Page 13 of Veil of Death and Shadow (Order of Reapers #1)

13

MAREENA

Approximately Nine Years Ago, Three Years Before The Undoing

W ith a heavy tug, I managed to pull the paddleboard down the dock, plopping it less gracefully than I normally did in the water.

It was more difficult than usual since, though mostly healed, my hand still wasn’t back to tip-top shape. Pumping the board up had been a test in patience that I almost didn’t pass.

At least it was healing. My knuckles were pretty much back to their normal size and, based on the improvements these last few weeks, I was confident my hand would be fully functional in another week or two. Seemed Levi was right, thankfully—nothing was broken, and the cuts had already scabbed over.

The sun beat down on my back as I velcroed the strap around my ankle and then wiggled onto the board.

It was my prized possession and the single most expensive thing I’d ever purchased for myself. Even though I got it second-hand, I still cringed whenever I thought about how much I forked over.

Worth every penny though, if I was honest.

Plus, it was on its third summer—patch tape worked wonders on all the inevitable holes.

It was one of those absurdly perfect Seattle days. Not a cloud in the sky. Hot, but tolerable near the water. And since it was a Wednesday afternoon, the small, secret cove I flocked to wasn’t too busy. Two guys scarfed down their lunches near the ramp, trying to soak in a few minutes of sun before they got back to work. At the end of the dock, there was a couple, both laying out in highlighter-bright bikinis while they played fetch with their golden retriever. Peels of their laughter and cheers ricocheted around the little bay, each time the dog bravely dove into the water and eagerly swam after his orange ball.

With a giant smile on my face, I leaned back on the paddleboard and floated near the dock, soaking in the feel of the sun on my skin.

This was one of my favorite—if not straight up favorite—places in the entire city. It was physically impossible not to feel a shooting wave of happiness here, on a day like this.

“Tell me, Rick,” a deep voice sounded above me. Startled, I wobbled on the board, nearly tipping into the water, then steadied myself at the last second, wincing when I used my bad hand to stabilize. “How exactly is this touring?”

I sat up and found Levi staring down at me—dressed in black, as usual, a hesitant scowl on his face as he glanced from the dock to me.

We were doing my portion of the deal first, since he didn’t want to start Punching Asshats 101, as I’d dubbed it, until my hand looked less like a blob with five sausages attached.

“You’re like,” I shuffled through my dry bag and pulled out my phone, “half an hour early.”

I’d deliberately come down here before we were set to meet so that I could get some solid introvert peace and quiet beforehand.

He shrugged, a soft smirk teasing his lips. “Didn’t want to be late. And I needed to make sure I could find this spot based on your . . . colorful directions.”

I swallowed my grin. Instead of giving him an address, I’d sent him on a bit of scavenger hunt that forced him to explore a park and small shopping district on his way to me. Figured it was a good way to smash two tours into one, plus see if he would actually follow through.

“Well, you made it.” I scanned his clothes. Black pants, black T-shirt—surely, this was a uniform at this point—and a backpack dangling at his side. “Thought I said bring a swimsuit and prepare for a day out on the water?”

Maybe he wasn’t so great at following instructions after all.

“Trying to get my clothes off already, are we?” He winked, kicked off his shoes, then peeled off his socks. “Have to admit, I honestly thought you were fucking with me. But I came prepared in case you weren’t.”

When he started to unbutton his jeans, I shifted my focus to the other side of the dock, suddenly deeply interested in the colorful, sun-bleached houseboats lining the water.

“So why the water?” Levi asked. “Thought today was supposed to be a tour day?”

“Best place to see the city, in my opinion.” I glanced back at him, finding myself very thankful that my sunglasses were oversized. Hopefully that meant they hid some of the blush on my cheeks, or the fact that I couldn’t tear my stare from him.

Not only did Levi have a pair of swim shorts under his pants—black, his signature color, of course—but he was also now shirtless.

And, unfortunately, it was as perfect a sight as I’d imagined it would be the day I first saw him at Frank’s. Smooth, lean muscle, every inch carved to perfection. It was honestly ridiculous.

