Page 87 of Null & Void

“Your father…” I ask tentatively. “What do you see when you look at him?”

I watch Eryn from the corner of my eye, and he tilts his head as if he doesn’t understand what I’m asking. I’m about to elaborate when he surprises me in a small voice. “Not again.”

My heart is doing backflips. “Eryn. Does he have violet eyes like a Patron of the Divine?”

“Yes.”

I’m not sure when I stood, but I’m up and pacing the room. Blanket forgotten, I’m holding my head with my fingers in my hair, trying to maintain steady breathing.

“You can’t say anything. To anyone. Ever. Mika, promise me!”

“What do you mean? I’m trying to figure out what the fuck is going on!”

Eryn has fear written all over his face, so I sit back on the bed and take his hands. My mind wanders for a moment at how easily I can touch Eryn when I barely know him.

Working as a nanny in the children’s compound involves a lot of touching. Kids are very physical, and I would never deny comfort and affection to a child who wants it. But once they leave, once they’re out of the children’s compound, the season they turn thirteen, something shifts in me. I’m completely averse to ever touching or being touched by them again.

Eryn sniffs, and I snap back to the here and now. “How long have you been able to see violet eyes?” I ask.

“As long as I can remember. At first, I didn’t know anything was wrong. Until I started asking my mother why his eyes were different from everyone else’s. I hadn’t really seen any Patrons of the Divine at that age, so I didn’t know what it meant, only that they weren’t the same color as ours.

“She brushed me off for a couple of revolutions, but then I think she must have realized it wasn’t just a child’s wild imagination, and she told me to keep it a secret.”

He trembles, staring at our hands as he speaks, and I give them a small squeeze of encouragement.

Eryn takes a deep breath. “When I was six, I remember her asking me specific questions about whether I had seen other people with violet eyes sometimes, but other times they were normal. I didn’t know what she meant at the time, so I couldn’t answer.

“One night, as she was putting me to bed, she told me to pack a bag, and she’ll be back in an hour because we’re going on a secret trip.”

His breath is shuddering, and he’s having trouble speaking, so I tell him we can take a break. He nods and focuses on my hands in great detail, like he’s trying to memorize every line and crease.

After a few minutes of silence, when his breathing has returned to normal, he speaks again. “I waited for her to come back all night. I sat there with my bag packed and hidden under the blanket with me until morning, but she never returned.

“The next morning, my father came to tell me my mother was dead. People had seen her kill her brother, and then run away on a horse. They found her by the side of the main road toward Osraed with a broken neck. Fell from the horse.”

He looks me dead in the eye. “I knew it then at the age of six, and I know it now a decade later. There is no way she would have killed my uncle, she loved him. And she wouldn’t have left me behind.”

I’m reeling. This is so much more awful than I was anticipating. This is no longer the case of someone hiding in plain sight—he is murdering people to keep the secret.

“So, you see, you can’t say anything. I can’t let him hurt you too.”

Choosing my words carefully, I gently check in with him. “You know it’s not your fault, right? Eryn, you can’t blame yourself for what happened. You didn’t ‘let’ him do anything.”

“I know that, I do. But afterward, I vowed to never speak about his eyes again. Speaking about them was a death sentence for the only person who ever loved me.”

“Well, I see them too, and I promise that I will do everything in my power to make sure he never hurts anyone ever again.”

He gives me a weak smile. My heart aches for him and how lonely he must have felt. That’s too much for such a little person to go through. It’s no wonder he unraveled the other night when he thought he put me in his father’s path.

“I don’t understand. Why can only you and I see them?” he asks.

“Honestly, at first, I thought maybe I had discovered my Gift. That I could see through tricks of the mind, but that doesn’t make sense anymore. Not that it ever really did, to be honest.”

“Do you think there are other people who see them but don’t say anything?”

“Perhaps. But I don’t think so, or rumors would eventually surface and run wild. What I wonder is: how long he has pretended to be the king…”

Eryn’s eyes widen, his gloomy demeanor finally starting to lift again. “You think he’s someone else, like a shifter?”

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