Unbreakable by Sara Ella

Author:Sara Ella
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2018-03-29T04:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-TWO

Ky

Good riddance, Gage. Good-bye, mirrorglass blade.

Hello, Princess.

I make my way back through the dark compound. The tents sleep now, most every lantern extinguished. How many hours remain for rest? Do I care? I have my prize. Snoozing isn’t my favorite pastime anyway. At night my guard lowers, and then it all comes back to me. Every punch and blow feels fresh.

But worse than any bruise Tiernan could have given is the gash that never healed.

“Mom?” I forced steadiness into my voice as I pushed the already-ajar door inward. “Mom?”

My gaze landed on a shoe. Her shoe. In the middle of the entry. If the open door didn’t ignite fear, the abandoned piece of footwear did. My mother wasn’t one to be careless. She always locked the door and never left anything lying around.

The floorboards creaked as I rounded the corner from the foyer into the main hall. Our modest home near the docks in the Third was nothing to boast about, yet it was more home than the Second ever was. A safe place for my mother and Khloe, where they could live in peace far away from Tiernan and his drunken dissatisfactions.

Until then. Until I saw her lying at the bottom of the stairs in a rag-doll heap.

I fell to my knees. “Mama.” I hadn’t called her that in years, but in the moment the word was everything. Her hand lay lifeless. I took it in mine and held it to my lips.

I’d never felt skin so cold.

It was minutes before I rose. When I finally gained the strength, I punched a hole through the nearest wall. Then another, then another. I swung until my hands were a bloodied mess, but I couldn’t help it. The loose board on the middle step was something I’d been meaning to repair. But the faulty stair structure didn’t end her life.

He did.

“Yessss,” Kyaphus eggs. “Remember. Remember how good it felt to let me out. To release all your anger and frustrations and become the man you truly are. Me.”

“Get out of my head, monster.”

“No can do. When you tried to kill Tiernan after what he did to our mother, that was when you finally behaved like a man. You sought justice for the wrong done to us.”

“Don’t be a fool,” I say beneath my breath. “I’ve learned my lesson. When I let you out that night, you almost killed us both. I won’t be so negligent again.”

“Details, details.”

The pain I’ve kept below the surface threatens to rear its evil head. I harness it before it causes a shipwreck in my soul and gaze up at the stars, a clouded half-moon hanging in their midst. My mother loved stars and chose her own names for the constellations, just as she did for most everything else. Flowers were “color wheels” and trees were “shade makers.” The Callings were “gifts” and the Void was “death” itself. The Verity had many names, but my mother’s favorite was simply “morning.”

“Because morning always comes,” she said. “Just like the Verity.

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