Page 1 of King of Malice
PROLOGUE
Ava
“Now I layme down to sleep,” I softly whisper so that I can’t be heard more than a few feet away. Cadence and I are pretending to be asleep, despite the raging fight happening between our foster parents just outside our door.
At fourteen, we’re way too old for this kind of kiddie prayer, but the air is charged with danger, and I just need to do something.
“You never fucking shut up, woman,” Al, our foster father, screams at the top of his lungs. “I’m so fucking sick of you and your stupid ideas.”
“I pray the lord my soul to keep,” Cadence says back, our hands reaching across the narrow space between our twin beds.
Al is a mean drunk. We know the kind. Cadence and I have been in four different foster homes in the last two years. Two together and two apart. “And if I die before I wake,” I add drawing in a shaky breath.
“I pray the lord my soul to take,” Cadence finishes, her eyes closing as a single tear leaksfrom her eye.
I tried to tell her not to put that petroleum jelly into Al’s slippers. Al and Judy are two of the few foster parents who would take us together. What’s more, even though Al yells a lot, he wasn’t like my last foster dad who touched me whenever he could, giving me the creeps. I’ll take Al any day.
But Cadence has always pushed buttons, and she hit one today. Coupled with the fact that Al came home drunk, he’s ready to fight, and he definitely wants us gone.
As if to voice my thought, he screams, “I want them fucking out.”
“But the money they bring in,” Judy answers back in a whining tone that sounds small and weak in comparison.
“You can keep Ava, she’s not a fucking problem. But Cadence…” I hear his slippers hit the wall as he throws them. “That little shit has got to go.”
I squeeze Cadence’s hand tighter as the door flies open and we let go of each other, me emitting a squeaking scream, as I huddle under the covers.
Cadence and I met at a group home, where, at the time, we were the two youngest kids. My mom had just died and hers might as well be dead, she’s always strung out and hiding out in some crack house—that’s what Cadence says.
We stuck together because the older girls were mean, and twice, when they stole my stuff, it was Cadence who snatched it back for me. One of those items was my mother’s locket, the only thing I have left of her.
I’ve got it around my neck now.
Al stands in the doorway, backlit by the hall light. “Get your fucking stuff girl.”
“It’s the middle of the night, Al!” Judy cries, appearing behind him.
He turns, raising his hand. A crack sounds through the air as it comes down across Judy’s cheek. His backhand is hard enough to send her crashing into the far wall. Cadence screams and scrambles from her bed, into mine, hiding behind me as Al stalks into the room.
Tears are rolling down my cheeks now too as I flop over and thenroll in a ball around Cadence. I squeeze my eyes shut, like closed eyes will keep the impending hit from happening.
Al grabs me by the scruff of the neck and yanks. My head snaps and for a second, I think it might break. Pain radiates through my head and back as I scream out in pain and fear.
But he doesn’t snap my neck. Instead, I fly through the air, landing on Cadence’s bed with a bounce.
He leans down over Cadence, smacking the back of her head hard. “You think that was fucking funny,” he screams an inch from her face, her hands wrapped around her head, her knees drawn up to her chest as she tries to protect herself.
But she doesn’t cave. She’s disadvantaged in every way, but she still fights. “It was hilarious,” Cadence screeches back instead.
“Cadence,” I gasp, trying to help her see reason.
I hear the next hit, the force of Al’s hand ringing through the room.
“Al,” I cry next, but I’m frozen in fear, not able to move as he hits her a third time.
“Get your stuff and get the fuck out,” he says in her face but she’s not moving now. She’s so still, that fear beats in my chest like a drum, pulsing all the way up to my ears.
“Cadence,” I half whisper, half sob. “Cadence.”
