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I snapped around.
They stood in the doorway, half-huddled behind the frame butthereall the same – Valter and Editta, his arm around her shoulders, her hands clutched over her mouth as if to hold back the screams bubbling up from her throat. There was no one else to be seen behind them. The two of them must have stayed behind as the others ran for their lives – morbid curiosity? Or, much more far-fetched …
They might even have caredwhether I made it out alive.
It was strange how flatly that thought arrived in my mind, sparking not the faintest glimmer of hope or elation.
They suddenly seemed so bewilderinglysmall, standing there pale and frightened – so utterly feeble that my mind scrambledto match the sight of them to the parents living in my memories, the people I’d believed I knew for twenty years. So much had changed since I’d last seen them.Ihad changed, most of all, yet only now did I realise that my memories hadn’t changed with me – that my mind had somehow frozen the two of them in time as pivotal and powerful figures, those phantom voices that could make or break my world.
And only now, looking at them in their melodramatic white cloaks, at Valter’s thinning hair and Editta’s time-worn features, did I realise these two had never even managed to break the chains of their own fears.
Let alone anyone’s world.
Let aloneme.
And it was miraculous how easy it was to open my mouth, suddenly, without any fear of saying the wrong thing or looking the wrong way – how effortlessly I smiled at them, bloody and grimy and wounded. ‘Still here?’
They flinched.
Makingmethe frightening one between the three of us, all of a sudden.
Although Creon probably didn’t help, prowling into the edge of my sight in the same moment – Creon, who they’d last seen burning their village to the ground, threatening them to draw out the secrets they’d kept from me all my life. I glanced at him. The slight narrowing of his eyes said all I needed to know – that he remembered that same night, vividly so, and a single word from my lips would be all he needed to make that point in several elaborate and very unpleasant ways.
I gave the smallest headshake.
A small, tired smile crept around his lips.
‘Em …’ Editta started in the doorway, her voice choked with sobs. ‘Em, we didn’t want … We never should have …’
I was so bloody sick of it before she’d even figured out the sentence.
So many times I’d been unable to stop hoping. To stop imagining that one day they might just change their minds and show up at my doorstep to tell me that they’d been wrong, I was right, and I’d done all I could to be the daughter they’d wanted – and yet now that Ihadproven them wrong, now that Ihadshown them I would never have turned against them even at the risk of my own life …
I found I could no longer give a damn.
All I wanted now was to bedonewith this.
‘It’s fine.’ The most bewildering part of it was that it was true – that I no longer even cared about revenge, about anger, about being right. What did it matter? They would spend the rest of their mortal lives well-aware of their mistakes, and I would live my infinite years and never hear their voices again. ‘It’s all fine. Hope the shop is doing well. Hope you’ve found a good place to live here.’
They blinked owlishly at me.
‘Go find the others and go home,’ I added, flatly. ‘I don’t have anything else to say to you.’
They seemed to shrink a few inches. Valter’s hand – pale fingers, stained with paint – squeezed his wife’s shoulder tightly as he started, ‘But Em—’
Creon scarcely raised his knife – little more than a twitch of his fingers.
They ran like the wind.
I might have laughed, if there had been any laughter left within me – might have cried, too, if there had been any tears left to shed. But all that remained in their wake was an emptiness – or rather the hollow sensation of emotions too exhausted to be felt – and once again that smothering silencesettled over us as the clatter of their footsteps died away, emptier now, and somehow lighter.
Somehow … freer.
‘If either of us has any more parents to deal with,’ Creon said, his voice raw and hollow despite the spark of humour below the surface, ‘I suggest we ask them to wait until tomorrow, don’t you think?’
That broke the spell.
Half a chuckle escaped me as I staggered towards him, over the bone-strewn floor, past my sword and the blood and the corpses; another one as I threw myself into his embrace and wrapped my arms around his slender waist, fingers digging into the muscular planes of his back. His heart thudded against my cheek. His arms and wings enfolded me as he let out a single long, shuddering breath, relaxing the weight of his head against mine – the unyielding warrior, shedding his armour at last.