He smirked, no doubt fully aware of how hot he was, and lifted his bag. “Er, what am I supposed to do with this?”

Right. I could do this. It took me a moment to unfluster myself and lift my dry bag up to him. “Put anything essential in here, and then just hide your bag behind that bush over there.” I nodded towards the main ramp, which had a bush and small cove underneath, a few feet above the waterline. “Should be safe until we get back. Probably.”

“You really know how to set a guy at ease, don’t you?” Still, he did as I suggested and hid his bag under cover of the bush. It, like everything else he owned, was black, so it would blend in well enough. When he made his way back to me, I had one leg dangling over one side of the board and used the paddle to anchor me to the dock.

I’d gone with a one-piece and pair of shorts, so that I wouldn’t feel too exposed. Still, when his gaze dipped over me, it felt like I might as well have been wearing nothing.

Some of his cocky expression waned when he stared at the paddleboard. I wouldn’t call it outright fear, but he was eyeing it with the sort of suspicion I’d be eyeing every beer dudes tried offering me in the future.

Should I have warned him?

While I often felt more in control on the water than I did on land, that didn’t necessarily translate for others.

“Sorry, I should have checked with you first. If you’re not comfortable, you don’t have to get on. Do you know how to swim?”

“I’ll manage.” He grinned. “Hopefully. I mean, how hard could it be?”

Then without warning, he took a running jump and leapt over me and into the water, clearly unconcerned about the wave he sent splashing up in his wake.

He stayed under longer than I anticipated, and when I glanced around, expecting rippling rings to signal his emergence, I saw only still water.

“Levi?” Leaning over, I tried to see through the murky depths of the water, but all I saw was my own reflection staring back at me. “Levi!”

Before panic had the chance to fully settle over me, my board tipped, sending me plunging into the water.

Ice surged through my veins. While the water was safe to swim in, it was still cold. The Pacific Ocean was always frigid, no matter how hot the temperature on land was—and even though this lake was freshwater, not salt, the two still connected. Now that fall was ushering in, it wouldn’t be until next summer that a swim in this lake didn’t send a bolt of cold through my bones.

When my face broke the surface, I found Levi, his head resting on his arms, which were folded over the board to keep him effortlessly afloat. “Whoops.”

I brushed my hair back and grabbed my sunglasses before they disappeared into the lake, never to be seen again. I’d lost three pairs, two shirts, and a book to these depths over the years. “Dick.”

He shrugged, a wicked grin on his face. The sun made the water droplets on his face sparkle, like they were laughing too. “Sorry, couldn’t resist.”

As much as I fought to keep it there, my scowl twisted into a laugh. “Whatever, you’re paddling. Get on.”

He slid himself over the board with more grace than I’d anticipated and leveraged his weight while I climbed up myself.

Once I steadied us both, I handed him the second ankle leash. “Put this on.”

“Yes, mam.”

When I glanced at him, my breath caught in my lungs. If he was hot dry and on land, then wet Levi was two stages past scorching.

Water glistened over his skin. The dark curls that were always half in his eyes were pushed back now—the gray pools clear and filled with a mirth that the sun gravitated towards and only seemed to accentuate more, like it was his own personal ring light.

I cleared my throat, and glanced down at the board, realizing how very little room there was between us. “Right. Safety first. Let’s teach you how to stand.”

Pushing off from the ramp, I positioned us a few feet away, ensuring that if and when we fell again, neither of us would end up getting a dock lobotomy.

Like most people, Levi fell the first time he tried standing.

And since we were both on the paddleboard, that meant I fell, too.

I talked him through it, giving him the spiel I wished someone had given me: don’t lock your knees, stand on either side of the line to center your weight, and when it’s time to stand up, don’t look down, look out on the horizon instead.

He was wobbly at first, but he had a good awareness of his body and center of gravity, and, once he had a feel for the board, a solid balance followed soon after that. It was always more difficult with two people on here, so I was impressed with how quickly he picked it up.

