Chapter 21
Déraper
CLAIRE
Ifroze, heart racing, as I turned toward the orange halo of light.
In the far corner of the chamber was a cluster of shapes huddled together.
Our group took a step forward, extending the light until it illuminated children.
Little knees were tucked to chests. Their red hair tangled. Their clothes hung off small frames.
They were watching us like we were monsters.
My heart broke for them. They were alone in this dark place. The oldest girl appeared to be no more than sixteen. Tansy’s fingers slipped into mine, and she squeezed hard. Her hand was ice-cold. I squeezed back harder.
“Stay with Miss Donadieu,” Tyson told Okeri. She positioned herself in front of Tansy and me with her sword drawn.
I waved off his concern. “I don’t need to be protected from children. They’re scared. That’s all.”
“My uncle would disagree,” he shot back. Tyson sheathed his sword and crouched beside the children.
Devlinn followed after him, already unstrapping the waterskin from his belt. “Here,” he said softly. “Drink. You must be thirsty.”
The children flinched, and none reached for the water. Their eyes kept darting past him. Past Tyson. Like they were watching the dark for signs of life. Perhaps their parents or whoever was caring for them.
The oldest girl stood, a wand in one hand. It wasn’t the wand that scared me. But her eyes. There was something in them that didn’t belong to a child. Like someone had reached inside her and scooped her childhood clean out.
I knew that look, and the realization hit so hard it almost knocked the breath out of me.
It was the look formed by long nights alone, staring at the ceiling and wondering if the gods heard your prayers or if your voice just disappeared somewhere between your mouth and the sky.
The kind of nights where you whispered please.
Then why. Then nothing at all. Because eventually you stopped asking for things to be different and started assuming you must deserve it.
It was the look you wore after being hit so many times they didn’t even have to raise their hand anymore to make you flinch.
Your body just knew what to expect. It was the look that drew my least favorite question, “What’s the matter with you?
” Like they had no responsibility for your inability to smile.
And worst of all, it was the look you wore when you started wondering if the world might be better off without you.
When you caught yourself imagining how quiet everything would be if you just…
weren’t here. If no one had to trip over you anymore.
If no one had to sigh when you walked into a room.
But you were too scared to do anything about it.
Or maybe—on the better days—too hopeful.
Too stubbornly, stupidly hopeful that something might change.
My throat tightened until swallowing hurt.
I didn’t see this girl as a threat. I saw a girl who had been raised on hate, the way other children were raised on bread and milk.
Fed it every day until it was all she knew.
Hate for herself. Hate for anyone who was different.
Hate for the people who made her mother so angry.
You blamed them for every beating you took.
You hated so deeply that it became your armor. Your air.
And at the bottom of all her hate, I saw myself.
Her fingers were wrapped so tight around her wand that her knuckles had gone white, the tendons in her wrist standing out like cords pulled too thin.
She wasn’t pointing it because she wanted to hurt us.
She was pointing it because she didn’t believe she had another choice.
This must’ve been what I looked like to Shreesa the day she came to help me, and I threatened her with a fire poker.
But Shreesa hadn’t attacked me. She’d tried to help me see the truth.
And Bastien. Had this been how he’d seen me? Was this the look I’d given him when he’d shoved me against that bathhouse and I told him I blamed him for my awful, miserable life?
Had I looked like this? Ready to burn down the one person trying to help me?
“Get away!” she shouted.
I didn’t hear a threat. I heard a cry for help.
Tansy and I pushed past Okeri. She tried to block us with one arm, muttering something under her breath, but it was half-hearted. Even she knew two armed men looming over terrified children wasn’t going to help anything.
Tyson stayed crouched, hands open, voice gentle. “Easy now. I’m not going to hurt you.” He gestured to the smaller children. “Something tells me you’re not playing hide-and-seek down here. Are you?”
Despite being a vampire, Tyson wasn’t much older than the girl. But his easy smile did nothing to charm her. Nor the other children.
“It’s alright. We’re like you,” I reassured her, removing the hood of my cloak so that my red hair spilled over my shoulder. I wanted them to see that we weren’t soldiers or hunters.
They looked at me. Then at Tansy. And her moon-white braids and dark skin, and recoiled. I took Tansy’s hand as a show of goodwill. “We’re from the Unified Territories. Witches get along there.” A lie. But it wasn’t all-out warfare. “Just tell us what you’re hiding from, and we can protect you.”
