Avena stiffened. She stared at the man before her. A sudden fear seized her, a dread to know the answer mixed with a glimmer of hope. A shining diamond beckoning her through the darkness always lurking in that empty place in her soul.
“Did you . . . have any children?” Avena asked, her voice raw and hoarse. “Daughters?”
Fingers looked away from her. “No.”
Avena struggled with her memories to remember her father. In her mind, he was young and fit, tall and strong. He wasn’t this heavyset man crushed by the weight of years. Her memories were blurry. She’d been so young, only seven, when her mother had drowned Evane in the whitewash and was about to do the same to herself. So young when her father had to swing his hoe out of fury.
“Are you . . . my father?” Avena asked. She trembled there, knowing the truth. She wanted to reach for him.
“No,” Fingers said. “We didn’t have any children.” He sank down to the dusty floor, his back still to her. “Get some sleep, Avena. We got to keep going on.”
“But . . .” She swallowed. “My father killed my mother like that. With a hoe. She made him furious because—”
“I’m not your Black-damned father!” He scrunched himself tighter and then the sounds of exaggerated snoring rumbled from him.
Avena’s legs buckled. She sank down by the lantern. She turned it off, plunging them into silent darkness. She could feel him nearby as her mind struggled to process this revelation. She’d thought her father hated her for being too weak and helpless. For just standing there while Mother had drowned Evane. When he’d walked away after killing his wife, Avena had understood it was all her fault. By not acting, she’d forced Father to kill Mother.
Of course, he’d despised her. Hated her.
But now . . .
Fingers had come to work for Dualayn not long after she started as a maid. Had he been watching her from afar? Had he tracked her from her time at the orphanage with Daughter Heana and then to her new home at Dualayn’s? Had he been close by her all this time?
Did her father not hate her? Was he merely a man destroyed by the fact he’d killed the woman he loved?
She felt too drained from her grief over Bran and Smiles to cry. She stared in her father’s direction, listening to his breathing become regular, for his snoring to become real. She fell asleep listening to his breathing, and though she was in ruins, hunted by automatons, separated from the man she loved, she felt safe.
For the first time in fourteen years, her father was nearby to protect her from the monsters of the world.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Ōbhin kicked Dualayn awake the next “morning.” Time had lost all meaning in the ruins of Koilon.
The old man started awake. He rubbed at his face, blinking in the diamond light shining down on him. He groaned and sat up. The others were already awake. Ōbhin felt rested enough. He couldn’t just stay down here and do nothing. They had to find Avena and shut down the crystalmen before they all died in the dark.
“Break your fast then we’re leaving,” Ōbhin said.
Dualayn rubbed his rib. “Was it necessary to kick me awake?”
“Yes.” Ōbhin faced the exit. “You’re a heavy sleeper.”
“We definitely tried to wake you up gentler,” Miguil said.
Dajouth fought to contain a laugh.
“I am starting to realize there is nothing I can do to ever win back your good graces. If you could just imagine how things would be better if—”
“Don’t.” Ōbhin’s shoulders rolled. “You’re lower than a pus-filled roach scurrying through dog shit. You’re a worm, Dualayn. You feed off everyone else and what you crap out is even worse.”
Dualayn muttered about all the lives he saved as he readied himself to continue on.
Ōbhin tested out the healer. Aliiva’s soothing Tone flooded through Ōbhin’s ankle. The topaz had regained enough energy to operate while they rested. Dajouth held his own to his arm. Out of the sling and splint, he looked almost a hundred percent.
Not that they could do anything against the crystalmen.
Except collapsing ceilings. Ōbhin was lucky not to have died. If he did it again, others would be hurt.
They crept out of the house onto the crystallized streets. They soon found another transmuted crowd fleeing the destruction of the Wave Resonance Beacon. He couldn’t help but stare at their frozen faces and wondered if they’d known they were about to die. There were so many families. The park nearby must have been full of parents and their children enjoying a leisurely day. Perhaps it was some sort of holy day.
A surcease from their labors.
They left the frozen crowd behind where the ruby transmutation petered out. Only strong lines radiated out after a certain point, like the energy bursting out had started out as violent spurts of focused change firing off in a hundred different directions before an explosion of transmutation engulfed the area. When they crossed the boundary out of transmutation, the ruins became choked off with rubble.
Ōbhin wondered if those past here had survived. Or were they the owners of the bones they’d found throughout the city? Had they escaped one catastrophe only to be slain by the lizard demons?
“That building, perhaps,” Dualayn suggested, pointing to their left.
Outside of the transmuted area, traveling through the buildings made the most sense. They were connected by subbasements and utility tunnels that had survived the city’s burial. As they traversed through a winding path, rats and other things scurried through the darkness. Perhaps some of those feral dogs watched them from hidden crevasses, waiting for the light to pass.
Perhaps an hour into their walk, a crystalman thudded on the level above
