Page 103 of Sorrow & Strangers

Rafe locks eyes with me. “Do you want to?” he asks. There is no fear, no pressure. It’s a simple question.

“I will tell you. If you want to know.” Why your brother died. Why I am alive, and he is not. If anyone deserves to know, Rafe does.

He studies me for a long moment before responding. “Only if you are ready, Summer. There is no reason to rehash trauma when it’s still actively traumatizing you.”

I look down at my hand and my empty ring finger. I brush my thumb over where his ring used to be. “It will always be traumatic,” I say, looking up at him. “But I think you need to know.” Connor’s story deserves to be told. He deserves to live through his brother’s memories. My memories. He deserves to be remembered as a hero. As my hero.

Rafe nods. “Then tell me.”

Chapter Fifty-One

Rafe

“Iwas strapped to a chair, blindfolded,” she begins, and my body goes still. It’s not just her words, but her voice. She switches so easily from one sentence to the next, her voice at first full of its usual warmth and familiarity, even as we discuss some difficult topics. Now there is nothing but this flat, vacant tone. I recognize it. I used it a lot as a teen. It is where you retreat to detach yourself mentally from events, a way to survive a traumatic memory. A traumatic life. It’s so much easier to speak when you pretend things happen to someone else, anyone else. It is easier to process something someone else endured that irrevocably fucked them up than something that fucked you up.

The ease with which Summer switches cadence tells me this is not the only significant trauma she carries. Without her having to say a word, I know other scars on her soul will probably never fully heal.

“Aqua had taken me to a cave. She cut me, carved into me, slashed me.” Still, there is no inflection, no hesitation or tripping over her words. I can’t decide if that is worse than the actual words she’s speaking. I know what happened to Con in the abstract, but hearing it from someone who was there is worse, especially hearing it from someone I now call sister. It broke a little more of me, if there was anything solid left of me to break. “She called me light fae. She said she wanted to wear my skin.”

“What’s a light fae?” I ask.

There is only the fae. Then there’s the subspecies that used to call Faerie home before the Fall, those like kelpies, sprites, pixies, redcaps, and such. That’s all we’ve ever been taught, and even the fae I’ve known, besides Summer, have reiterated it. But Summer is different, and it is far more than just her eyes. It’s another reason we understand each other so easily. I am the different one in my family. My perfect family, who just wanted to understand me, when I could not bear to be understood.

“An extinct species, or so we thought.”

Is this why she was targeted last year? She’s light fae. If I remember correctly, Aqua initially targeted people who resembled Summer. She saved Summer for last, like the psychopathic bitch she was. I only had the pieces of information that Connor imparted last year, and what I’d put together myself.

“So . . . what is every other fae? Dark fae?”

Those names suck. The best they could do is light and dark? Some people need to exercise a creative muscle when naming things. Though I guess Fallen wasn’t that creative either.

She nods.

“I guess that makes sense and explains a lot,” I say. The dark fae are all kind of dicks, and they share some common physical traits, like their violet eyes with varying magenta rings around the iris. They are super obsessed with one another and speak of their psycho king in weird, hushed whispers. If half the things I’ve heard about Kai Tuatha De Daanan are true, he could challenge Uncle Lu for depravity. Though in the case of the Fae King, I am pretty sure it isn’t all an act.

“I was resigned to letting her kill me.” Her voice flattens even more, if that is possible. “Because then it would be over.”

Those words reverberate in my head. How many times have I thought the same thing? It would be over. It would be over. Over. Finally, it would be over. I’d thought them before my Fall and during it, even after. Sometimes I hoped for it, looked forward to it. It was one of the things I hid so desperately from my parents and brothers—this great flaw. I didn’t want to live, and they would never understand why. Could never understand why.

“But then Connor showed up. He saved me.” She grabs my hand and squeezes it hard. “But he didn’t make it out.” Sorrow leaches into her voice, and I lean my head against hers in silent support. “I thought for a moment . . .” She stops, emotion momentarily closing her throat. I suppose she could only hold it back for so long. “When Max showed up, I thought it might all work out, but she had already plunged my dagger into him.”

The dagger. That heinous holy dagger.

“That’s . . . It’s the weapon he summoned for the first time to . . . It was for me.” My voice trembles slightly. Angels can only summon holy weapons when we . . . they are in great need. Once summoned, they can be recalled at will. Thirteen was too young to need something like that. The weapon he needed to save his worthless younger brother was the one that killed him in the end. It was my fault. The dagger wouldn’t exist without me. Con would never have given it to Summer. Aqua would never have stolen it. It would never have⁠—

“He came for me once.” I’m speaking before I even register my mouth moving. That familiar chill sweeps through me, and as the memories rush me, my voice goes just as monotone as hers. “In the same way. We were kids.”

He saved me too. In a dark cave in the abandoned part of Hell, my brother had descended like the archangel warrior he was destined to be and saved my absolutely worthless life.

“Connor knew something was wrong,” I continue, unable to stop the words now that they’d started. “He just knew. He charged in like an idiot, but he saved me, and saved more than just my life.”

He kept saving me every single day after. Every time I thought about ending it, he just knew. He’d do something so distinctly Connor that it would help just a little, just enough so that I could breathe for a second, for a minute, for an hour.

“He told me he had killed before,” she whispers, squeezing my hand.

“Yeah, it was for me.” He was just about to turn fourteen, and Mom had planned a surprise party for him. The party still went ahead as planned, and only we knew Connor was no longer who he had been a few weeks earlier. His smile was a bit strained, his eyes a bit darker, and it was my fault.

It was all my fault.