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Rhea

—L eap, Zephyros says as he circles around my house.

—Leap? I think you’re taking this trust thing a little too far.

He sighs, then I feel something brushing my ankles. I glance down to find air swirling around my feet. It quickly gains in speed and climbs further up my body. When the current reaches my thighs, it has built into a small tornado.

—What are you doing? I demand.

—Trust.

I come off my feet, the force of Zephyros’s tornado carrying me with it. Slowly, he pushes me away until I’m hovering midair, several feet away from him. My ears roar with my own heartbeat. This is Vortex Drop , the maneuver Skysingers use to descend from their dragons.

—You are entirely safe, he says, his tone annoyed.

—I know I’m supposed to trust you, but this is terrifying .

—Not terrifying in the least.

I can’t answer. I’m too focused on the ground below. I’m going to die. Humans can’t fly. Except…

“I’m flying!” I exclaim.

—Flying? Do not be ridiculous. Humans cannot fly. You can plummet, however.

—You will not use the word plummet while I’m not flying.

He chuckles, then asks, —Where should I set you down, little one?

—That ledge on the second floor. Next to the window.

He brings me to within inches of the ledge. I step onto it, then grab the windowsill. This is my bedroom, and the window through which I sneaked out more times than I care to count. One night, my father discovered what I was doing and locked me out. The next day, I broke the latch, knowing he wouldn’t care enough to fix it. This window has remained unlocked since then.

With practiced movements, I push the lower pane open and climb inside. Enough moonlight spills in to illuminate the interior. I stand silently for a long moment, steeping in the darkness.

“It’s time for bed, sweet princess,” my mother’s ghost enters the room, a gas lamp in her hand. The room fills with warmth, both from her and the light. She wears a white, long-sleeve nightgown, her black hair pinned up, letting only a few locks frame her face. She’s beautiful. With gentle hands, she tucks the blanket around me and caresses my cheek. “Your dreams will take you to the moon on a dragon’s back, and tomorrow night the moon will beg for your return. But guess what?” She puts a finger on my nose. “Not even the moon can love you more than mama does.”

The memory shatters, dragging me back to the present. Gray shadows, cobwebs, and dust choke the happiness of the long-ago echoes. My heart aches.

—If you ask me, I will take you to the moon, little one.

I nearly choke, and it takes all my strength not to let the tears that burn in the back of my eyes come forth. Instead, I armor my spine with ice and walk out of the room.

Across the hall, my father’s bedroom door is opened a crack. He sleeps with his lips parted, making puffing sounds. I knock on the door.

“Father, it’s me, Rhea,” I figure announcing myself is the best way not to spook him.

He stirs. Eyes blinking open, he turns his head and looks at me. His brow furrows as he sits up.

“Are you really there?” His voice cracks with a mixture of old age and fear.

Does he think I’m a ghost? I don’t blame him. This house is full of them.

“Yes, Father. I need to talk to you. I’ll put the kettle on.” I leave without waiting for a reply.

It’s dark, so I make my way downstairs guided by my knowledge of the house. Once in the kitchen, I find matches in a drawer, light up a few oil lamps, and set the kettle on the stove after stoking the fire. It takes my father a moment to get going, but at last, I hear him moving around, the boards groaning under his weight.

By the time he enters the kitchen, our teas are done steeping. I picked chamomile for him and regular black for me since I doubt I’ll get much sleep once I leave.

We sit across from each other and sweeten our drinks with hardened sugar cubes. After taking a sip, he rubs his forehead and says, “Did they kick you out?”

I don’t even blink. I’m used to his disappointment and bitterness. “No. I’m here to ask for a favor.”

He sits straighter at this. I haven’t asked him for anything in years, not since I learned he took pleasure in denying me. There’s a glint in his eyes as he anticipates the moment he will refuse my request. Still, I have to try.

“You might get a visit from the police,” I start.

His bushy gray eyebrows draw together for only an instant, then they fall back down, and his expression settles into something that seems to say I knew it would come to this .

I go on, “They’re going to ask you a question, and I need you to tell them that you don’t know the answer.”

“I assume,” he begins slowly, “you’re asking me to lie. I know the answer to whatever they’re going to ask, don’t I?”

I nod.

