The city doesn’t sleep. I can hear blacksmiths’ hammers as I approach the trade works, just above the marketplace. A few Deccor guards scurry about, but being out at night is not a crime, so I pay them little attention. Pleb workers sweep the streets and carry deliveries. I wait for them to cross before hurrying in the direction Colson pointed out to me, my eagerness driving away the day’s exhaustion. The tunnel I take ends in a narrow staircase, and my knees hurt by the time I descend past the Mid-divide. There’s a lot of housing here, smaller apartments and shacks in poorer repair than Unach’s. I see one of the great barriers that form the X, so I follow it down a ways to what must be the school, since it has a designated stone yard, presumably for recreation. I’ve always gone around this section of the city, so all of it is new to me. But I’m willing to get lost, retrace my steps, and look generally foolish, in order to share a night with my kind. It’s been a long time since I was part of a group. A long time since I played games. My heart is so full, my nerves so quick, I feel I might burst.
I don’t hear anything, but humans would likely aim to be quiet in a troll city, so I follow the stone wall of the great building around, searching for the familiar beige clothing against the darkness. The yard itself isn’t lit, but lights from nearby roads and districts shine down like close stars, casting everything in a sort of orange glow. It reminds me of bonfires back in Dina. In my mind’s eye, I see Andru’s laughing face as we clasped hands and spun until vertigo swept us off our feet. For the moment, the memory doesn’t sting, as it so often does. Soon I’ll have new memories to replace the old. Good things to bandage the bad.
I reach the back of the school and see no one, then wonder if I’ve arrived too early.
“There she is.”
Colson’s voice. Relieved, I turn.
Just as a fist connects with my cheek.
I stumble back and lose my footing, falling to my hip. My shaking hand rushes up to my face, where pain slowly sets in. Blood trickles from my nose. Blinking, I’m just able to make out Colson above me, and Etewen behind him—along with two other men. One of them helps me up, only to throw me against the stone wall.
My heart lodges in my throat, and for the briefest instant, I am in my father’s house again. I fight the instinct to curl into a ball and guard my head.
“Do you have any idea,” Colson says, his breath hot on my face, “what it’s like for us down here? We work long hours, have our valuables taken from us, scrimp and barter for everything we have. And you just dance in here and play Montra? While the rest of us get beaten, just like this”—he slams knuckles into my breast—“by the bloody task force?”
I swallow, gripping his wrist to pull him off, trying to claw through the web of confusion engulfing me. “I-I didn’t assign myself—”
A fist hits my mouth, and I’m not able to get the words out. A knee thrusts into my stomach and knocks the wind from me. I drop to the pavement. I gasp, my thoughts muddled, trying to find my bearings. A trap? Was the meeting a lie?
The memory of bonfires fizzles into black coals.
Fear coils up my middle, itching to be released. But I don’t want them to fear me. I don’t want them to go home to the enclave and tell everyone what I am. I don’t want to lose my chance of having a home here. They . . . They’re my last chance.
I have nowhere else to go.
A boot to my hip sends me sprawling. “You make a mockery of us.” Colson’s voice.
I hiss as I’m lifted by my hair. Fear—
A blow lands at my kidney, another in my stomach. Bile rushes up my throat and burns my mouth.
Don’t you dare use it on me! my father screamed as his open hand burned across my cheek. I know what it is! Don’t you dare!
Fear slips from me, like a wild animal on a tether, jerked free. My bones chill as the man holding my hair drops me, wheeling back as though I’m one of the monsters from the chasm.
But then Colson’s hands squeeze my throat. I claw at him, trying to breathe. My fingernails cut into the skin of his hands, but he doesn’t relent. I barely feel the following blows to my legs as the others barrage me.
Do what they want, think what they want, but I won’t let them kill me.
My fear explodes outward, a great boulder dropped into a lake. My body mirrors the sensations of horror I invoke so strongly that my heart threatens to split in two. Colson releases me, and I drop to the ground, gasping. My assailants step back as if I were a viper.
Fight or flee. These cowards choose the latter. They run back the way I came, trampling my shredded hope underfoot.
I kneel there, doubled over, every blow making itself known slowly, achingly. Tears run down the sides of my nose. Odd. I never cried when my father beat me. He hated tears.
I hear heavy footsteps and shudder. Perhaps I didn’t scare them off after all. Perhaps the human task force heard of this meeting, and Grodd has come to deal out his own discipline.
The steps slow. “Lark?”
That voice. How do I know that voice?
Holding my throat, wheezing, I look up and blink, peering through the darkness. A tall figure stands over me, not quite troll, not quite human. Perg?
I feel his strong hands on my elbows, just as the dim lights of the schoolyard wink out.
Danner’s palm presses against my mouth.
I startle awake, tasting the salt of his hand. It burns against a small cut at the corner of my lip.
Something’s wrong. I wait for Danner to tell me what, but he doesn’t speak, only climbs into the bed, crushing his sister, Finnie—but Finnie isn’t there. She fell asleep by the fire.
The moon shines full and bright, washing out the stars, casting the tiny room Finnie and I share in shades of blue and steel. I try to push Danner’s hand away, to ask what’s wrong, but he presses it down so hard my teeth cut the inside of my lips. The house sleeps; everything is quiet. Danner, four years my senior, slips under the cover.
I don’t realize he shut the door until his hand grabs my breast. I’m only fourteen. A year ago, I didn’t have a breast to grab. Tendrils of fear awaken in me, curling like hungry worms. Like the curse knew, before I did, what was going to happen. That I was going to lose all of them. Finnie’s parents were my parents. Finnie was my sister. Danner was my brother. They were supposed to be my family. The Cosmodian had promised me a family of my own.
I push at Danner, stalling him, but he’s stronger and heavier than I am. “It won’t hurt,” his hot whispers promise. “Shh,” he coos, like I’m a baby. “They won’t know.”
Tears come, but still Danner doesn’t move his hand from my mouth. His other slides up my nightdress. I push again, I plead, the sounds dying against his palm.
When the fear flies out of me, almost of its own accord, Danner flies with it. He leaps back from the bed like it’s made of hot embers instead of cotton-wrapped hay. He screams, loud enough to wake the house.
He sputters truths mixed with lies. “Monster,” he says. Truth. “Tried to kill me,” he says. Lie.
But he is their son, her brother. They are family, and I am not. And so I flee with everything I can carry, everything I can grab as Finnie’s father rains blows on my back.
My road breaks a little more.
That was Terysos. The Cosmodian had not been in that township, either.
I’m murkily aware of strong arms encircling me against a wide chest. Voices spin in senseless orbits. A light blooms nearby.
My body burns, bruises pulsing and radiating from my head to my ankles.
“What do you mean, found her?” Unach’s voice snaps like a whip.
“By the school where I live, with the humans.” Perg’s voice sounds close. It reverberates in his chest.
I blink. I’m in Unach’s apartment. Did he carry me all the way here?