The water rippled around us, and when I glanced to the right, I noticed a furry, golden head making its way towards the board.

The golden retriever swam up to me, no doubt excited to have playmates in the water. He held the orange ball in his mouth like a prize as he collected a few well-deserved scratches behind his ear. He plopped the soaking-wet ball between us, and Levi tossed it out into the water, for the little land-seal to go fetch.

We watched him collect it, then head back to his moms on the dock, pride brimming when he climbed up and shook off all over them.

Feeling lighter than I had in a while, I handed Levi the paddle and gestured for him to kneel. It would be easier to move us both that way, than if we were both standing. Then, I waved my hand out towards the expanse of water. “Alright, let’s go see the city.”

Paddling two people wasn’t exactly the easiest thing in the world, but Levi made it look like it was. He moved us through the water evenly, with an impressive speed that didn’t seem to cost him any effort.

“You’re different out here, you know.” He averted his gaze when I looked up at him, almost shy. “Happier. Freer.”

“Less prickly, you mean?” I arched my brow.

He laughed. “Yeah, less prickly. Though don’t get me wrong, I like the prickly you, too.”

My chest tightened at that admission and, clearing my throat, I gestured absently around us—the blue sky, the warm sun, the picturesque water and houseboats lining the coast. “Kind of hard not to be happy out here.”

“You come here a lot then?”

I nodded. “As often as I can. I’ve always loved being on the water.”

Sometimes, after a particularly bad day, I’d find my way to the dock we’d left from and just go for a swim, alone, letting myself become one with the water and night sky. Not exactly the safest safety blanket in the world, sure, but my little cove never failed to make me feel better—less alone, even when I was. Out here, the weight of the world just felt lighter—no matter how heavy it was on land.

The water was also where I felt closest to Amto Amani. When I closed my eyes, I could almost imagine that I was back on our little shoreline, just out of reach of where her voice would carry. That if I opened my eyes, I might see her standing there on the dock.

Though, of course, I never could.

I studied him as he maneuvered us away from the small bay and out into the canal. We weren’t too far from where Sora and I had taken him before. “You sure you’ve never been on a paddleboard, or were you just fucking with me?”

His lips tipped into a small grin, that dimple of his making an appearance again. “I pick things up pretty quickly.”

It took a non-small amount of effort not to stare at his chest and abs as he moved us effortlessly through the water. The constant shifting from one side of the board to the other did major things for the expanse of muscle on display.

“This canal splits the northern half of the city from the southern, which makes it a unique way to understand and calibrate where a lot of the neighborhoods are. So,” I said, jutting my chin to the west, “if we went that way, we’d eventually hit the Locks in Ballard and, from there, the Sound.” I pointed to the buildings on the opposite side of the water. “Over there, you have Magnolia and Queen Anne.” I pointed east. “We’re going this way. We’ll hit Wallingford and Lake Union, and if we keep going beyond that, the lake will eventually spill into U District and Lake Washington.”

He nodded, maneuvering us in the direction I suggested.

After a few minutes of silence, he glanced down at me. “Your hand looks better. How’s it feeling?”

I opened it, flexing. “Better. Figure I should be in perfect punching form in a week or so.”

He grinned. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Surprisingly, he hadn’t texted much in the weeks since getting my number. Just enough to confirm a time and place—and for me to send my directions. And he usually took hours, sometimes days, to respond to the few back and forths we had managed.

It made sense. Levi wasn’t the sort of person who was stuck to their phone—a trait I admired. In fact, the only time I recalled it making an appearance was when he shoved it under my nose to punch my number in.

“So,” I said, feeling slightly bad that I wasn’t contributing much to the actual labor of the paddle. Least I could do was come up with some conversation. “What part of town are you staying in while you’re here.”

His grip tightened on the paddle, the smooth cadence of his stroke breaking just a touch. “Um, I’m outside the city, mostly.”

I studied him. “How far outside of the city?”

