds stupid when I say it out loud.”
Maya pushed at Harper’s chin, tilting her head up so their eyes met.
She really was so small. A fact that was easy to forget, but which only made the anger burn hotter in Maya’s chest.
Harper might be an adult now and a tough one at that, but she hadn’t always been. This still-painful wound was inflicted against someone with no defenses in place. Against a child.
Some people had no business being parents.
“It doesn’t sound stupid. But please, stop using that word to describe yourself. It doesn’t fit.”
“Sorry. Bad habit.” Harper smiled. A genuine smile, even though it looked tired.
Then her gaze fell. Not far. More redirected than averted.
She caressed Maya’s jaw. The side of her neck. Maya only realized what she was doing when Harper trailed her fingers over her shoulder, her ribs, and then around to her back.
“You have demons of your own.” Harper’s finger brushed over the scar between her shoulder blades. “You don’t owe me anything. Just because I shared doesn’t mean you have to do the same, but… you can handle me. I’m sure I can handle you.”
“My story isn’t pleasant. It might scare you. I might.”
“I think you’re more scared of yourself than I could ever be.”
Those words hurt. Burned. Seared, like silver and flame. Though parts of her nature had become easier to deal with—practical, even—her past wasn’t.
It was more than dark. It was a pit of despair, one she tumbled into every time she closed her eyes. Every moment of rest was ruined by it, as her memories tore it into bloody pieces.
Until Harper. After meeting her, the nightmares had quieted. When sleeping with this woman in her arms, they had transformed into dreams.
“It started a year and a half ago,” Maya said. “That’s when the Court of Night took me. Gave me my tattoo.”
Harper tensed, and Maya took her hand, holding it tight.
“I didn’t go through the same things Evie did. The vampire who captured me saw his humans more like pets than anything else. He wanted us to do tricks. To entertain him. He told me once that us being scared out of our minds would ruin it for him.”
She let out a bitter laugh. “I came to miss him, in a way. He had spending problems and needed money fast, so he sold most of his menagerie. Some to neighboring Night Courts and others, like me, he gave to a warlock. A necromancer, who had a theory that he could create a vampire and bind it to him. We were his test subjects.”
She’d gotten lucky. Unlike most of the others, she wasn’t awake for any of his preliminary experiments. She just woke up afterwards, nauseous from whatever he’d injected her with. Or aching from the samples he’d taken.
The only thing she was awake for was when he’d killed her. She’d been the last to go, huddled in a dark cell as the others were taken away one by one. And didn’t come back.
It took days. Days when she’d barely slept, barely eaten. Days when the only sounds she heard were crying, begging, and screaming.
When it was her turn, she’d been so exhausted that she couldn’t even struggle as she was dragged into his workshop. As he strapped her to a stained surgical table and cut her wrists, throat, and thighs, watching as she bled out.
She was relieved at first. She’d assumed blood loss would be a decent way to go. It seemed almost peaceful. Like you just went to sleep.
That wasn’t reality. She’d gotten so dizzy that she’d nearly thrown up. Her breathing had turned rapid as her lungs fought for oxygen, but were running out of blood to supply it. Doom and panic flooded her mind, with her being too weak to even scream.
Killing her hadn’t been easy or swift. It was a terrifying, slow ordeal that her body fought against every step of the way.
The last thing she felt before finally losing consciousness was that mad warlock stabbing two syringes into her heart—one holding a translucent liquid, the other a swirling, golden mixture.
She’d woken up in a grave. Had dug herself out as her mouth and lungs filled with soil. And the moment her fingers broke free into the cold night air, he had been waiting for her.
“He didn’t even intend for me to be a daywalker,” Maya whispered.
“I was an accident. One he couldn’t replicate, no matter how much he tried.
The brand between my shoulders bound me to him.
All he had to do was flick his wrist, and I would have no choice but to obey his commands. Kill anyone he wanted.”