“As you’ve always been,” she said, sliding me a knowing smile.
“Was the box from Lucia?”
“It was.” The smile slid from her lips, and she seemed to steady herself as she drew a deep breath.
“She left me a note,” Thalia finally said, the words chipping away some fractured part of me that had pieced itself back together in the decades following Lucia’s death. “It didn’t make sense, though. It was as if she knew she would be gone when I found it.”
How could she have known that?
“It also contained a keepsake—a memento from when I was held as a prisoner of The Pits, one I had completely forgotten.”
Her stormy eyes fell to the cracked pavement as we continued down the dark alley. "It was the only thing I had left from before I was taken.”
She had never spoken of before The Pits, as if the time before that terrible place had simply ceased to exist in her memories.
“I don’t remember much of my childhood,” she said, and my heart twisted at the truth I knew, the truth I wished I could reverse. “Only that my parents were killed when the darklings attacked Moonhaven, and when I found myself lost in the woods—hiding from the terrible monsters who had chased me from my home—I met a boy and his sister.”
Each word felt like a confession, like something she had held so close to her heart that she couldn’t bring herself to share, like a prized possession that could be stolen from her.
A weak smile tugged at the corners of her lips, the sight of it pulling at my heart in a way that made me want to take her in my arms, to hold her and tell her it was okay to share this knowledge with me—that it would be safe, that their memory would be safe.
And that what I knew to be true would do nothing to the feelings I harbored for her.
“They were kind to me. Fed me, lifted my spirits when I had felt broken and lost. The girl, Cali, showed me how to make flower crowns.” Her eyes went distant. “The boy... He gifted me his coat so I could stay warm that night, promised to bring a blanket the following day.”
I could almost see the unspoken words lingering on the tip of her tongue, and I wanted so badly to tell her I knew it was Barrett. No matter how much I wanted to, though, I couldn’t bring myself to force that truth from her, not before she was ready.
“I had hoped to see them again, to thank them for their kindness, but that was the night Rhyas took me across the veil.”
The leather of her gloves groaned as her hands tightened into fists. “I lost so much that night: the tiny trinket my father had gifted me, my name, my freedom, everything. The coat the boy gifted me was all I had left—all that survived the countless decades I spent fighting in The Pits.”
She lifted her gaze to me, and her steps came to a halt. My heart launched into my throat at the consideration in her gaze. Her lips parted, as if to speak some truth she had been afraid to share.
Tell me. Please.
A gasped cry and a scuffle of shoes against the ground dragged my attention from her, and we turned to find a young woman stumbling from a nearby alley. Her clothes were dirty, sweater ripped, her braided chestnut hair was disheveled, stray curls breaking free in her panic.
“Someone—" She gasped for air. “Someone, please!”
Her wild, hazel eyes found us, and we stiffened. I had never encountered a human on patrol, and for a moment, I hesitated. As she twisted to look over her shoulder, though, I realized this was no normal encounter. This human was being chased.
Thalia immediately rushed toward her, hands held out, and my hand flew to my sheathed dagger, my eyes darting to the shadows at her back in search of darklings.
“Are you all right? What happened?” Thalia asked.
The girl fell into Thalia’s arms, grabbing onto her as if she feared she might be torn away. She sobbed, tears streaking her dirt-stained cheeks. “Please, don’t let him take me!”
The scent of blood reached my nose, and as I drew closer, I could see the traces of cuts and scrapes peeking from beneath the tears and rips of her sweater and jeans. Gods, what happened to her? A fine sheen of sweat painted her skin despite the cold air, and I could almost hear her heart racing to the beat of her terror.
“Who? Who’s chasing you?” Thalia asked as she steadied her.
The human’s head whipped around, her terrified eyes darting to where she’d come as I came to a stop at Thalia’s side. I followed her gaze before catching a glimpse of a figure watching us from the shadows of a nearby alley.
“Hey!” I called out as the figure turned and ran.
“Stay here,” I demanded before taking off after him, my boots pounding into the pavement, echoing off the brick walls and dying out in the night.
As I rounded the corner, my pace quickening, I could barely make out the hint of blond hair, a male figure clothed in black as he raced toward the downtown district. This couldn’t have been a darkling. It was too deep in the night for a darkling to take human form, but his pace left me barely able to keep up...
