Page 144 of Lana Pecherczyk

“‘Father’s tainted supply causing…’ I can’t read that bit. It’s smudged. Maybe if you tell me who did this…”

“Tell me,” Manfri begged. “Tell me who did this. We’ll call every crow we know—Nikan, Carmine, and Tommas. Your father. My family. We’ll call them all and rain bloody murder from the sky. On them and their descendants. Just say the words, and we’ll paint your enemy’s blood on our faces.”

“No,” Cielo croaked. “Her death belongs to me.”

“Oh, this is so sad,” Blake sighed. “It says, ‘Memory loss hindering?—’”

“I said it doesn’t matter!” River bellowed, ripping the papers from her hands, hating how she flinched in fright. Her bottom lip wobbled, and he pointed at her face. “Don’t you dare apologize. Don’t you dare!”

But his mate stood. She faced him with resolution in her eyes and steel in her spine.

“Why won’t you just tell me everything?” She grabbed fallen papers and shook them in his face. “Why do I have to puzzle it out?”

“Because it hurts!” he shouted. “And this shit is making it worse!”

“Show me. Help me understand.”

He grabbed her hand and dragged her deeper into the trove, into the descent of Cloud’s madness. The parts that were createdafterhis abuse. A metal hairpin with dried blood. A torn scrap wrapped around a dagger. Crystal City soldier badges that were obviously trophies. Sheet music, handwritten on military plans—airship schematics. Two conflicting, repeated, jagged phrases clashed, growing in intensity: “Boy, I got to get away”and“Don’t let me go.”

Pain sliced through River’s chest. Guilt. Agony. Grief.

They kept walking. He stopped abruptly before an old sketch of a young Aurora sleeping, hair tucked around round ears, something clutched in her hand. More recently, a brown, crusted V had been painted over her face. Dried Blood. More of Cloud’s manic scrawl:

She looked right through me today. Those big eyes that used to light up … nothing. Empty.

More words.

She laughed with the guards. MY laugh. The one she saved for me. She doesn’t remember. She doesn’t remember anything. How could she forget so quickly?

River scanned the chaotic walls for what he needed to show Blake, but all he found was more evidence of a double life. All these years, River thought Cloud was happy with him and Ash. Happy-ishbeing a Guardian. He had a purpose.

Little bird with broken wings

Doesn’t remember how to sing

Daddy’s poison in her veins

Took my love, left only pain.

River made it to the end of the trove, a curved wall. He flipped through useless diagrams, more schematics. “Where is it?”

“Where is what?”

“He saved all this shit, but not the truth.”

“What truth?”

“Shewas his torturer.” He dashed his hand at the ramblings. “I know because he told me.” He pounded the wall beside the hand-carved word HATE. “He told me how she plucked his feathers. She made him beg for her to stop. He talked in his sleep. I heard his nightmares.”

He pounded his fist against another spot, the carved words,HER DEATH IS MINE.

“This just shows … what happened after. It shows his hate. But you can’t see why.” He started ripping pages off the wall, looking for hidden messages behind them. “She messed with his mind. She killed so many of our kind and then laughed about it. She?—”

He found a note and choked up. The ink was fresh and sharp, the words more painful than any others he’d read.

You died saving someone else’s child.

Was I not worth saving?