He shrugged. “It changes. Sometimes I’m close, but otherwise, I’m a few hours out.”

My jaw dropped. “Hours?”

His eyes shifted to mine, then back to the water, like he was embarrassed. “There’s not much to do where I’m working. I don’t even have cell service.” That explained the infrequency of his texts. “So I drive into the city for a night or two when I’m off. Clear my head away from—everything.”

I thought back to that day at Frank’s. He’d been drowning his sorrows in liquor. He was also stiff and moodier than now. “What kind of work do you do, exactly?”

He was silent for a long stretch, like he was searching for the right words—something that instantly had my hackles up, because why did he make it seem like it was such a difficult question? “My family works in protective detail. And right now, my mom is spending a lot of time with a small town in the mountains. I can kind of come and go when I want, but sometimes she sends me out of the state, too—for other clients and stuff.”

“Protective detail,” I repeated, rolling the words over my tongue. Like a bodyguard? What the hell did that mean? And who needed security in the mountains? “How long have you been doing that?”

He shrugged. “As long as I can remember.”

I narrowed my eyes. “You can’t have been working that long. You don’t look all that older than me, and I doubt your family let you go all secret service mode as a minor.”

His lips twitched, but he didn’t say anything.

“And you don’t know how long you’ll be around the area?”

He shook his head. “Not forever, just until my skills are needed elsewhere.”

“And those skills are?”

A smile stretched across his face, that dimple making an appearance again. “Teaching girls how to punch asshats.

I chuckled, though I recognized the clear attempt to change the topic for what it was. “You won’t tell me what you do, where you’re from, how long you’re here. What will you tell me?” When the silence stretched between us again, heavier now, I became abundantly aware of the fact that I was in the middle of the water with a virtual stranger. I was a strong swimmer, and was pretty confident that I could get away from him if I needed to—that was one of the reasons I’d suggested we do the tour here instead of in a car—but he wasn’t exactly offering trustworthy vibes. “You’ve got to give me something, Levi, otherwise I’m just going to think that I’ve embarked on a transactional venture with a serial killer.”

He stopped paddling for a moment, and we watched a crew team pass us, their soft chants fading with each pull. “I can’t tell you a lot about what I do or why I’m here, Mareena. I could lie, make shit up,” his eyes snagged on mine, an emotion I couldn’t parse flitting across his features, “but I really don’t want to do that.”

That night at the canal, he’d been oddly easy to talk to. At least Sora seemed to think so. And he didn’t seem to have trouble chatting with Chase or the bouncer at the party. Just me.

He was an indecipherable puzzle—one that occasionally made it seem like it was solvable, only for you to step back and realize that there were twice as many pieces than when you first opened the box.

I dipped my feet in the water. “Okay, then tell me something about you. Or about your family. Just—” I watched a seagull dive into the water, fishing out its lunch, “tell me something true.” I flicked at the water. “It’s only fair. Sora spilled one of my darkest secrets within, like, twenty minutes of talking to you.”

“To be fair,” he sat down on his calves, giving up on paddling altogether now, “you’re more a closed book than you think you are. Maybe the most locked down person I’ve ever met, and I’ve met a lot of locked down people.” He shifted, letting out a breathy laugh. “Besides, Sora hardly revealed anything. She just told me that you thought you were cursed. That you believe, on some level, that those you’re close to die. I wouldn’t really call that a particularly soul-baring secret. If anything, that tells me more about the people around you than it does you. Plus, for all you know, I brushed it off as a joke.”

“You didn’t.” I was suddenly incredibly aware of the fact that his knee was only an inch or two away from mine.

He shook his head. “No but, in the interest of fairness and keeping things transactional, I also gave you one of my own fears in return.”

The way he lingered on the word ‘gave’ made me realize that that moment had been more soul-baring for him than I’d realized.

“You really believe that you have no say in your destiny?” I asked.

He arched his brow. “You really believe you kill people by association?”

“Touche.”

