Page 48 of A Sanctuary from Shadow
“I’d say so. It’s not an uncommon gift among Dananns, although most will be mystified to hear you possess it.” She paused a beat before answering the question in my eyes. “Because it’s not something typically found in females.”
Rare and powerful gifts. That’s what Briar had said I might have (if I were the nebulous Aurora). Was the warrior’s skin one of them?
I bit my lip, thinking,What the hell am I?
Before Shasta left me, I snatched her hand. “Please don’t tell anyone.”
While at first bemused, she eventually set a cool hand over mine. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
Minutes later, I wore a peach sweater and a pair of heathered sweatpants, my freshly washed hair piled atop my head in a damp, haphazard bun. Ash Loosestrife led me into his uber-masculine living room. Vestiges of cigar smoke clung to his paneled walls.
Vi and Ace awaited me on a scuffed leather couch in the center of the room, both in their night clothes. Vi sat curled into the arm rest, her eyes red-rimmed, haunted. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she gnawed her thumb raw. Ace sat hunched, elbows on his knees, tapping one heel in a frantic beat. His eyes were bloodshot, his hair standing on end. The moment they saw me, they wilted in relief.
Ace surged up when I rushed them. “Thank Danu you’re all right,” he said as I strangled him in a hug, needing to hear the heartbeat of someone I loved.
Vi mewled like a baby when she joined the embrace, her mussed hair soft against my cheek. “We should’ve made him come with us.” She hiccupped against my shoulder. “We shouldn’t have listened when he said he’d be all right.”
I wished I could tell her it wasn’t that simple. Briar had warned me those assassin bats hunted by scent. They’d have followed Daddy’s scent to any hidden refuge. In joining everyone at Ash Loosestrife’s house, he would’ve led the bogeybats right to Vi and Ace.
“What happened last night?” Ace asked, hours of being left in the dark stressing him. “All Aunt Aylie told us was that Dad passed on, and that you were hurt.”
I stared for a moment, the horrors I’d witnessed indescribable. Knowing wouldn’t ease his mind and telling would obliterate me. I’d been trying so hard not to think about what I’d seen, though unwanted images kept flooding me. An especially graphic one of Daddy, cold and gray, had caused me a mental collapse during my shower. I’d balled up beneath the spray and sobbed into my knees.
Part of me needed to tell someone what I’d been through—needed to call my friends and unleash every sordid detail upon them. Like the telling would purge the memories. The rest of me, though—it refused to speak a single word about it. It didn’t want their pity or their Hallmark condolences in the mail. Because admitting last night had happened made everything real.
I didn’t want it to be real.
Aunt Aylie, Uncle Neel, and Briar’s arrival saved me from having to sicken and dismay my younger siblings. Perhaps one day I’d confess what happened the night our father died, but that day was far in the future.
“I’m fine,” I assured Ace before he turned to our uncle.
Lines cut across his 16-year-old brow. “Will someone finally tell us what’s been going on? We deserve to know.”
Uncle Neel inhaled like he was preparing to drop a meteorite on us. “Sit down, all of you.” He massaged his temples. Little sleep and dismal circumstances ringed his eyes.
In the same weary state, Briar fell onto a dining chair before me, his seat no doubt placed there in preparation for this talk. He’d changed his clothes, ridding himself of oily bat blood, but ash still speckled his neck. His sweat caught me as I sat on the couch between my siblings, squeezing their hands in my lap.
Aunt Aylie reposed on the armrest of the couch, petting Vi’s unkempt hair. I wondered what she’d eaten for breakfast, as motherly as she was being.
Uncle Neel plopped into a leather recliner beside Briar, facing us Larkspur kids. “I’ll just start from the beginning. You three—you’re not what you think you are. You weren’t born where your father said you were.”
Ace chewed his bottom lip. “You mean Philadelphia?”
Sniffling into a tissue Aunt Aylie had pulled from her cleavage, Vi shook her head at Uncle Neel. “Then where were we born?”
“You’re all from a place called Evereostre,” Uncle Neel stated. He templed his hands over his stomach. “As was your father, your mother, me, your aunt, Briar—and most of the other Dananns you’ve ever met.”
The three of us blinked at him—absorbing.
Finally, I asked, “Why would he lie about something like that? So, we aren’t originally from Philly? Who cares?”
“Philadelphia was just the cover story your father chose. He had a fondness for the place.” Uncle Neel shook his head, rolled his eyes. “Something I’ll never understand. In truth, he could’ve chosen any city and named it as your origins. You children were too young to doubt him.”
Of course, we wouldn’t doubt him.We were kids. How foolish of us to trust that our father wouldn’t deceive us.
“He did it for your protection,” Briar answered the burgeoning fury on my face. “He didn’t want to lie to you, but he needed you to believe you were from this place, so you’d all act like normal American children—so you wouldn’t draw unwanted attention.”
Why the hell was he talking as if he’d been a wise old adult when my father had made his bullshit decision? We were born in the same fucking year!
