Page 73

T wo hours later, Phyllis handed me a steaming mug of cocoa, and I raised one brow, my heart still aching at what Tarquinius had told us.

We were being separated, after everything we’d been through.

“What, no marshmallows?”

“Forgot them. My apologies.” Without hesitating, she whipped off a rune that summoned a trio of three fat marshmallows and set them bobbing merrily in my cocoa. Then, she pinned me with that eerily perceptive gaze. “Anything else?”

It took everything I had not to fidget like a five-year-old.

“Sorry. I’m feeling super anxious and stressed, and sometimes I use humor as a defense mechanism.”

Cripes on a frucking cracker, where had that even come from?

Shaking my head in awe, I let out a low whistle. “You’d have made one hell of an interrogator, Phyll.”

I winced, realizing my slip up, and was about to apologize for the second time in less than thirty seconds, but she held up a hand as she settled into the purple velvet chair across from me.

“It’s fine. I’ve come to terms with you calling me that. It was just a bit of a shock, initially. Only one person ever called me that.”

And we both knew who that was. I took a sip of my cocoa.

“Which brings me to why I wanted to talk with you tonight, at least in part,” Phyllis said softly.

“What I’m about to say might sound cruel, but you need to hear it from someone who cares about you.

” Her eyes filled with despair and just the hint of tears before she blinked them away and stiffened her jaw.

“You’re a liability here, Harlow. Now that he’s made contact, your father will never stop coming for you – I know him.

Everyone around you will be at risk. Including your housemates.

” She pursed her lips. “Including Opie.”

When Phyllis fired shots, she went straight for the heart.

I put my mug on the table between us. Then I wrapped my arms around myself and sank deeper into the sofa.

“Here’s the thing,” I said after a while.

“He could have taken me. At the arena. But he didn’t.

He ...” She immediately started to protest, but I waved her off.

“No, I mean, I realize people did get hurt. I just ...” I scuttled to the edge of the cushion and leaned forward, almost afraid to say what I had to say too loud.

“When we were out of sight ... when one of the Runecoats was fighting with one of his men, Opie and Krishna were in the line of fire. I got between them, I would have died, Phyllis. He came and –” I broke off and raked a hand through my hair, wondering how much to say.

Because now that Tarquinius was sending us to the Runecoat divisions, separating us, Nocta’s message seemed all that much more real.

“There’s no other way to put it. He saved her and Krishna. And me. Then he spoke to me directly. He said that I was trusting the wrong people, and that things weren’t as they seemed – that I needed to flee.”

Unspoken were the questions I kept to myself ...

Had he said all that to recruit me and gain my sympathy? Or had he changed?

She set her own untouched cocoa down and then stood, leaving the room without speaking.

For the next five minutes, I could hear her voluminous skirts rustling and the opening and closing of drawers in the next room.

I was starting to wonder if I’d been summarily dismissed and shunned in one fell swoop and just didn’t know it yet, but before I could call out and ask her, she was back.

In her hands, she held a small pile of items.

She settled herself back onto the chair and laid the items between us.

“I’m going to tell you about your father because it’s imperative that you know, but it brings me great pain to do so. After today, we’ll never speak about this again. Is that understood?”

I swallowed hard and nodded, half tempted to walk out but knowing that wouldn’t change anything.

“I loved him. Nico.” A soft smile spread across her lips as she gazed down at the photo on the top of the pile.

“He was my first – my only love, you know. And I knew it the second I laid eyes on him. He wasn’t just gorgeous and charismatic, much like you, Harlow.

He was also brilliant. His mind was the thirstiest of sponges, soaking in every drop of knowledge and immediately on the hunt for more.

Even Tarquinius saw it in him. He became his mentor, teaching him, molding him into his own image.

Despite being the housemaster’s pet and some petty jealousy from a few of the other boys, your father was very popular.

Everyone wanted to be his friend or his girlfriend .

.. bathe in the light he gave off. We kept it a secret from the others, but he loved only me. ”

She handed me the picture and I took it hesitantly.

“I know you’ve seen it already but look again.”