“What will convince you that I’m not a serial killer?” He shot me a coy grin. “Since apparently saving you from a drugged beer isn’t cutting it.”

“Oh please,” I grunted, “everyone knows that serial killers enjoy doing the killing part themselves.” I flicked some water on the board at him. “If anything, you were just saving me from Ace so that you could get me off yourself.” Heat crawled up my neck as I instantly realized my mistake. “I mean off me,” I corrected, flustered. “ Off me yourself.”

“Off you,” he said, then he let out a deep and husky chuckle that did strange things to my stomach.

I couldn’t bring myself to look at him, choosing instead to focus on the yacht coming towards us, and the obnoxious yuppies dancing to shitty music on the deck.

“Tell me about your mom,” I said, shifting the conversation in a direction that most definitely would not send my mind in dangerous directions.

“I don’t really know what to say about her. No one’s really asked me about her before,” he said, almost surprised by the revelation. “She’s a . . . mom, I guess.” He shrugged. “Tough, kind of standoffish around other people, but warm around me. Funny when she lets her guard down—which is pretty rare when it’s not just me and her. She’s also extremely protective.” He paused for a moment. “I owe her a lot. She gave up a big part of her life when she found out she was pregnant with me. I’ve always kind of felt shitty for that.”

“What do you mean?”

“She had an affair,” he winced, then dropped his leg in the water, letting it dangle over the side. “And the guy who impregnated her was not the guy she was married to.”

“Ah,” I said, “and judging by the fact that you called him ‘the guy who impregnated her,’ I’m guessing you and he aren’t exactly close.”

He ran his hand through his hair, which was now almost dry again from the sun’s heat. “Nope. It was just a fling—with my mom. He wasn’t around.”

“I’m sorry.” And I was. I knew what it was like not to know the people you came from. It wasn’t a loss in the traditional sense—it was hard to miss someone you never had—more like an emptiness, a piece of yourself that was forever cut off from you. “I never met my dad either.”

He glanced up at me, a softness in his eyes that wasn’t there before. “And what about your mom?”

“She uh—she died giving birth to me.” I swirled my leg through the water, needing the distraction. I never let myself linger on my parents for too long. There was too much guilt, too much shame—both because giving birth to me killed my mother, and because when it came down to it, I missed Amto Amani far more than I’d ever missed the parents I never even met. Sometimes, even though it didn’t make any sense, that felt like a bit of a betrayal. “What about your mom’s husband, from before? Is he still in the picture? Are you two close?”

Levi shook his head. “No, they had another son.” He looked shy suddenly, the callous, cocky mask he usually wore slipping away. “Before me, I mean. So, I guess I have a half-brother technically. I’ve met him, but we aren’t really close. I tried, when I was younger, to reach out,” he exhaled sharply, “but he made it very clear that he had no interest. He hates me, but I can’t say that I entirely blame him.”

“Why would he hate you?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” His leg brushed against mine under the water, but he pulled it back just as quickly, as if the touch had stung. “I broke up his perfect family. If I hadn’t been in the picture, I’m sure my mom and her ex would have worked things out—whatever their problems were. She’s never really discussed it with me. I think thinking about that part of her life hurts too much.”

“Hey,” I nudged him, waiting to continue until he looked up at me again. “That wasn’t your fault. I’m sure what happened was shitty. But if he blames you, then fuck him. He doesn’t deserve to have you in his life.”

“What about you?” he asked, watching me now with a focus that made me squirm. Maybe drawing his attention back to me had been a mistake. “Who raised you, I mean, if not your birth parents?”

“My aunt,” I answered. “Well, technically my father’s aunt. After my mom—” I shrugged. “Well, you know—after what happened—I moved in with my mom’s sister, but I wasn’t there for very long.”

She was my mother’s only family, an older sister she was never close with, but she took me in anyway. I didn’t have any memory of her. Or any memory I did have, I suppose, was cobbled together through a handful of photos I found online years later—memories that were half shadow and false memory, a record more than anything I felt particularly connected to. It seemed silly, holding onto a memory of what I couldn’t keep.

