Page 170 of Cold-Blooded Creatures

“No.” Her expression turned to steel. “It’s cold. Ruthless. There’s no beauty there. Why would there be?” She laughed bitterly. “Only ‘death laces the night.’ Nothing more, nothing less.”

Death laces the night.

The first line from the song Damia’s father used to sing to us whenever we lost an imaginary battle against the invisible armies attacking our kingdoms when we were children.

And Kali had lost hers a week ago. The one she had been fighting for the last thirteen years.

You could not grow comfortable with death. The cloak of your failed decisions and foolish actions weighed on you heavily. I had grown accustomed to the feeling of it, but her… The first time and the first person always stayed with you—a shadow at your back.

“What is this?” Kali asked as we reached our training rings. Half-collapsed buildings bordered the three sides of the square and an open field of withered grass on the fourth. During the day, it created a sensation of a vast space, but now everything drowned in a confining gloom. A lonely bonfire flickered in the center, the surroundings blanketed by the night’s darkness.

“A funeral,” I explained as Zion came up to meet us. “We may not have her body, but she still deserves a proper goodbye.”

“What do you think?” Zion asked, flanking her.

She halted. “For Alora?”

“Yes.” He nodded, and I gave her a short squeeze as confirmation.

“It’s just a fire,” she murmured. “It won’t bring her back.”

“I know.” Zion sighed, and his voice took on a quiet note. “But it’s a way to speak with her.”

She pulled her hand from mine to zip up her jacket as the chilly wind whipped our hair and numbed our skin. “She’s dead, Zion. I’m not stupid. So don’t give me a promise you can’t uphold.”

Her words were cruel, but it was not difficult to recognize a coping mechanism. Zion’s resided in the underground, mine in keeping distance. Dread at facing the consequences of my actions from my past had rooted itself deep inside me. Pretending I was fine was easier than unraveling the mess in my head and beneath my rib cage.

Zion did not respond, but absentmindedly reached for his upper arm, where he usually strapped a sheath for the knife I now knew his sister had plunged into herself to escape the city, choosing death instead of servitude.

Gravel crunched under our boots, like a ring of stray bullets, as we moved toward the sole source of light in the open field. Kali hugged her midriff as we greeted Jayla, Eli, Ava, Ezra, Sadira, Ryder, Ava, and Tarri sitting around the bonfire.

When she did not raise her head, I lifted her chin. “I am not going anywhere, Kali. He is not either.” I glanced at Zion as he situated himself on the ground at her feet. “He may not say it, but I will. It’s the only thing I will repeat to you as many times as you need.” I locked onto her green eyes, now simmering embers instead of the vicious forest flames I had succumbed to monthsago. “You are not alone anymore. It will take time to come to terms with your past, but anger is not a solution. Trust me, I know.”

The tightness in my ribs eased as we knelt down and she whisperedI’m sorryto Zion, pressing their foreheads together.

I nodded to Eislyn, and she passed us blank sheets of paper and charcoal pencils. “Here. We figured it might be easier to write than to talk. We all have someone to say goodbye to and this gives you privacy.”

Kali stared at the items she had been handed. “What am I supposed to do?”

I tapped the piece of paper in her lap. “Write whatever you want. A letter to Alora, a goodbye, anything you wish.”

“It’s something we do here,” Jayla supplied. “You put down on paper what you cannot say and burn it afterward. They say the ashes flying from the blaze into the sky will carry your message to the stars where the person you seek will hear it.”

The wood crackled, filling my ears with a familiar sound of a whip flying through the air and striking flesh.

“How many of you are there?”the soldier demanded, presumably the commander, based on how the others regarded him.

Huddled on the roof with Zion, we were too far away to make out the golden patch on his uniform to be certain. But his voice had reached me loud and clear, rumbling across the square brimming with their military. Handguns were strapped to their thighs and black rifles poised for defense—the soldiers stood ready to launch strings of tiny lead cylinders, to bring death at a moment’s notice if we planted a foot on the stone-paved square.

Silence.

My father refused to reveal any information pertaining to our people for the hundredth time the commander had asked him.

The soldier jerked his chin at his executioner dressed in black, his thighs, upper arms, and chest full of sheathed knives with rubber handles that had sliced off my father’s fingers and toes, one by one, starting with pinkies and finishing with the big toes. More flesh equaled more nerves to destroy, the increase of their number hindering your ability to adapt to the pain and tolerate it.

The executioner drew back, and the spindly branch struck my mother’s back. A wet and sharp strike echoed in the early morning hours, the peeking-out sun globe painting the clouds in shades of red, similar to her back. Her body swayed on the hooks embedded under her shoulder blades and her feet painted the square’s stones in scarlet streaks as blood streamed down her bare legs.

But not the faintest cry left her throat, not after what she had endured in the past hour alone. Perhaps unconsciousness had pitied her and taken her under its wing.