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“That’s the thing about pictures and paintings—they show what you want them to. You just need the right clothes, the right artist, and it can look like anything. My parents were never home, always too busy for me, and I was just their legacy. I spent more time around my nannies than I ever did with them.”
Kit nodded as he walked beside me up the stairs, following my pace. He didn’t even call me on how slowly I moved. “Things aren’t always what they seem, and that goes both ways. Sometimes people can care but show it in the worst ways.”
“Sounds like an excuse.”
“Perhaps,” Kit admitted. “But we are all imperfect. I mean, I cared for you well before I told you properly. I thought it was better and safer to keep a distance, to not show my true feelings, but I still had them.”
His words drew a frown from me as I considered it. It was easy to think of my parents as villains—and them abandoning me after I changed sold that fact—I couldn’t deny that they were imperfect people.
Kit grasped my hand, entwining his fingers with mine in a comforting hold. “You don’t need to know right now. Things like this take time to work through, to figure out, and no matter what the truth, no matter what decision you come to, you aren’t alone.” He squeezed softly at our clasped hands, and I squeezed back.
Not being on my own was the only reason I’d made it this far.
Kit
It was strange to think the woman I knew, the one I loved, had grown up like this. If I didn’t know her, I would have hated her immediately upon seeing this.
The house was nothing short of a mansion, with marble floors and expensive artwork lining the walls. The ostentatious and nearly life-sized painting drove home that she hadn’t grown up as most people did.
Yet, somehow, she’d remained kind. Despite having everything given to her, despite how she’d grown up wanting for nothing, she’d avoided turning cold and cynical. She’d retained her sweetness, her innocence, her caring nature. That alone proved just how special she really was.
She paused at a door, then opened it after a deep breath. The inside told me immediately where we were.
Her bedroom.
It lacked the awkwardness that going into a woman’s room normally had. As an adult, there was always this undercurrent of sexual tension when in another’s private space. Even with people who lacked any real attraction, societal rules meant being around a bed created a question between them.
That wasn’t the case here, probably because it didn’t feel likeherbed. It didn’t remind me of the woman I knew at all. Awards sat on the bookshelf, along with pictures in expensive silver frames. The images had her and others—including her old boyfriend and Moa. They were smiling in them, with Hera dressed entirely differently. She had heavy makeup on, and her hair was always perfectly styled. She wore clothing that appeared both trendy and expensive, though not edgy. Instead, they made her look classy, and she reminded me of the painting of her mother, or the many times I’d seen her mother on the television while discussing anti-shade legislation.
“This all feels so weird.”Hera’s hands moved, but I got the feeling she wasn’t talking to me.
Still, I answered. “I’m sure it is. Still, it’s not a bad idea to stop. You can get whatever it is you want to bring with you.”
“I don’t have a lot I’d want to take,”she admitted.“None of this stuff even feels like my things, you know? Like, it all feels like it belongs to someone I don’t know.”
Strange, since that was how I’d felt as well. The girl portrayed in this room was not the one who had come to Larkwood. Perhaps that was the point, though. Larkwood changed people. This was the girl Hera had been before that, before circumstance had transformed her just as much as becoming a shade had.
She went to her desk and pulled open one of the drawers. She reached toward the back, bending down to do so, until a click said she’d found what she wanted. She withdrew something—a book of some sort.
“What’s that?”
She handed it to me without answering.
I took that move as permission, so I flipped open the leather-bound book. A diary? Or perhaps a diary-scrapbook hybrid would describe it better. Articles and images were glued to some pages, with scribbled words beside them. Some had pictures with friends—not the staged ones in the frames, but candid ones. Dates, names, memories, it all was written down in colored ink on the pages.
I looked up at her, not quite understanding the relevance or importance of the book.
“The pictures in this room are ones my mom chose. She had them edited before they could be put up, because they needed to show what she wanted. That journal is the history I wrote. It was how I remembered the events, what I wanted to say but couldn’t ever bring myself to. If my mom ever found it, she’d have destroyed it, so I kept it hidden. I couldn’t imagine leaving without it, because eventually she’ll go through this all, and if she found it, she’d probably burn it to save her false little story.”Hera took the journal from my hands and cradled it against her chest.
She didn’t meet my gaze, as if afraid to see I’d found it stupid.
She really didn’t trust me, did she?
I went to reach for her when something hit mehard.It wasn’t a physical blow, but it felt like a high-pitched sound I couldn’t ignore, something that reached into me and set every nerve inside me on edge.
I cringed and pressed my hands to my head, trying to block it out. Except, it quieted again, allowing me to blink.
I was on the ground, and above me? Hera. I twisted, realizing my head was in her lap and her fingers ran through my hair, her worried eyes staring down at me.