“It didn’t work out?” he asked.

“She died, too. Overdosed a few days before my first birthday. And her own daughter, just two years older than me, fell ill not long after she passed. Her husband—my uncle—sent me away after that. Thought I was cursed.” I gave him a wry grin. “My cousin got better after I left—or at least I assume she did, since she’s still alive anyway. According to the internet.” And a drunken night of social media sleuthing with Sora.

I never tried getting in touch with her though. Protective services reached out to them after Amto Amani died, hoping they could place me with them. But my uncle made it clear that I wasn't welcome.

I was dead to them, no matter how alive I was.

It stung, maybe, but I understood. Bad omen, curse, or just plain bad luck—it hardly mattered at the end of the day. My presence had done very little to protect the people closest to me.

“But yeah, l guess that’s where the whole curse thing started, now that I think about it,” I said.

“That’s ridiculous, you know that, right? A string of rotten luck, sure, but what happened to them wasn’t your fault.” His brows were furrowed, like he was angry on my behalf. “You have to see that.”

I shrugged. “Yeah, maybe. I mean, I don’t know, I know the curse theory is all woo-woo and out there, and maybe it’s not real. I hope it’s not. Trust me, no one hopes that more than I do. But there’s enough evidence that it is—or at least that it could be.”

I dipped my hand into the water, letting the cool, gentle waves pull it under. Oddly, I wasn’t panicking. Maybe it was because I was in my element out here, or maybe it was just something about Levi—he’d certainly had a way of getting Sora to open up, I supposed I shouldn’t be surprised he’d been just as successful with me. Or maybe it was easier to be open with him because I knew what this was—a transaction. Two days, and we were well on our way through the first.

There was no danger of things going any deeper than surface level, not really.

In some ways, that made him the easiest person to talk to. Things I spoke into existence out here would be swallowed up again by the sea and a stranger.

“It just seems easier to assume it’s true,” I said. “Safer. For other people, you know? I don’t blame my uncle for sending me away.”

He didn’t know me. He wasn’t even my blood. And he certainly didn’t owe me anything. He did, however, owe his daughter protection and, rational or not, it was entirely possible that shipping me off was what saved her in the end. Almost like he had been holding onto her at the edge of death's cliff with nothing more than fatherly desperation and a white-knuckled grip—and the only way to pull her up was to let me go.

In her story, he was a hero. In mine, he wasn’t even a villain. Just a fleeting footnote.

Levi didn’t look convinced, but he decided to be merciful and drop it. “And after that—you lived with your father’s aunt?”

I nodded, the tension easing from my body. “Amto Amani. She’s the reason I’m on the West Coast. I was born in Ohio, but I moved to a small, isolated town on the Oregon coast when she took me in.”

“What was she like?”

“Warm. She had a really great, but kind of dark sense of humor. And she didn’t give a single fuck what anyone thought about her.” I smiled, remembering her fierceness, the confidence she radiated in every room she walked in. Now that I was older, I wondered how much of that was innate, and how much was a shield or weapon she could wield when she needed it most. “Which was really impressive, considering she was a bit of an outsider, and we lived in a super small community. The sort filled with judgmental assholes just looking for someone to cast out. People thought she was a witch.” I laughed, my chest feeling light and free with the memory. “They hated her for it, but that didn’t stop them banging on her door in the middle of the night, begging for spells and talismans for whatever misfortune had fallen on them. We had a lot of fun over the years, collecting random things and pretending to enchant them.”

During my time with her, I never once felt like I was cursed, though I’d asked Amto Amani about it when I was older—like as I grew, the more aware I became that death was close. She often brushed it off, called my fears unwarranted, but sometimes I’d catch her watching me when she didn’t think I noticed, her features carved into a frown, lost in thought.

Of course, after I arrived, and throughout the nine or so years I lived there, people in our small town grew mysteriously ill. Several even died, but no one cast the blame on me.

Who would blame a child? Especially one orphaned so tragically?

