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They don’t want to tell me about their pasts, and despite what I feel for them, Melissa’s accusations haunt my mind. At this point, it seems easier to find out their secrets from Ophelia than from the boys themselves. If they don’t trust me… how can this work out?
18
SINDRI
I’m so fucking tired I can’t think straight, and my brain is sliding back into the quagmire of my nightmares. I can’t tell Mia who I really am, all that I’ve done. She’ll be disgusted with me, walk away.
It would be the sane thing to do.
And it’s damn cowardly of me not to tell her. But I can’t lose her, not now. I’ve just found her, her and the others, and where before I plodded through the days alone, knowing that would never change unless I found my mother—a distant dream, and now she’s dead so the dream is dead, too—knowing that I can’t stop moving because then I’d never get up, never stop to think because I’d give up… Now I want to get up in the mornings, even if it means getting shot again, knifed, stabbed…
I don’t give a shit. Let them shoot me full of arrows. I’ve never felt more alive. More present. More appreciated.
It’s fucking with my head. My mind insists it’s all a lie, anabeshtrick.
You’re still alone, it says.Nobody really cares for you. Nobody really wants you. You’re as much a reject now as you were then.
But when Mia touches me, the dark thoughts shrivel up and blow away on the wind like ash and dust.
The memories from my first years are hazy, but I have impressions of starry fields and lakes and forests and a woman smiling. My mother. I remember when I was captured by soldiers, when she vanished and I was left with the ache of her void in my life. Then the long years in the basements of Lothar Castle, locked up, left to live in the dark. The moment the king died and the new politics dictated I could be useful in the light, and then I was exposed to those who hated me and made sure I felt it.
And then the walls I built around me, the promise I made to myself that I’d find my mother, find those starry fields. The person I had to become in order to get the new king’s ear and acquire a position of enough power that I could get coin and go off to look for her. The path that led me here, to the Academy, and to Mia.
Speaking of whom… She has lain back down beside me and threaded her fingers in my hair. “You’re frowning,” she whispers. “Everything okay?”
I can’t tell her the truth, so I just nod. “Awesome.”
“You don’t have to be like that with us,” she reprimands softly. “Does your back hurt? We should change the bandage, right, Ash?”
I start to protest but they roll me on my stomach and set about cleaning and covering the cut in my back again and it’s so damn soothing I almost doze off. I’ve never let anyone in so close, inside my defenses before. Something in me resists, says it’s a bad idea to let them…
…And an even worse idea to stay here any longer. Usually, I have an emergency pinch of fey drugs in my pocket, to ensure I stay calm through the night, but for some reason my pockets are empty…
When someone’s fingers bury themselves in my hair, I only grunt, reluctant to move.
And they don’t make me. Mia lies down beside me, slinging an arm over my back and Ashton lies on my other side, on his back, curling an arm around my head.
As if they’re guarding me, I think sleepily, from something. From nightmares, probably, the monsters and the things that go bump at night. From the past. From who I am.
Yeah, if only that were possible…
Cursed as I am to visit the past every night, it’s damn disorienting to wake up flailing and choking on a howl only to find hands closing on my arms, freaking me out even more.
I lash right and left, trying to get free, and go back to… Fuck, can’t even remember where I’m supposed to be. The dungeons? My room in the tower? Got to break way,abesh k’emel elekta, or I’m done for. I—
“Sin. Sindri!” a man’s voice says. “Come on, man, you’ll open up that wound. Wake up.”
The words don’t make sense, don’t fit in. I try to yank my arms free of the hard grip and they are released, almost smacking me in the face. “What…?”
“Sin.” A girl’s voice. Sweet. Scent of flowers.
Mia.
The name conjures a face, the face conjures the Academy… and my eyes open to the stabbing light of morning coming through a window.
“Ugh.” I lift my arm, so damn heavy, to cover my eyes. “Light.”
“That’s right. Morning, Sunshine,” the man says.
