I tried to turn back toward the gravelly voice, but Sofia squeezed my arm painfully tight.
“We should keep moving,” she whispered and tried to pull me onward faster.
“Sofia!” the voice rasped as if the name had just come to them from foggy recesses in their brain. “My girl!”
Sofia was shaking and tears were gathering in her eyes when I slowly turned toward her. I put my arms around her and held my friend until the tension finally dissolved from her body, andshe was hugging me back.
“Did they hurt you?” I asked her. Such a thing had not occurred to me until that moment, and I felt foolish for all but forcing her to come along with me.
“No, never,” she whispered right away.
“Then we should help them,” I urged her gently.
“We cannot. She is gone,” Sofia sobbed, shaking her head as she squeezed me even tighter.
“But she knows your name,” I pointed out.
“She isgone. She died with him. Shesaidso when she came here! She does not want help from her family.”
And suddenly I knewexactlywho was sitting behind us in the dark. Sofia had said that her mother had become a shell of herself after her mate was killed trying to get his family back from her grandsire. The one who had tried to keep Sofia and her mother from her father, and then told her awful lies about him.
“Castor is yourgrandfather,” I realized aloud.
No wonder he had sent me here if his daughter would not accept his help. And no wonder Sofia thought he was an evil man when he must have been the one who killed her father and then lied about him…
“I have spent my life distancing myself as best I could from him, but heinsistson meddling!” Sofia snarled.
“We will not say a word,” I swore with a glance back at Helena who shifted. I knew how much Riordan disliked Castor and knowing Sofia was his granddaughter would probably only make him distrust her too. “Helena.”
“Fine,” my guard grumbled.
Sofia released me and stepped hesitantly back in the direction of where the voice came from. Someone shifted in the dark, and I saw a filthy woman with a broken wing drag herself into a shaft of light.
“You know my name this time,” Sofia whispered as she knelt on the dirty floor.
“Sofia, my darling,” the woman cooed at her with a vacant smile as she cupped Sofia’s cheek with a trembling and gnarled hand. “The heart knows. So pretty now.”
“Thank you,” Sofia breathed as she clenched the hand resting on her cheek. “Momma, will you please allow me to give you my cloak this time before I go?”
“No! No helping,” her mother objected and recoiled with a nervous glance around.
“See?” Sofia said over her shoulder to me, but I was not deterred in the least. I recognized this behaviour.
“She doesn’t want to be given anything to make other homeless people want to take it by force,” I explained while kneeling next to Sofia. “It would make her a target. What if we come back with enough blankets for everyone here next time?” I asked the shrinking woman gently.
“Everyone would get one?” she verified.
“Exactly. No fighting over food or blankets,” I swore. “We will bring enough for everyone. Would you take it?”
The woman seemed to consider this a moment before she gave a jerky nod.
“I would take a blanket then.”
“Good. Is there anything we can get you right now? Perhaps a healer?” I suggested with a saddened glance at her wing that lay awkwardly behind her.
“Will everyone be healed?” she asked cautiously.
“We will come with healers for everyone,” I insisted, and she nodded. “What is your name?” I asked her.
