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I put my feet on the coffee table as I leaned back, trying to look comfortable despite the situation.
“How long has it been?” Moa set a mug of hot cocoa on the table beside me.
“Feels like forever.” Aaron sat in the recliner, slouching down the way he’d always done when not in view of his overly strict mother.
I took the writing pad and scribbled down my response. “It’s only been a year…”
Moa blew out a slow breath before she took a seat beside me, her own drink cupped in her palms. “Is that all? God, it feels like so much longer. I thought we’d all head off to college and nothing else would ever change.” She looked toward me, but her gaze landed on my throat before jerking away as if not wanting to make me uncomfortable.
I smirked before writing. “It’s fine. I’m not that sensitive about it. You don’t get to be sensitive about stuff like this in Larkwood.”
Her cheeks flushed, but she nodded and allowed herself to really stare at the scar. “I just can’t believe it. It feels like a story that happened to someone else, like it couldn’t all be real. Larkwood, you, the work I’ve done. It all feels like so much.”
Her words struck me as oddly naïve, and it made me want to laugh. Maybe it was because of all I’d suffered, but too much didn’t mean anything to me anymore. I’d watched others killed, saw them imprisoned, had suffered so much pain myself that it all felt very real to me.
It wasn’t like I could blame her for that, though. She’d done what she could with what she had. If anything, I should have been happy that she didn’t have a frame of reference that would let her understand the reality of life as a shade. It took me back to what felt like so long ago, when we’d walked around the day I’d been attacked.
The three of us had picked out those necklaces, worried about our future, and Moa had lectured me about that young werewolf we’d seen. I’d shaken my head as I’d accepted that her history hadn’t allowed her to understand the truth.
Funny how things changed yet stayed the same. This time I felt the same, about her history blinding her, but she’d been right before where I’d been wrong.
“Do you think they’ll come?” Aaron asked.
“Yes.”I wrote without hesitation.
Aaron took a sip of his drink, his eyes locked on me. He didn’t say anything directly, but that look sure meant something, didn’t it?
Moa must have picked up the strained tension between us, because she laughed the way she always had when she was playing nice. “What will you do when we succeed?”
That question hit me hard, made me consider a future. The idea of winning felt so far away, so impossible. What sort of future could I have after all this?
I wanted to say I planned to buy some farm and live off the grid and spend my days with backyard chickens and a vegetable garden. That was the right answer, wasn’t it? The one everyone gave after so much trauma.
I couldn’t even picture such a thing.
“I want to be happy,”I admitted.“I’ve spent my whole life living up to other people’s expectations. I did what my parents wanted me to because I thought that was right. I thought it was the path I was supposed to take.”
“But not anymore?” Moa asked.
I shook my head.“When I saw my parents, I realized they were doing what they thought they had to. The world is full of people doing what they think they should, and they hide behind that when they do terrible things. I did it, too. I ignored reality because I thought that had nothing to do with me. Now, I’m done living by other’s rules.”
Moa let out a long sigh. “That sounds great, but not many people can do that. They can’t just decide to live their life differently.”
“Didn’t you? Bowen sending us to you says you’ve been making your own choices.”
Moa offered a soft smile. “I guess. I just couldn’t sit back and do nothing. I couldn’t start a revolution or attack Larkwood or do anything for you, but I figured if nothing else, I could maybe help a couple shades find freedom.”
The way she spoke, so unaware of how much she’d done, what she’d risked, made me really look at my friend.
I’d been so angry before between what had happened with Aaron and generally wanting someone to blame. I’d wanted to hate Moa because she’d gotten to keep living her life, because she hadn’t had her life torn apart like mine, but hearing her speak made me recognize how little she saw her own accomplishments.
“Do you know how scary life is when you’re alone and on the run? I didn’t know what I was going to do, how I was going to get out of the country, who I could trust. I ran into trouble where Bowen was when a group of men attacked a child. I saw the way humans looked at me, the way the guards saw me, the way Medical at Larkwood used me like a toy without caring about me at all. I came out of the hell of Larkwood to find the outside world no less dangerous, no less willing to destroy me for no reason. You being there, you risking yourself knowing what Larkwood would do if they found you, it was a light in a very dark tunnel for me. Don’t think for a moment that what you do doesn’t matter.”
I tore the page from the writing pad and handed it over to her, wanting her to keep it, to read it again and again until it stuck.
Moa read the words slowly, tracing them with her finger. Her eyes reddened, a sure sign I’d gotten to her. Then again, I fully understood how it felt to think I wasn’t doing enough, to think I wasn’t living up to what I could, and that was a very heavy burden to bear for long.
She folded the paper and tucked it into her pocket as though precious, then gave me a smile. “Thank you—I needed to read that, I think. It’s hard to fight when I don’t know if I’m doing anything, when I feel like I’m not making progress or a difference. It’s hard to offer help but then not know if it mattered at all, if the shades got away.”
