Page 3 of The Darkening (The Darkening)

The beast snaps at me, and my head bangs against the wall, a whoosh of displaced air kissing my throat.

Pa raises his arm and sends the knife flying.

I squeeze my eyes shut.

The beast shrieks in my face, but its scream dies into a gurgle of grinding rock.

I open my eyes. Cloudsmoke pincers tremble an inch from my face. A pale grayness spreads across its eight eyes, dulling them, as if someone upended paint over its head. The grayness radiates from a single point: where Pa’s knife is embedded in its side. It reaches the tips of its pincers and the furred edges of its feet, and all is still.

I stretch out a shaking hand to the beast’s skin. My fingers brush cold stone. One ikon did this?

“Vesper!” Pa yells.

I inch sideways until I’m free of the beast and break into a run to him. Pa glances up at the sky as he grabs my arm and hurries me inside.

The door shuts behind us.

I lean back against it, gasping into the silence, meeting a dozen pairs of wide eyes.

Pa squeezes his eyes shut, but his relief lasts barely a second before he wheels on me, a flush reddening his tan skin and his gray eyes glinting. “What were you thinking?”

I catch my breath. “We just saved two people, Pa.”

“No, I saved three people.Younearly threw your life away.”

My cheeks heat. “It was the right thing to do.”

“If you can’t even protect yourself, you’ve no business playing hero.”

The mother and her daughter watch us, huddled together on the empty bed in the corner, clutching each other even tighter than they did outside. Their terror stokes a red-hot fury in my belly, one that melts the rest of my fear away.

Giving them as much of a smile as I can manage, I push past Amma and the stormtouched, heading into the kitchen. Four of them stare openly, but a few avert their eyes in a pretense of giving us privacy. Red-haired Jem ever so sweetly slides a finger across her throat and grins at me.

“Vesper!” Pa’s thudding footsteps follow me into the kitchen.

I draw down the curtain as Pa stands with his back to me, gripping the edge of the counter. He takes a deep, shuddering breath, and his voice comes out dead quiet. “When are you going to learn?”

My stomach sinks. Wisps of my hair fly around my face and stick to my cheeks, courtesy of the humidity and the static in the air, and I work my fingers through knotted curls, buying myself a moment. I know it’s not what he means, but a little rebellious voice says, “I want to learn, Pa. Teach me a few tricks, and you won’t have to worry anymore.”

He wheels on me, more frightening than the hairy spider baby. “Don’t start. Not now. Not when your foolishness almost cost you your life.”

I bite my lip. How do I make him see that ikonomancy could’ve saved me? I had time to write an ikon. If I’d known the one that turnedthe beast to stone, I could’ve saved myself. I wouldn’t need him. “If you taught me, Pa, I promise I’d make you proud.”

“Vesper—”

“Pa, I’d be dead if you didn’t know ikons. If I knew ikons, knew them properly—”

“Enough.” His voice booms through the kitchen.

My heart is in my throat. “Or what? You know every ikon under the Storm, Pa, and you don’t do anything. If I had a third—no, a tenth—of the ikons you know—”

Pa looks at me as if I’ve struck him.

I pause. I’ve said worse than that without him giving me that look. “What?”

“We need to go.”

“What? Go? Where?”