No, it was far easier to blame my great aunt, a woman who’d always lived on the outskirts of their community, as mysterious as a stranger.

My memories of the town, even now, were laced with the sharp sound of their whispering behind our backs—an occurrence that took place nearly every time we walked down the main street of shops. They swore that she was a witch, cursed; threatened time and time again to have me taken from her and sent away to a more suitable guardian. Someone who could give me a family, a future, a more palatable life.

Or at least one that better suited their idea of a palatable life.

I loved living with Amto Amani, and never once felt like my life was lacking in any way.

She’d always pull me tight against her side, gluing us together when those threats would resurface—her warmth sinking into me, a calming promise, the vicious hiss and nonsensical chanting she shot back at the pearl-clutching townspeople a dark dare.

It was enough to keep their threats just that. And their fear never stopped any of them from haunting our driveway in the early hours of the morning, begging for a love spell to draw back a cheating spouse, or a protective talisman to keep their investments from slipping through their fingers.

She would always acquiesce, whispering gibberish over her table of found objects and rocks—most discarded trinkets I’d collected from oblivious tourists during the summer months. Worthless.

Then, when the townspeople threw her a few wrinkled bills, noses crumpled in disgust—disgust that seemed directed half at her and half at themselves—they'd stow away their useless talismans and the cloudy vials of water they’d assumed she’d ‘blessed’ and brought back from the Mediterranean Sea. They had no idea that I’d collected the liquid from the shoreline just a few steps from their very backyards.

Of course, those moments of desperation also never stopped them from whispering behind our backs the next day when we'd go in for the week's groceries or keep them from hugging their children close to their bosoms whenever we passed by.

I'd asked her once, why she did it, why she fed into their fears and carved space for the lies they harbored to root and grow, but she only laughed, her answer so clear and so her, that I remembered every word til this day.

“Fear is a powerful tool, habibti,” she’d said, her words filtered through the soft curves of the accent that only occasionally made itself known. “ Don’t underestimate it. Their money spends the same, no matter what names they might call me. And it’s far better for their ignorance and hatred to land on me than on you. I can make better use of it. "

Her fearlessness wrapped around me like a cloak, and I grew to revel in her cleverness, amplifying her fake chanting with my own whenever I was feeling particularly brave.

“She sounds kind of like you,” Levi said, drawing me back from the recesses of my thoughts.

With slow, steady strokes, he started pushing us down our path again.

He had no idea how very wrong he was—or how much I wished that he wasn’t.

“I can tell you really loved her.” He smiled, and this time it stretched all the way to his eyes. “You light up when you talk about her.”

My cheeks warmed under the weight of his gaze. “She was just that kind of person, you know? The start of my life was chaotic, but when I was with her, it never really felt like I’d suffered some great loss.”

Even with the solitude of our town, made more obvious by the disdain of the people who lived there, I loved my childhood with her. Possibly, in part, because I didn't know anything different, but mostly because she had a way of infusing warmth into every room of our small cottage—her every exhale breathing comfort and light into each crack and cob-webbed corner.

As long as I had her, I hardly noticed the things I lacked—friends my own age, my parents. She was all I needed. And she put my needs before anything else, even when they created more work for her.

“During my first week of school,” I said, recalling the memory with a sudden urgency, “I'd been picked on so badly for living with a witch, that I begged to be homeschooled. It was a request she’d refused, at first, until the afternoon I came home with a black eye and a gash a few millimeters short of my eyeball where the sharp edge of a rock had hit. She gave in instantly after that, securing a stack of textbooks and various homeschool curriculums. Just like that, she sacrificed so much of her time and so many resources to keep me safe, to keep me happy.”

Our life went back to being cozy and quiet after that day. Just us. She never let me go a single day without knowing that I was loved, without making sure I understood that my life was a gift, not a curse. That I was not defined by what I’d lost but forged stronger because of it.

“How long did you live with her?”

“About nine years, give or take,” I said. “She died on my tenth birthday. And then I ended up in a group home and foster care. That’s where Sora and I eventually met a few years later.”

