Page 46 of Dishonor Among Thieves
I clenched the stone between my fingers. “A gift,” I whispered. “From my sister.”
“It’s enchanted.” As Neo said the words, Odile seemed to be struck by the same realization.
“Tracking magic?” she asked, looking puzzled. “Would that fall within the skills of an illusionist?”
“I’m not sure.” Neo’s voice and expression softened only slightly, as if he began to realize that perhaps this was not my fault. Or if it was, I certainly hadn’t brought this upon them intentionally. “Give me that charm.”
He held his hand out, and for a moment, everything inside me screamed to run. To keep the one small token I had that was proof that anyone had ever loved me. That anyone had ever cared. Yes, I knew that my mother had adored me, had given up so much of her own comfort and stability to be my mother for the short time she was able to, but this…this was different. The charm had soothed me, guided me. It had been a gift. The only one anyone had ever given me.
Even as I resisted relinquishing my treasure, I realized I had to. If in fact it was enchanted, whether or not my sister had intended for me to have it, it was dangerous. With it,Iwas dangerous to the people I cared most about.
“I will leave,” I vowed, unable to yet remove the charm where it rested gently against my skin. “That’s the only solution now. I will go back where I came from. To the life they wanted for me there.”
Odile startled me by stroking the damp strands of my hair that fell along my back. “Even if you did leave, that mage knows how to find the rest of us. She’s used magic, Brex, which is illegal. Dangerous. We know the queen has spies living and working among the common folk. Just waiting for the smallest sign. I know this.” The healer’s face looked pale, the shadows under her eyes deep and dark. Mirrors of the many horrors she’d no doubt seen. “That mage came for something, and she left without whatever that was. It’s safe to assume she’ll be back for what she wants, whether or not you’re here.”
“What if what she wants is me?” I wept hard, my shoulders shaking and my stomach turning over in confusion. I felt an inexplicable pull toward home, the foundling home. As if everything within me was urging me back. I couldn’t stay here. I tried to stand. “I have to leave. I’m… I’m so sorry, but I have to leave.”
“Wait, Brex, please.” Odile stopped me gently with a firm hand on my arm. “Let me inspect the token. If you still are determined to leave, I’ll return it to you.”
“I make no such promises,” Neo seethed, but Odile shook her head at him.
“Neo, I don’t believe the girl is at fault for this! By the gods, keep your threats to yourself. At least until we know she’s deserving of them.” She glared at him, clearly impatient.
I would have appreciated her defense of me if I wasn’t being asked to do the one thing I wished not to do. The one thing that pained me unlike any other. Let go of everything I had. The only thing I had.
Crying like a child robbed of her only toy, I laced my fingers through the leather and slipped the charm from around my neck. My hands shaking and palms clammy, I held the stone out to Odile. She took it graciously, nodding in encouragement.
“Good girl,” she said. She looked it over, turning it front to back. She licked her fingertip and tapped the stone, even sniffed it.
“What do you make of it?” Neo muttered, sounding impatient.
“I’m unschooled in enchanted objects.” Her pretty face looked puzzled. “I don’t know what to think. But I do believe if Brex intends to stay here, we should destroy it.” Apology hung heavy in her words, and I sobbed all the harder at the mere idea of the permanent loss of the gift. “If you truly intend to leave, I will return it to you. But Brex, I do not believe you’ll be safe until we understand the power of this token.”
I sat back on my heels and stared at the tile floor. Shapes whirled before my eyes, and dizziness stole my ability to tell up from down. “Whoa.” I squeezed my eyes closed and covered my face with my hand to shut out the shapes and movement. Suddenly, I heard sounds more clearly. The muted voices of Dale and Antonia, weak with pain and fatigue. The light melody of the late-autumn rain striking the roof. I smelled the sweat and heat from Neo’s body, the smoke that clung to his hair. I could have sworn that I heard Elgit’s breathing.
“Something is wrong,” I sputtered, closing my eyes against the dizzying rush of images flashing through my mind. “I don’t know what’s happening.”
I splayed my palms on the cool floor to steady me, but that didn’t help. I was falling, disappearing, dying. Maybe all three at once, I could not tell.
“What is it?” I could hear Neo’s concerned question, but I couldn’t see him. I felt a strong hand on my arm, but I shook it off, falling deeper and deeper down a well that only had space for me. My thoughts. My memories.
I saw in flashes everything I’d lived through. My mother, her stunning face holding nothing but affection as she held me close. The hollows in her cheeks and the dullness of her eyes before she brought me to the foundling home. I could see our cottage, a fire crackling in the familiar stone hearth. My mother’s aged cooking pot bubbling with humble vegetable stew. Then, the long journey through tall grasses and dense trees as we traveled through Byrlad. My shoulders and back bent with fatigue.
The foundling home, so much larger than anything I’d ever seen, its door wide open. The owner, the woman in charge, holding her hand out. Not in welcome. Expecting to be paid. My mother passed her everything. Every last coin. The few items of clothing I owned. Even her only cooking pot. My mother tiptoed backward, inching away in the sunlit afternoon. The sun reflecting on her flowing tears as she left without even saying goodbye. Without one last kiss.
The face of the woman who’d taken me in, the mage who ran the foundling home, was foggy, a cloud obscuring her features. I felt a hand on my forehead and heard Odile’s voice from very far away. My body was moving, being moved, but my mind was focused on the face behind those clouds.
“Gini?” I whispered the words through parched lips.
But it wasn’t Gini, was it? Gini was my sister. Who was the house mother? What was she? My heart thundered in my chest, an irregular beat that was at once too fast and too slow. Heat flooded my limbs, and yet I trembled in terrible cold. I was so confused. So angry. So afraid.
“The enchantment is releasing her.” Odile’s words filtered through the haze of memory. “She’ll be all right. Don’t touch her, Neo. Let her be.”
In my mind, I followed the woman into the foundling home, her brazen laugh mocking and harsh. The dank room with a cot that would be my new home. My forever home.
I was introduced to the other children. The shapeshifters, the vampires… Orphans of so many species, all like my mother, long forgotten or long denied as real. We were all homeless, motherless, a family forced together without a single common bond. And among them, I was the only human.
Then the nightmares began. Longing for my mother. The inconsolable grief of knowing she was truly gone. I rocked back and forth, weeping into a hay-stuffed pillow. I pictured my mother’s fangs, the apologies she sang as she sipped from our cat. I tasted blood and salt as finally, the sun rose on the fourth day of my confinement.
