“Was she always that way? The way she was with Nox? With me?” It’s odd to think that Farin’s mother is partially responsible for how my many lives have turned out.
Farin shrugs. “Are any of us always that way?” There’s a moroseness about his tone, a sadness I can’t quite grasp.
“No, I suppose not.”
“My mother was rather innocent when she was young.” Farin sighs. “At least, that’s how I prefer to think of her. She married my father, the leader of our tribe, thinking she could get around the tribal ordinance that prohibited members from having children.”
“That’s a strange ordinance.”
“Babies have a tendency to scream, and the Others have excellent hearing.”
I frown, imagining a society built around being quiet. Around silence. No singing or dancing or laughing.
In all my lives, I’ve never experienced a world like that.
“Anyway, she married my father, and though I get the impression he was kind to her for a while, all that ended when I came around. I would cry, putting the tribe in danger. He had ways of silencing me, of course, even from a young age.”
A chill sneaks up my spine.
“But it was never enough. And I suppose the monster in him was always going to come out. I remember asking my mother about it once. Whether my father was always a monster. She said no, but that my grandfather had been one, and had trained it into my father. I remember asking her if I would grow up to be a monster, too.” An exasperated laugh escapes his lips.
“And what did she say?”
A wry smile twists his lips. It’s when he looks like this that it feels as if shards of glass are scraping against my chest. “She said no. Said that my heart was too tender. That I was stronger than my father.”
Gooseflesh prickles my spine.
“I think she meant to get me away from him when she discovered we could escape to another world through the Rip. But then I was attacked by a wolf, my leg injured. She didn’t know I would heal quickly, so she raced off to grab her healing supplies from our world, the Nether. My father caught her during the process. Made her lead him back to me. Imagine her terror when she found me running around on the leg that was supposed to be ruined. She’d led my father into our haven all for nothing. I didn’t see her for a long time after that. By the time we met again…well, I’d say she’d changed, but I’d changed too. The monster had already been passed down.”
“What kind of monster?” I can’t help but ask.
Farin flicks his gaze up at me. “Why do you want to know?”
I take a step closer, feigning bravery, though I fiddle my fingers together behind my back. “Why don’t you want to tell me?”
“Because,” he says, “I’m getting used to someone looking at me like I’m not the villain. Maybe I like pretending.”
My cheeks heat, something about the word pretending feeling more intimate than it should.
“Why do you want to know?” he presses again.
“Just call me curious,” I say, though my breath falters a bit. Why do I want to know? So I can size up my enemy, surely. “Maybe I’d like to remind myself that you are the villain.”
Something flashes across his face, but it’s too quick for me to catch in the flickering firelight.
“And why would you need to do that?”
He’s close now, and I don’t know when or how it happened, at what point during our conversation he shifted toward me, lessening the space between us.
“I’ve already told you. I’m a rather forgetful person.”
A grin snakes his lips, and they dip down to mine, ever so slightly. “Maybe I like that about you, Wanderer. Maybe I find it refreshing.”
Maybe he likes that about me, but he’ll always like Blaise more.
No—that’s ridiculous. That should not be my number one reason to protect my heart from Farin.
I clear my throat. “Never mind,” I say. “I’m sure it’s a boring story, anyway.”
Farin narrows his eyes in suspicion, but he creates space between us, regardless.
That’s good, because I’m not sure what I might have done had he lingered close any longer.
CHAPTER 81
NOX
I hesitate at a familiar oak door, my fist brushing against the gnarled planks as I will up the courage to knock.
A set of carvings marks the door frame. Each for marking the height of a twin.
There’s a slash above the shorter ones, where Zora got jealous that I was outgrowing her and pulled a stool out to the doorframe to carve her own slash when no one was paying attention to her.
My chest constricts when I see it, and in my mind, I hear another slash, the carving of a knife against her flesh.
My throat aches, a knot forming in it, and I don’t know if I can bear it, showing up here at my parents’ when I couldn’t save her. When I didn’t save her.
I didn’t save either of them in the end.
