I know he’s dead, otherwise the Wraiths wouldn’t have taken me to Veltuur, but I can’t shake the feeling that he is still alive, waiting to take me again, as he had so many times before.
I’d kill him again if I could.
Sharply, I stand and stride to the fire, staring into it before Acari can see the pools of tears held at bay only by my eyelashes.
I sharpen the edge of my voice like steel and cut through the uncomfortable silence. “I am fine. You should rest.”
“I don’t think I can…”
I know what he’s about to say, but I can’t stomach to hear it. Instead, I pretend like he’s talking about something other than my past.
With a stomp of my boot, I spin around. I storm over back across the room and stomp onto the bed, ignoring the dried mud crumbling from my boots onto the flannel blanket and instead focus on the black creature nested in the corner where the ceiling meets the walls.
“I didn’t mean—” Acari pleads, but he is too late.
I know who I am.
I am not some weak, little child.
I am a Reaper.
All it would take is a simple touch and this spider would end. But I don’t want to just touch it. There’s too many years of anguish and rage built up inside me, and I only got to kill my abuser once for it.
Instead, I ball my hand into a first and smash the spider against the wall.
Without Crow there to act as the conduit between here and Veltuur, the soul of the spider dissolves into the ether.
Instantly, shadows writhe in the room in protest. Veltuur does not like when a life is claimed without its permission or instruction, but I do not care. Let the Wraiths tell the Council. Let them summon me and punish me for an eternity. See if I care.
When the ripples of darkness settle, and I am not snatched back to Veltuur, I jump down from the bed to resume my gazing at the fire. Numbly, I realize I’ve just completed my five thousandth kill. I doubt it counts, but still. I expected it to feel more victorious.
Acari argues no more. Instead, he shuffles onto the bed in complete silence and rolls onto his side once he’s under the covers. Despite his earlier assumptions that sleep would deny him tonight, he succumbs to it almost instantly. There’s so much on my mind that I don’t even care. In fact, I am grateful for the solitude in the dying dimness of the fire’s glow. Being alone is comforting, or at least it always had been, ever since my initiation. Now I can’t help but wonder what I preferred before. Though some things have come back, my past still feels largely unclear.
While I was in the memory, I felt like a completely different person, someone wide-eyed and excitable. Of course, some things remained the same between us: I am still as determined as ever, and my sense of humor likely always was and always will be an acquired taste, but there was something tragic about reliving my past self, outside of the experience I was dropped into, and that was realizing that the girl I used to be is dead. I never took the time to mourn her; I never really thought to. But I do now. In my own way, I guess. I play with my power, calling the black spirals forth into a sphere of black flames mimicking the fire in front of me, just to send them back beneath my skin again.
This darkness, I fear, has always been inside me. That memory dredged up a whole lot more than just one terrible night. Not individual memories, just mostly the things I was thinking about when I killed that man. I thought about how if my parents had never died, I would’ve never been sent to the orphanage and none of this would’ve happened. I thought about the friends I was leaving behind, about a boy I had a crush on.
I bring forth my black power, swirling it around in my hands. It’s no wonder Veltuur strips Reapers of their pasts. Now that I have all these memories, I am tempted to find my old friends, to sink my teeth into pears and apples and peaches again, to fall in love.
But a Reaper can’t do any of those things. My power will leave fruit rotten in my hands. It makes everyone afraid of me, and even if someone wasn’t, getting too close would only hurt the people we care about.
I was better off without my memories.
Caw.
“Crow!” I say, spinning around to find the bird perched on the backside of one of the rickety chairs. It couldn’t have been better timing. I need to get out of this inn. I need to distract myself from all of these emotions and remind myself what is really important: restoring my reputation with the Council and becoming a Shade.
“What did you find?”
Before it can answer, I shake my head, remembering how the game works with it. Direct commands only. “Blink once if you know the whereabouts of the bandits, twice if you don’t.”
Crow blinks, one time. I wait for a second motion, just to be sure, but when it doesn’t come, I sigh in relief.
I kick the bed and Acari stirs.
“Come on,” I say with a jerk of my head. “Crow is going to take us to the bandits. It knows where to find your sister.”
16
Cuddly as a Firefur
Sinisa
Neither of us take long to vacate the room as we both have very little in the way of belongings, but I watch skeptically as Acari retrieves the pouch of memory leaves from the table. I hate to admit it, but part of me is still intrigued by them and curious to uncover more, even if the louder, more stubborn side of me tells me that I’m