I stared down at the face that haunted me.

“That was springtime ... before the darkness. Before he changed. He’d just found out he had a Quirk.

A Splice, if you can believe it. One of only two Splices ever born.

He could meld mundane items together, which was amazing in itself, but he could also meld magics together.

He was just scratching the surface of what he could do, and we were so optimistic about our future.

So in love, and heartsick that we would have to spend our six-week summer break apart.

I don’t know exactly what happened during that time.

Although we sent letters, his quickly grew short and cryptic.

He’d been asked to stay at Neverthorn for special training with Tarquinius.

I thought he was just too busy to write much, but when I came back that September, I knew it was more than that.

Something was different. He seemed ...

troubled. His zest for life was tarnished.

And when we spoke of the future, he seemed bleak.

Depressed. I tried to get him to talk to me, but the harder I pushed, the more he withdrew.

I shouldn’t have let that stop me, though.

If only I’d told someone that I was worried, maybe they could’ve –”

She started to rock almost imperceptibly, wringing her hands.

“In any case, I did as he asked and gave him some space. And every couple of weeks or so, he would come to me. Usually exhausted, always distraught. But he would lay his head on my lap, and we would talk. Sometimes I could even make him laugh. It gave me hope. The last time he came to my room was on November second. He was even more upset than usual. He started ranting about power, and how corrupt it could be. It was a time of political unrest in both the Dwimmer and Unlit worlds. Lots of protests happening, and that type of talk, especially for our generation, was fairly common. He said he felt helpless ... he didn’t even know who he was anymore.

It finally had a name, this demon dogging my Nico.

He was having an existential crisis. And I remember feeling almost relieved.

Less than a week later, he murdered nine of our housemates in cold blood. ”

My head was spinning, and I took a long gulp of the cocoa to dislodge the stone wedged there. I regretted it instantly as the cloying sweetness of the marshmallow set my stomach churning.

“Why did he do it? He was brilliant. Surely, he’d have seen that his actions would achieve nothing good?

” I asked, desperate to make sense of it.

“And you said yourself that Tarquinius was mentoring him. They spent the whole summer together. Surely, he would’ve seen the changes in Nicodemus, same as you? ”

She shrugged. “Maybe. And maybe not. Your father was very good at playing the part. When he was in class or out and about around school, he seemed almost normal. Maybe a bit more reserved, but everyone chalked it up to his rigorous study schedule. He was only his true self with me.”

“And at that time, did you believe his true self was capable of mass murder?”

Until that moment, I didn’t realize how much of me desperately wanted her to say no, despite what I’d seen in those bloodied walls of the fairy circle. For the one person who loved and knew him best to tell me that I wasn’t the fruit of a poisoned tree ...

“I don’t think it, Harlow. I know it.” Her eyes filled with tears and her lips began to tremble. “I saw it with my own two eyes as he used a siphoning machine to suck the magic out of our classmates, leaving them dead. Nothing but empty shells. Skin and bones for their parents to bury.”

Same as what the fairy circle had shown me. Why was I being so stubborn when I’d seen it with my own eyes?

The same eyes you saw him save Opie with, a little voice reminded me.

She tugged a scrapbook out of her pile and slid it over toward me. “That’s them, Harlow. All the children your father killed.”

I’d seen them before, but there were more images.

Some looked like Polaroids. Others were from newspaper articles or yearbooks.

All pictures of young teens smiling, not a care in the world.

No hint that their days were numbered. That their lives would be brutally cut short by one of their own.

I stared at each one in turn, committing their faces to memory.

Mary Wood with teeth that her face hadn’t grown into yet but would’ve been the envy of all a few years down the road.

Angela King with hair the color of a shiny penny and a hint of mischief in her eyes that reminded me of myself at that age.

Jennifer Rhodes, Lisa Richardson, Rick Butler, Eric Gomez, Randall Martinez, John Rahl, Michael Carolinus. Their names blurred with their young faces, so full of hope for a future that was not meant to be. Not for them.

Phyllis leaned in and closed the book with a snap, jarring me back to the present.