If I believed in such things, I’d think Amto Amani had sent her to me—like she knew I’d need someone to hold onto when she was gone, someone too stubborn to let me isolate myself entirely.

“I’m glad you had her,” he said, his expression soft, the hard edges from earlier erased entirely. “And I’m sorry that you lost her so young.”

“Thank you.” I swallowed; my throat tight with the loss of her. “I don’t talk about her much.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Sometimes it’s hard.”

“I get that.” He nodded, his lips lifting into a small smirk. “Sometimes it’s easier to talk to a stranger you’ve only agreed to hang out with twice.”

I snorted. “Precisely.”

But it was also more than that.

After Amto Amani died, I didn’t speak about her very much. Partially because, at first, I didn’t know what wearing the grief of her loss would feel like. The more I grew into it, the less I felt equipped to unpack it, to put it on display for people—even Sora, which was absurd, because she would have understood better than most. But she held her own pain just as closely, like a second skin.

In some ways, it was easier to dance around the other’s pain, a silent promise that we knew that it was there, that it festered—neither of us able to look the other’s loss in the eye, because if we did, we might have to let it go.

And we both understood the truth—that letting go of that pain was the only thing more heartbreaking than feeling it. That pain was the final tether we had to the people we’d loved the most. It had to be guarded, protected, at all costs.

The days after Amto Amani died had been easier in some ways. People treated me with understanding, their eyes soft, their voices quiet as they ripped me from the only home I knew, placing me in a different, colder one, where I was untethered from any connection to my life before then. Still, while their words were filled with false sincerity and wishes for my wellbeing, they didn’t fight back against my tears, didn’t tell me to toughen up or get over it.

In those days, my grief was a deep wound, an incision I could point to, that they could all see and understand, on some level. But as the days turned to months, and then years, that wound closed, becoming nothing more than fading scar tissue to those viewing it from the outside.

What they didn’t see or understand, was that though invisible to them, the ache left by Amto Amani’s death festered beneath my skin, growing and rooting into my veins and bones, cocooning me completely. Where grief had been acute and sharp before, it had morphed into a gentle—though no less painful—throb. One I couldn’t escape. One that became like a second heartbeat, as necessary to me as my own breath.

The loss engraved in me by her death was so much more than just the loss of her person. She’d been the only anchor I had to myself. With her, I lost my community, my culture—the frail connections to family and blood were completely eviscerated. With her gone, I didn’t know where boundaries of myself started and ended. I didn’t know who I was without her. Without the one person in the world who understood me, who’d seen me—through me, down to the core of who I was.

I knew it was the same for Sora, after Rina died. Perhaps that was why we never spoke about it. Both of us recognized the echo of a pain we tried desperately to cover in the other. It was the sort of agony that only multiplied when you looked at it, like speaking it into the world would only infect the other’s wounds, make them worse—impossible to feign recovery from. If we tried to wrap up each other’s grief, we’d be left sitting on the discarded paper, drowning in it.

“Well,” I said, clearing my throat and shoving the weight of loss back into the recesses of my mind where I usually kept it covered, “this is Seattle.”

The already-wide canal opened up into Lake Union, the large lake that traced the skyline.

Something about the immensity of it here, existing in the middle of it, made me feel so small. But not in a bad way, just one thing that reminded me how very full and exciting the city really was outside of my small world.

Behind us stood Gas Works, an old Industrial plant that had been repurposed into a public park in the sixties. It was such a strange mix of nature and industry, the large metal structures were still on display, though they were ruins now, as grass and plants reclaimed the area surrounding them. There was a giant hill that tourists and children climbed, their kites soaring like birds through the sky.

As cool as the park was on its own terms, it was generally visited because it looked out on one of the best views in the city.

In front of us, tall and looming, as sea planes took off and landed around us stood the Seattle skyline—the famous Space Needle on the right, closest to where we were floating.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Breathtaking,” he said, his voice almost reverent as his eyes held mine.