By the time we return to the house, it’s past midnight, and I find myself leaning against the doorway, watching Lauren as she studies her new surroundings. Darian offered her one of the spare rooms in the same wing as mine so we could be close. The sentiment makes me feel things I shouldn’t, and I can almost hear the ice cracking as it melts around my heart.
Lauren stares at the countless scattered cushions on the queen-sized bed for long moments before she hauls her suitcase onto the sheet and zips it open with her back to me, carefully folding and arranging her meager belongings in a pile. “Mr. Visage let me keep a few things he bought for me while I was his Pawn. It’s not much but…”
She’s right. It’s not. I make a mental note to take her shopping first thing in the morning if I can sweet talk Darian into letting us leave the property.
“I hope you will be comfortable here,” I say. “Darian is… Well, he’s not bad.”
She looks at me over her shoulder with a raised brow, then turns back around and continues unpacking the suitcase. “I exchanged one cage for another.”
I frown, pushing off the doorframe. “It’s not ideal, I know, but at least he won’t hurt you like that asshole?—”
She slams the lid shut. “Why are you defending him? We’re prisoners, Cecilia. This situation isn’t normal.” Her shoulders slump, and she looks at me with frustration as I come to stand beside her. “Out there in the real world, people don’t get a green card to murder and commit crimes every ten years. They don’t get away with human trafficking.”
“This isn’t the real world.” It’s a sobering thought but doesn’t make it any less true.
“Is it true?” she asks, busying herself by folding a top.
“Is what true?” I reach for an item and help her fold it.
“You were born into this world? The daughter of an Elder?”
I don’t like the way she sneers when she says Elder. My father may have been a monster, but my mother was a good person. And no matter how despicable my father was, I can’t erase all the good childhood memories I have of him.
“Yes,” I reply, refraining from elaborating. “It’s true.”
“What happened?”
“The Exodus happened. Reckoning night.”
I feel her watching me, but I focus on folding the clothes. Lauren would never understand even if I tried to explain my reasons for joining the Antichrist. Unlike me, she was born a regular member of society. Her mother was an accountant, and her father worked as an electrician.
Then one night, they happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and were spotted by a group of Pawns as they walked home after a meal at a friend’s house on Reckoning night.
Lauren, orphaned at the tender age of nine, moved in with her grandmother, who was going through chemotherapy. Afterher passing, Lauren found herself without a legal guardian when she was fifteen, and that’s how she stumbled upon the Antichrist. An angry teen with nothing left to lose.
I place the folded pants on top of the pile nearest to me. “I joined Antichrist for the same reasons as you.”
Lauren remains silent, waiting for me to continue as she takes a seat on the mattress.
“We’ve both lost people we love.”
Her eyes meet mine, glassy with pain. I wish a magic eraser could make it all go away. That we could be kids again in a world where our parents weren’t murdered for shits and giggles. It’s all so fucking pointless.
Our parents, Keith, and Carlo.
They all died for nothing.
“I was orphaned, too, by the Exodus. My father disappeared on Reckoning night, and my mother died in a car crash years later. I didn’t lie. I just…” I pinch the bridge of my nose and shake my head, trying to swallow down the thick lump congesting my throat. When I speak, my voice is choked with suppressed emotion. “I didn’t know how to tell anyone who my father was.”
“Would it have made a difference?”
I lower my hand. “You tell me. Would you have welcomed me if you knew I was born into the secret society responsible for the death of your parents?”
She observes me for a moment, then stands up and pulls me in for a hug. I cling to her while breathing in her clean floral scent, grateful she’s here. “We’ll be okay,” she says, and I squeeze her tighter. “I know.”
“What happens now?”
If only I knew the answer.