I could tell by the way she held her ground when the others cowered that she was fierce. “We’re hidin’ from her kind! The wolves.”
Her kind. The words were spat like a curse, and I saw Tansy flinch as if struck, her shoulders curling in on themselves as she quickly turned away. A hot surge of anger and helplessness twisted in my chest. Devlinn rushed over and put his arm around her shoulders.
“They just keep doing horrible things,” Tansy muttered. “And when I think they can’t do anything worse, they find a shovel and keep digging. Now they’re attacking children. Children.”
“Look at me. Look at me,” Devlinn said, taking her face between his hands. “This is why we decided to stay. Because we don’t agree with this, and we’re not just going to let them speak for everybody. Are we? We’re not going to let them keep doing this.”
I burned with the need to say something, anything that would lessen her pain, but the words stuck behind my teeth.
I set my hand on Tansy’s shoulder, feeling her pain more deeply than I could explain.
Tyson gave the girl one of his winning smiles. “We’re here to take care of those mean old wolves so you won’t have to hide from them anymore. So how about you put your wand down and let us help you?”
The girl just shook her head. “They said the same thing. That we would be safe if we just listened. But it was all lies.”
The word came out as a hiss. I knew her fear was fracturing into something more dangerous, but I didn’t want to believe she was too far gone. “We can help find your parents,” I said, trying to keep a hopeful note in my voice. “Are they down here too?”
Her wand drifted toward Tansy. “The moon witches took ‘em.” Red light flashed in her eyes. “They’re all tricksters!”
She swished her wand to cast the spell. “No!” Devlinn shouted, pushing Tansy behind him, protecting her with his body.
I grabbed her wrist and lifted her wand toward the ceiling. The spell shot from the tip and ricocheted off the ceiling, nearly missing Devlinn by an inch.
Tyson went to grab her, but magick flared under my skin, making my hand glow with light, and I shoved him back ten feet in the air like he was nothing more than a feather.
People started shouting, but I stayed locked on the girl.
Her lip was trembling. Tears were filling her eyes. She didn’t want to hurt anyone, but she was afraid. It was a fear I knew all too well. One that had been put there by stories of evil Dark Witches and merciless vampires. One that had been solidified by the blank eyes of dead relatives.
“I know you’re afraid,” I said in as calm a voice as I could muster. “But we are here to help you. I swear it.”
She drew in a shaky breath, and a single tear rolled down her cheek. “They killed my Ma. In cold blood. Right after they,” her voice broke off. She didn’t need to say the rest. I understood.
I wanted to reach out to her. To hold her. To rock her in my arms. But she wasn’t ready for that kind of love. It was foreign. So instead, I validated her pain. “I’m so sorry. That should never have happened. Your Ma didn’t deserve that, and neither did you.”
Someone shouted at me, but I didn’t move. I had to make her see. If I could understand, she could too.
“Please, Mellie,” said the little girl crouched beside her. She couldn’t have been more than eight. “I want to go home.”
“We can’t go home!” she shouted back. “There is no home.”
When she looked back at me, the hurt had disappeared, and all that was left was anger.
Tears formed in my own eyes. It was like looking into a mirror.
There was nothing Shreesa could’ve said to change my mind when I was hiding under that chair.
There was nothing Bastien could’ve said to convince me that he wasn’t evil.
It was in his actions. And Tansy’s. And Devlinn’s. Day by day. It was seeing kindness from people I’d been told were evil.
There was only one thing I could do to show her that we weren’t bad. And that was to ignore everyone who was trying to tell me to move and show her that I wasn’t afraid.
She pointed her wand at the center of my chest, and the pressure dropped again.
A warm, radiant light sparked in my chest that felt different from the insistent scratching of dark magick.
It expanded until it touched the girl. Her eyes widened, as if she were being reminded of all the beautiful hopes and dreams she held.
I pushed that light harder, expanding it out, knowing I could change her.
I could make her see if she’d only reconnect with hope instead of despair, just like I’d done.
But the harder I pushed, the more she pushed back, until the light rebounded and I stumbled backward. All the hope and light disappeared, leaving me with the empty sense that nothing I could do would save her. At least, not until she was ready.
The moment before she fired the spell stretched on and on and on. I braced for death in the same way I waited for the back of Mama’s hand, wondering if everything would become quiet.