Page 119 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

“So, two angry sabbers could be standing right next to us now? Listening to every word we’re saying?” Arpix’s eyes flitted left then right.

Livira sighed heavily. “They could.”

“Let’s get back.” Arpix shivered. “And hope they get bored and go away.” He started off in the direction of the exit.

“Wait. The books are that way.” Livira pointed towards the portal, a mile or so away in almost the opposite direction.

Arpix looked reluctant. “They’re safer out here than in our quarters. We can read them by the portal.”

Livira gave a slow nod. He had a point. Any other time she would have demanded to stay and start reading right now, but for once in her life the questions she wanted answers for could wait. Repetition hadn’t helped. She felt too heavy and sad to read, too broken, too full of sharp edges. Company, even Arpix’s, would grate. She wanted her room and darkness and nothing else.

Cain begat Enoch, and Enoch begat Jaspeth and Irad. And Jaspeth, who had his whole life long walked on eggshells around the shame of his grandfather’s invention—fratricide—agreed with Irad at an early age that neither would kill the other.

Murder in the Family: A Novel in Six Parts, by Captain Noah

CHAPTER 50

Evar

Clovis vanished into the pool, snatching at Livira’s trailing leg. Both disappeared without a splash. Evar stumbled after them, trying to shake the daze from a head still echoing with the force of Clovis’s blows. He fell into the water and let it take him.

“Clovis! No!”

Evar threw himself at his sister, hauling her off Livira. To his surprise, Clovis let herself be pulled clear. They ended on their backsides, Clovis between Evar’s legs, her back to his chest, Evar’s arms under hers, his head lowered against the inevitable backwards head-butt.

Clovis, breathing deeply, made no effort to break free. “Why can’t I touch her?”

“It looks like you already did,” Evar panted.

Livira lay on her back not far from them, both hands over her face. A crimson trail led from the portal to her legs. A fair amount, but not enough blood for a serious wound.

“She’d be dead if I could.” The coldness in Clovis’s voice belied the intimacy of their position.

Evar slowly released his sister and edged away, tensed for more violence. His face hurt. His mouth especially. The rest of him would probably hurt tomorrow. Clovis wasn’t gentle on her best days, and this was not one of those.

He stared at Livira wonderingly. He’d always felt her to be small but this? She was so slight. Clovis could break her in two hands. And yet what he’d seen in her from the very first moment was still there. Even with her face hidden.

A human... She didn’t look dangerous, but with a weapon in her hand, especially a projectile weapon, her kind could be deadly. In sufficient numbers, even armed with nothing but simple blades, a pack of humans could overrun a city of his people. He had seen it happen. The stink of it had yet to leave his nostrils. The screams still rang in his ears.

And yet...

And yet, as Clovis got to her feet Evar rose too, ready to defend the girl.

“Why can’t I kill her?” Clovis’s fierce eyes pinned him. Not: Why won’t you let me kill her? She knew she could sweep him from her path. Just: Why can’t I kill her?

Even so, Evar stood between them. “You can’t kill her because she’s already dead. You can’t kill her because she died centuries before you were born. We’re ghosts here. We can’t touch anything except each other.”

“I made her bleed.” Clovis tracked the blood trail from the portal.

Evar shrugged. “It’s different in the Exchange. I think...”

Behind him Livira let out a scream that made both of them flinch and had Evar spinning around, thinking she must have been attacked.

For a moment Livira remained arched on her back, lifted by the force of the scream. Slowly, she collapsed back to the floor. Evar stood above her, watching, his breath suddenly short, huffed in and out of a chest painfully constricted by unaccustomed emotion. The sort of emotion that rarely entered life in the library and which he’d run from in the massacre and the invasion that he’d been made to witness. He couldn’t turn away from this, though. Not from Livira. He fell to his knees beside her.

“Stop!” Clovis commanded him.

Evar shook his head. “I won’t.”

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