Page 95 of Cloak of Night
“I... I didn’t know any better. He was my family.”
“Weare your family!” Papa collapsed against Hana and held her tightly.
Tears spilled over Hana’s cheeks. She’d been so young when she was abducted from the Citadel, but she still remembered some pieces of her childhood.
Whenever they had a school break like the Autumn Festival, she would ride together with Sora on a horse and Daemon would ride on a separate one, and they’d make the journey up the winding switchbacks of Samara Mountain together. Mama and Papa would rush out to greet them, Mama with tea and cake and Papa with a new ceramic trinket for Hana to take back to the Citadel.
They would spend the whole holiday together, packed into that tiny house, occasionally descending the mountain to the village for music and dancing and sweets. If it were All Spirits’ Eve, Mama would make paper-lantern kites for them to light and fly into the sky. And every evening, they’d retire to the living room and cozy up by the fire, while Mama told them one of her new stories. It was Hana’s favorite way to fall asleep.
She now looked over at Mama slumped and covered in blood. A new burst of tears wracked Hana’s body.
“I’m not worthy of being her daughter,” she said between gasps for air.
Papa tightened his embrace on Hana, as if wanting to strangle her and hug her forever at the same time. She buried her face into his shoulder.
“We have to give Mama a proper burial,” Hana said. Her tears slowed with the prospect of being able to atone, even if just a little.
“Mina loved the sea,” Papa said.
Hana nodded. Her parents’ home overlooked the ocean, and Mama ate every meal out on that deck except when itrained or snowed. Sometimes even then. She could never be close enough to the water.
“Then we’ll cremate her and scatter her ashes into the sea,” Hana said. There was no way she was going to just dump her mother’s body like Emperor Gin intended.
“You would do that?” Papa asked, looking up with red eyes.
“I’ve been wrong for too long,” Hana said. “Now I need to do what’s right.”
Chapter Forty-Nine
The chains shackling Fairy disappeared as her orb descended the waterfall. She rubbed at her ankles and wrists, watching her surroundings warily. Had Hana released them from Prince Gin’s chains? But why? Fairy prepared herself for another awful surprise to come.
The waterfall ended, but her orb kept plummeting deeper. She couldn’t see Wolf or Spirit through the churn of the water. Maybe she’d be imprisoned in this sphere beneath the surface forever.
Slowly, however, the orb began to rise. It arrived in a grotto, hidden from the outside by the waterfall, and the sphere floated to shore, where it opened.
Fairy stepped out.
A greasy voice welcomed her. “Hello there.”
She spun with a pair of stiletto blades out.
A ryuu stepped into the dim light. He was flanked by two skeletons and a corpse.
It had to be Skullcrusher’s brother, Skeleton.
Fairy had to disable his Sight.
Skeleton looked at her knives and chuckled. “Very amusing.”
His magic knocked the blades away, and he advanced, grabbing her waist and drawing her up against his body.
But Fairy had slipped another dagger out of her sleeve, and she rammed it into his right eye.
He screamed.
“That’s what you get for underestimating me,” she said. “What kind of idiot thinks a girl carries only two knives?”
Skeleton held his hand over the gushing blood. “You’ll pay for that.”
