Page 2 of Red Demon (Oria #1)

I tried to make sense of the threat. It would have taken some heavy tech to kill our town.

But what, and who had it? Queen Azara had outlawed anything she thought the Asri could abuse to hurt us, and she’d outlawed anything she thought we Chaeten could use to hurt them.

The priests said Asri magic can corrupt even little things, like electricity, without the right protections.

On the fringe of an empire surrounded by Asri towns, we did without a lot of tech our ancestors found essential, to prevent tragedies like this.

“Asri tech—magic, whatever.” I couldn’t get that thought out of my head. “It has to be.” They didn’t teach us at school how that magic worked. They didn’t want to give anyone the key to abusing it. But it had wiped out communities before.

At first, I thought Iden would keep his mouth clamped shut as we rushed on. “Maybe,” he said. “Let’s go home. Hurry.”

We ran.

We crossed the alley between the school and the temple.

Ice clinked in the branches of the bushes along the street.

A cat mewed from a porch with a door wide open to the winter cold, the body of Dr. Garla lying in the doorway.

I recognized the purple in her hair and blue tint to her skin—a more traditional Chaeten, wearing bold, unrepentant colors when the rest of us were coded to blend in.

A pram drifted slowly across the road toward us, blood smearing the outside.

We slowed our pace, but I avoided stepping closer to that carriage, too fearful to look and confirm if it was a baby’s blood that stained those blankets.

A woman lay cloaked in indigo down the road, blood on her arms and chest—the mom, perhaps.

On every street we jogged down, only the dead greeted us. Then we were home.

Our gate creaked on its hinges. My pulse pounded in my ears. And then I saw my sisters.

The twins, Cara and Samantha, lay sprawled in the front yard, a dusting of snow on their winter clothes.

At five, the twins doted on the youngest, Sora.

She lay dead beside the twins on the icy ground, her thin blonde hair rustling in the wind.

Brushing the snow off did nothing to warm their little bodies.

I wanted to lose it, to scream, but I didn’t. Iden’s chest heaved, and I gripped a hand on his shoulder. Mom taught me there will always be someone else to cling to when a pillar of our life falls down, and she taught me to be that pillar in turn. We kept it together, holding each other up.

Mom lay dead in the kitchen, near the fire… very near the fire. I’ve never had a nightmare that hollowed me out as much as pulling her red, blistered body away from the embers, seeing the mutilated face of someone I loved so much.

I can tell you what it felt like when I realized she wouldn’t be there to turn to.

My hope died. It didn’t feel possible that I was here, and she was gone.

I don’t think I’ll ever stop missing her, or stop feeling as if she is missing, even if I know she’d hate that.

The Chaeten way would be to let her go and never look back.

She left me too young to see that lesson home, to teach me how that’s possible.

Resilience is often mistaken for coldheartedness, especially so for us Chaeten.

We coded ourselves to survive our near-extinction, never surrendering to fear or heartbreak.

When they cut us down and we’d hold our heads high at the end, the Asri saw it as inhumanity, not bravery.

But heartbreak sums the same for all of us.

I didn’t break that day, but the cost would come later, in my dreams, and in so many quiet moments where I could never fully surrender to joy.

“I’ll check the basement,” Iden said.

“I’ll check the other rooms.”

The bedroom door just off the kitchen creaked as I opened it to see what, at this point, I was expecting.

My sister Bella died at twelve, tucking in the young neighbor kids for their nap.

There were always extra kids around the house, whose parents were on shift in the mines.

That’s how Mom earned coin. Bella’s long blonde hair spilled across the multicolored blanket, her head down as if resting her eyes.

I checked her cold body for blood, then lifted a bright-squared quilt to look for clues on the children’s faces and little bodies.

Nothing; I’d hoped it felt like sleeping for all of them when they died.

It started snowing out the window. I stayed until I heard Iden’s footsteps behind me.

“Downstairs is clear.” Iden sheathed his knife and stood for a moment, eyes fixed and overcome. He gripped the doorframe, painted over in bold green and blue geometric designs.

“Should we burn them?” I asked, trying to be practical, to not fall apart.

“The mines.” It looked like he considered his own words as if they hadn’t just come from his mouth. “Mal and Oren won’t be back for hours. They might be—Jesse, they might be okay.”

I bit my lip. All seven of my siblings lived at home with me, odd for Chaeten standards, I know, but the frontier was different.

Iden paced the room. “The Asri don’t use our tech. They wouldn’t want our mine. They’d just want to kill us.”

“The Chaeten-sa had blood on her sword. That’s no accident, and she’s no Asri rebel.”

Iden massaged his forehead. “She didn’t attack us, though. Maybe she killed off the people who did it.”

“Then where are their bodies?”

Iden turned to the bodies of the children in bed, his eyes unfocused.

“So, the kids, that bloody baby—” He shuddered.

“You’re right. It has to be her.” It still didn’t explain the ones with no wounds.

Squatting beside the bed, I held Bella’s cold hand, too exhausted to speculate further.

I pushed blond, curly hair from both our faces.

“Mr. Gell was lying by the temple. I saw him.” Iden gripped the door frame so tight I wondered if it would splinter.

“I liked him,” I said. Mr. Gell was the only Asri in town, a bearded man with a bright smile and hazel-ringed eyes that came alive when he taught his classes on history or the Asri language.

He left out the parts my mother taught me—things Asri called us in the war—things that rebels still called us in secret, but he meant well.

If the killers didn’t check Mr. Gell’s irises for those two shades of color, I suppose they wouldn’t have noticed which kind of human he was.

The embers in the kitchen provided little warmth through the open doorway. I’d have to see my mother’s body again to stoke the fire. I wanted to sink into the chilled wood floor, numb and cold as the dead. Iden had the same glazed-over look as I must have. Seeing him snapped me out of it.

“Iden, we should go.”

Iden nodded, pursing his lips. “Go-bags. Mines.”

Dad had made sure we were prepared for emergencies.

I was grateful for a routine that took little thought.

I packed food and water, wrapped in the best blankets.

Iden took our best hunting gear, our warmest clothes.

I picked up a bracelet from Mom’s jewelry box, the only memento I allowed myself that didn’t serve a practical purpose.

Not everything in our house would fit in our packs.

I took the rest in my memory, vowing to never forget the walls painted in a rainbow of little hand prints, the smell of spices in the pantry, the feeling of being in a room worn down with love and laughter.

Because I knew this house would never be home again.