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She blinked at him. “You did not count.” Her voice was clearer already. She pushed up, her hand sliding from his by necessity, until she was sitting properly. “So, um, sorry? What’d I miss?”
Maya angled around him and leaned in to wrap her sister in a hug. “Are you okay? Did you see anything jarring?” She knelt down on Sienna’s opposite side. “Anything you want to talk about?”
Fenn watched as Sienna stared at that sister, then looked across at her other, and finally turned her gaze up to him. She seemed to be searching for something, but he couldn’t imagine she lacked for a sense of security. He arched a brow at her.
Sienna sighed heavily. “Gods above! This is not the first time I’ve had a vision. Would you all please stop freaking out?”
Fenn was perfectly angled to see Maya’s immediate responding stubborn pout.
“The weird guy you brought for Christmas did some kind of blood magic in the doorway—” Maya started.
“He didwhat?” Piper asked.
“—wants us to believe the crazy bimbo who tried to assault you is actually some living anti-saint, and he openly admitted to being a monster. His word. So yes, I’m worried you may have seen something concerning, but I’m mostly worried about how you’re feeling.” Maya pulled Sienna’s hand into both of hers and lowered her voice, though how she thought Fenn wouldn’t hear her he had no idea. “If you’re in trouble, just say the word, okay?”
“I think the two of you left out a very important detail about that altercation before,” Piper said as she drummed her fingers over the armrest of her chair.
Sienna launched to her feet, yanking her hand free from her sister in the process, and started shouting. “Will the two of you calm down? I’m fine! What happened was not supposed to happen, okay? And while I’m sorry it did, it’s not exactly my fault—orFenn’s—that some crazy bitch is stalking him. Also, she’s not an ‘anti-saint,’ she’s more like a mid-tier comic book villain. She has a power she could totally be using to save people and make a positive change in the world, but she’s selfish as shit and is using it all for herself, and at the same time thinks her power makes her superior to everyone else.”
Both Piper and Maya were wide-eyed when Sienna finally drew a breath.
Fenn suspected he might also have looked a little startled.
Then Sienna rounded on him, one hand raised and pointing. “And you, mister, arenota monster, do you hear me? I don’t care what your power is. I don’t care what your title is. I don’t care if you wear black all the time and live in shadows and all the awesome shit you do is arguably creepy by conventional standards.Iam not a conventional-standards kind of person, anyway. Do you know what a monster is? A monster is someone who goes out of their way to hurt people. A monster is someone who enjoys inflicting pain on people. A monster is someone likeFlorencewho thinks she can do whatever she wants because she has a power most people don’t, that somehow makes her better.”
Silence settled for long seconds after Sienna finished. Fenn noticed her sisters exchange a long look.
Something like guilt settled heavily at the bottom of his stomach and Fenn frowned. “There are many types of monsters in this world, Sienna,” he said. “And none of them are worse than me.” She opened her mouth, but he didn’t let her speak. “How many innocents have to die before the one who ended their lives qualifies as a monster? Does it matter their age, race, or gender? Does it matter if it was intentional?”
Sienna drew a breath, frowned at him, and more quietly said, “A person doesn’t become a monster simply for the fact that they exist.”
Piper laid a hand on Sienna’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. I have to draw a line somewhere.” She met Fenn’s gaze with a firm stare. “Just to be clear, you’re saying you’ve killed people? Were you military, perhaps?”
“Not by any stretch.”
“Fenn,” Sienna said, nearly talking over him. “How many. Tell me how many.”
Old memories flashed rapidly through his mind, in no logical sequence. Faces so long lost he couldn’t put names to them. Faces whose names he’d chosen to forget. Faces whose names were etched into his soul. And somewhere mixed in, the sound of children laughing. The blare of older-model sirens. The explosive echoes of gunfire and the remembered stench of smoke from a very different fire.
He explained none of that, and said instead, “I couldn’t answer that if I wanted to.” It wasn’t as though he’d had someone to guide him, to teach him about his curse. A curse he’d been born with, that had only grown stronger as his body had matured.
Horror filled Piper’s eyes—eyes that were nearly the exact same shade as Sienna’s.
Sienna stepped forward, out from her sister’s grip, and latched onto his sweater. “No. Not how many died before you understood. How many did youintentionallyend. There’s a difference, Fenn. Just because your power is extreme doesn’t mean any child burdened with it should automatically be responsible for the weight of it before any of the other things society thinks they deserve help in learning. So, I’ll ask again. How many did you kill on purpose, before you became who you are now?”
Fenn stared at her, her seemingly stunned sisters falling away from his focus as his brain scrambled to keep up with her logic. It was true he didn’t generally spend his waking hours actively berating himself for the deaths of his early years. It was more true he typically tried only to think about the present, and not the past, because thinking about the past brought with it a heap of guilt that had more than once had him wishing his curse applied equally to himself. But he had always been ironically—infuriatingly—immune.
Immune…Like Sienna. Who hadn’t even blinked as she stared up at him, waiting determinedly for an answer to her ridiculous, oversimplified question.
He let out a quiet breath. “Three.”
One of her sisters had an audible reaction to that statement, but he barely heard the sharp gasp.
Sienna’s expression softened and she smoothed her hand over the portion of the sweater she’d rumpled in her grip. “Why?”
“Sienna!” Maya, it sounded like, said in something like a hiss.
Fenn closed his hands into fists again as that particular memory returned, whispering through him. Screams and rapid-fire explosions resounded in his ears. The memory of pain when he himself had been shot down in the chaos. He released a breath. “I had managed to find a job,” he said. “I hadn’t been working there more than a month, but my coworkers were friendly. I deluded myself into thinking I could feel human among them. Until three men burst in and opened fire.” Sienna’s eyes widened and he swallowed, shoving the memory and the associated anger down. “I only survived because of my own regenerative nature. When I saw the bodies, I fell into a rage and embraced the power I had spent my life cursing.” He held her still-wide stare. “I killed each of them, and I made sure they suffered. I decimated their bodies from the inside out, I filled their minds with a terror so strong it paralyzed them. And of all the things I’ve regretted from my life, ending those three has never been one of them.”
