My dad grunts and lifts a hand to his chest, massaging it gingerly. I can’t help but to lift my offending hand to my mouth as my lips form an O. “Dad, I’m so…I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
My dad laughs and I stop talking, my eyebrows rising along with my confusion. “Don’t ever apologize for winning a fight, Adele,” he says.
“Wha…what? You mean I…?”
“Won—yes.” My dad is grinning. “You are learning so fast, Adele. In a couple of years I will have nothing left to teach you.”
“So the student will become the master?” I joke. I am such a dork—but I don’t care.
He laughs, deep and throaty. “I wouldn’t go quite that far, but yes, you are doing well.” Sometimes Dad can be so serious.
But I am grinning, too. I’ve never even come close to hurting him during training. The familiar rhythm of my hands and fists smacking against his hands and fists has become like a soundtrack for our mornings together. But I’ve added a thud to the mix, and for that, I am proud. I couldn’t ask for a better present on my birthday.
“We’ll finish early to celebrate your success,” my dad says.
I frown. “No, Dad, I want to finish the whole session, please.”
Dad laughs. “That’s my girl,” he says. “You’re so much like your mother.” I never understand what he means by that. My mom is a quiet, generous soul who would never hurt a fly. Me, I’m tenacious, feisty, and sarcastic. A redhead with black hair, my mom always says.
I’m not able to beat him again during training, but once was enough for me. When we come inside I’m exhausted but happy. Somehow our tiny stone house looks even smaller than before, but to me it’s cozy, it’s home.
A warm and tempting aroma fills my nostrils when we cross the threshold. My birthday surprise. Freshly warmed bread, not more than a few days old, from the bakery in the subchapter. Only half a loaf, but more than I’ve ever seen in our house before. A real birthday treat.
“Happy birthday, Adele,” Mom says. “Go wake your sister.”
I smile and sigh. Yes, we live underground. And don’t have much money. And live in constant fear of the Enforcers, who ceaselessly roam the streets. But we have each other: my mom, my dad, my sister, Elsey, and me—a family. We’re all we really need. Oh, and a warm half-loaf of bread for a birthday treat. For a moment, I am happy.
“Adele,” my mom says, and the memory fades. Remembering my father, how things used to be, makes the flame that started in my belly flare up, heating my chest. It’s a fire I haven’t felt in a while. “Are you okay?”
I shake my head and the cobwebs disappear. “Yeah. I was just remembering.”
“Your father?”
“And you,” I say. “All of us. Before…”
“I know. This place is so full of memories. That’s why I wanted to come here one more time.”
My mom moves away from me, rummaging through the rubble, looking at old pictures and trinkets. I watch her for a minute.
When she turns around, there’s a sparkle in her eyes. “There’s something I want to give you.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Give me? Mom, I just need you.”
“Just follow me.” She walks the three steps across the living area to the door to the bedroom that my sister and I shared with my parents. The door is hanging by a single hinge. My mom pushes it aside and enters. When I slip in behind her, I’m surprised to find the bedroom mostly intact, although there is glass everywhere from the shattered window.
Using the hem of her tunic, Mom brushes the glass from atop the bed and motions for me to sit down. I do, wondering what in the Tri-Realms she could possibly want to give to me. I watch her while she scans the ground, as if looking for something she dropped, and then bends down. She uses her fingers to pry at a loose stone in the floor, which wobbles and then lifts. The gray rectangular rock is heavy and I see her straining at it, so I get up and help her lift it out and roll it to the side.
Beneath where the stone used to be is a wooden box. When I look at my mom, she offers me a slight smile and then reaches down to retrieve the chest. It’s small and looks like it couldn’t hold more than a few marbles at most. However, when she lifts the lid, I see a slight sparkle under the glow of the flashlight I’m holding. Using a single delicate finger, she lifts a necklace from the box. I gasp. Its band is thin and silver, polished and gleaming and well cared for, but that’s not what makes me gasp, nor is that what sparkled when she first opened it.
Dangling from the end is a gem, big, perhaps the size of a gold Nailin, beautifully cut and a brilliant green hue that seems to catch every bit of light offered and then shine it all back tenfold in a dazzling array of green slivers. An emerald.
“Mom, I…I don’t understand. Whose is this?”
“It’s yours now,” she says, handing it to me.
“But this must be worth hundreds—no, thousands—of Nailins. Where did you get this?”
Mom’s smile is almost as brilliant as the emerald I’m holding. “It was your father’s gift to me after you were born. I don’t know where he got it and I didn’t ask. When he saw those emerald-green eyes of yours, he just knew you were going to be something special, so he gave me this necklace as a keepsake, something for me to pass down to you.”
My eyes are watering. “But this is too much. I can’t accept this,” I say, knowing that I will.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Tristan
While Adele is away with her mother I worry about her. Not because she’s not capable of taking care of herself—I’d have to be an idiot if I didn’t know that she was by now—but because there’s some truth to what she said to me earlier. Awfulness does seem to follow her around. But I guess these days terrible things are happening to everyone.
I also feel somewhat lonely because she’s not here. Trying to kill time, I rummage through my pack, organizing my stuff. As I toss out a few bags of dried meat and a dirty tunic, my hand brushes against something hard. The diary. Ben’s diary. Well, not his diary, but the one he let me borrow. I never gave it back. And now he’s gone. As I flip through the brittle time-yellowed pages, I remember him. His calm, solid demeanor; the ever-present twinkle in his trustworthy eyes; his rare combination of optimism and realism: he was a good guy. The best kind of guy. A friend, in the end.
He deserves some words from me. Something to honor him.
“Ben,” I say, glancing uncertainly at the cave roof, as if he’s above it somewhere, “I wish you were still here. You were…you were everything my father never was.” Were. Such a simple word but with such an awful meaning. I choke on my words, my eyes brimming with tears. I fight them off, take a deep breath, determined to finish my personal eulogy. “In just a short time, you were my role model, mentor, trusted adviser...” The words are sticking in my throat; the pale tears overflowing and tracing lines to my chin. “You were my friend. I’ll miss you so much.”
I cry lonely and silent tears for him.
Ben should be alive and my father shouldn’t. The world is broken, turned all upside down. Evil seems to conquer good again and again.
* * *
I spend a few hours with Elsey, who manages to cheer me up with her stories about her and Adele as kids. She’s an amazing little girl. I should be the one cheering her up considering all she’s lost, but it’s the other way around.
When Elsey’s shattered body gets tired after sitting up for only an hour, I go to find Roc. I’m walking down a random street in subchapter 1, hoping to run into him, when a shadow falls over me. Spinning around, I only have a split-second to react before a large, dark hand grabs me by the tunic and lifts me in the air, slings me against a rock wall.