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Chapter One
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Nerida
AGE: 17 YRS OLD
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(Love in Welsh: Cariad)
I DIDN’T TURN AROUND AS THE TWO policemen tumbled into my room.
I didn’t look back at my unconscious father on my favourite cream rug. I had no interest in those men when the only man I wanted, the only boy I would live and die for, tripped and stumble-sprinted out of our garden and down the street.
The coral pink sunset etched Aslan in glowing warm splashes, staining the ridiculous Hawaiian shirt Dad had made us wear for Christmas. I’d worn a matching shirt, before the strain of the day’s festivities and the haunting in my mind made me lock myself in the bathroom.
I’d hurt myself.
I’d put on makeup to hide that hurt and tried to dress up my pain with a little black dress.
Both my attempts had failed at healing me.
But Aslan?
God, him?
He’d given me the perfect brand of medicine.
Not quite a cure but enough of an antidote that I felt stronger than I had in so very, very long. More myself. More brave. More accepting than ever before.
In an act of love wrapped up in violence, he’d proven to me that I didn’t have to be afraid of the world.
The world needs to be afraid of me.
I clung to that conviction as Aslan vanished into suburbia, running from the police my parents had called, bolting from a rape charge that wasn’t his to bear.
Balling my hands, I turned from the window with my teeth bared and fury flowing swiftly in my veins.
It burned so bright, so hot, so sharp that I pitied anyone who got in my way.
My attention fell on the two policemen.
The slender, leaner one with short brown hair tripped to my father. Speaking into the radio hooked to his chest pocket, he barked, “Unconscious male. Requesting ambulance immediately.”
Guilt panged. My hand still throbbed from the vibration of hitting my beloved dad over the head with the very same mermaid lamp he’d bought me for my thirteenth birthday.
Tears pricked but then my hackles rose as the other cop, the shorter, stockier one with black hair, marched into me and shoved me away from the window. “Where is he?” Folding himself over the windowsill, he peered at the garden with its ferns, boulders, and sandy-bottomed pool.
Using his radio, he barked, “Male running on foot. Requesting a unit to patrol the streets around Helmet and Reef.” His gaze lingered on the sala-bedroom where Aslan had hidden for almost six years.
With a huff, he pushed back into the room. “You let him go? After what he did to you?”
My chin tipped up. “He didn’t do anything to me.”
Crackle of radio chatter as the cop tending to my father checked his vitals.
My mother stepped into the room, wringing her delicate hands, her pretty pink dress dancing around her calves.