His eyes narrow. He wraps large fingers around his teacup and ponders, trying to figure out which of my previous transgressions has come back to haunt me. Before entering the Academy, I gave him plenty of trouble, tangling with any authoritative figure who got in my way. I once spooked a horse because its rider was a Neutro. The man fell in a puddle of mud, and instead of running, I laughed. He caught me and dragged me to a nearby station house, where he made a constable throw me in a cell. I was only fifteen, so when the Neutro left, the constable took me home and made my father promise to keep me out of trouble. He promised and not for the first time.

I can see he’s struggling to come up with something. I’ve been nothing but a model citizen since I entered the Academy. What could possibly have become an issue this late in the game?

He gives up and grunts in frustration. “So what is this question?”

“The Chief Inspector will ask you if Mortimer Cindergrasp was my Neutro. He doesn’t know because, for some reason, he can’t find my records.”

His eyes narrow again as thoughts speed behind his rheumy eyes. “So you want me to say I don’t know who your Neutro was,” he says slowly, each word delivered between short pauses.

I nod. “Yes. You don’t remember because Mama took me, not you.”

This isn’t a lie. He couldn’t come because he had an important client to tend to, though he inevitably learned the man’s name and has cursed it a million times since then. There is no way my father would ever forget who shattered his entire world.

“I can’t lie to the Chief Inspector, Rhealyn,” he says. “It’s a crime. Besides, Cindergrasp… he’s responsible for… everything.” He throws his hands up in the air, waving them around the house, encompassing even me. Especially me. “Everyone needs to know what a bastard he was. Maybe now that he's dead, they’ll finally listen to me.”

“You know they won’t. And if you don’t lie, they will throw me out of the Sky Order and into a cell.”

That glint in his eyes returns. “Will they?”

His lips twitch as if he’s suppressing a smile. Something in my chest constricts, and I find out that he can still hurt me, even after all the years I’ve spent telling myself he doesn’t matter. But then he stares into his tea, thinking for a moment. He’s not a stupid man.

His gaze darts up and meets mine, then he says, “They think… they think you killed him, don’t they?”

A flash of red blinds me for a second. My breath catches, and when my vision returns, I see my mother standing by the sink. Her arms are crossed, and she’s looking at me with immense disappointment. I shake my head and force myself back into reality. I hold my father’s gaze, but I say nothing. My throat is too tight, and I’m afraid my voice will break.

His demeanor changes by degrees. His tired features form a strange expression I can’t decipher. “Did you?” he asks. “Did you kill him?”

I consider lying. Telling him the truth would be a confession, which he could use against me. He blames Cindergrasp for what happened, but he also blames me. This would be his chance to get revenge on at least one culprit, wouldn’t it?

—I did not know, Zephyros says, that this was a fool’s errand. Do not tell him, Rhealyn.

I know I shouldn’t. I know I should heed Zephyros’s advice, but I need him to know. I need him to see that it wasn’t only his life that got ruined, that he wasn’t the only one who lost everything, even her father. I want him to know that I learned to hate just as much as he does, that we’re more similar than he imagines.

“I did kill him, father” I say, my voice a cold monotone. “I put a dagger in his back while I held him in front of a mirror, looked him in the eyes, and told him why he had to die. I twisted the dagger and let him bleed out until life vanished from his eyes.”

My words seem to echo around the kitchen over and over again. My mother, once more standing by the sink, covers her face with both hands and shakes her head, sobbing, all while my father sits like a statue, saying nothing and wearing the same unreadable expression.

I swallow thickly, fighting the knot of emotions twisting in my throat. “Well then, will you lie for me?”

It takes him a long agonizing minute to reply, and when I finally hear his answer, a bolt of true shock goes through me.

“Yes, Rhealyn.” To my ever-growing shock, he reaches for my hand and squeezes it. “I will lie for you.” A sad smile stretches his thin, chapped lips. “I’m… so proud of you. You avenged us, and now that monster is where he deserves to be… suffering in the Seven Hells.”

I stare at his fingers as they cover mine, an incongruous image I seem unable to process. I don’t remember the last time he touched me.

I’m proud of you.

The words I’ve been wanting to hear from him all along… he finally said them, and it wasn’t because I graduated from the Academy with top marks, or because I earned a dragon and have joined an elite group few ever do, but because… because…

I am a murderess.