Page 67 of Ira

It was nice. It still needed a coat of paint and a significant number of repairs, but it felt a lot more homey now.

I missed it here. Sure, Elverston House was a little worn down and needed some love, but so was I. I was connected to this place.

“Here, sit,” Jade said, gesturing to the wide ledge by the fireplace where she was boiling the hanging kettle. “So? Have you heard anything from the human realm yet?”

I shook my head. “No. I mean, I guess they have to go through the evidence I gave them and whatever. I don’t know how long these things take.”

Those were probably the kinds of questions I should have asked Adela at the time, but I hadn’t been thinking straight and I’d just wanted to go home.

“It was such a brave thing you did,” Jade said, an almost dreamy look on her face as she added the tea leaves to the boiling water to steep.

“I don’t know about brave.”

Spiteful, yes. Justified, absolutely. Bravery hadn’t really come into the equation though.

“What? Of course it was brave. All of us here have fantasized at some point or another about how it would feel to tell a Councilor to go fuck themselves. And you actually did it! And you had the receipts to back it up. You’re a hero.”

My face heated at the genuine enthusiasm in her voice. She made it sound like I was some kind of crusader for the downtrodden, when in reality I’d been thinking purely of myself.

“I didn’t actually tell him to go fuck himself. I didn’t see him at all.”

Jade pursed her lips. “That’s slightly less cool than what I was imagining, I’ll admit. But if you get him sent to jail, it’ll all be worth it.”

I laughed for the first time in the past few days. “That might be true. I’m sorry for leaving you guys in the lurch. I shouldn’t have let you cover for me—that wasn’t a nice position to put you in.”

“What? Oh no, it was fine. We didn’t mind. Look, we get it, you know? And sometimes, they just...don’tget it. They don’t understand that sometimes you can’t do things by the book, because the book wasn’t written for us. Astrid was really trying to talk to me and relate to me, but she was being groomed to join the Council someday. What does she really know about my life?”

The friends I’d had since the beginning weren’t elitist snobs who thought less of anyone else. They were great people. And theywereshaped by their experiences, as we all were.

Ophelia’s parents had still paid for her to go to boarding school after she’d been kicked out. Astrid had been shoulder tapped for a future on the Council herself. Tallulah’s friends and family had just quietly shuffled her along when she was exiled, and she’d had an income and friends from her college days—paid for by the Hunters Council—to rely on. Austin had been free to pursue his music career, financially supported by his family.

But for those of us at the bottom, we hadn’tbenefittedfrom the system. We’d been trapped by it. I’d left with nothing. No money, no family, no friends.

No hope.

And yet… we were all here. Jade and the others. Verity. Iris. Myself. We’d found our way here, and now we had the opportunity to build incredible lives for ourselves. We were in a supportive environment where anything was possible.

It waspossible,but it wouldn’t justhappen.

And the differences that divided us there couldn’t just be forgotten, because they formed who we were. But they didn’t need to be a barrier between us either.

“She doesn’t really know anything about it, but we can tell her,” I replied quietly, staring into the fire. “I mean, don’t share more than you want to share, of course. But we’re all on the same side, aren’t we? It’s very easy to get caught up in that resentment of how differently our lives played out when we had so much in common, but we also have an amazing opportunity right now to try to balance those scales.”

I looked up at Jade while she poured the two cups of tea. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to sound dismissive—”

“You don’t. You sound wise. Like you’ve really put some thought into what life here could look like for us. I haven’t done that, honestly. Maybe because I feel like I’m in survival mode all the time.”

“It’s not easy to think philosophically when your brain is constantly scanning for threats,” I agreed, accepting the cup she handed me. “But hopefully you’ll start to feel more settled here soon. If there’s anything I can do to help, then I want to do it. It’s important to me that you feel at home here.”

Jade sat down on the other side of the ledge, watching me with a small smile. “You’re really easy to talk to. Has anyone ever told you that?”

I paused, my cup halfway to my mouth. “No. Never.”

“Oh. Well, they should. You have this really quiet, comforting way of getting people to open up. It’s a real gift.”

Huh. Not boring. Not glum. Not dull. Quiet and comforting.

I could live with that.

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