A Reaper at the Gates Page 89

“We can’t expose them to that kind of danger. Mirra—”

Darkness. Smell comes to me before light. Apricot orchards and hot sands. I am in Serra. My mother appears again, in leathers this time, a bow and quiver slung across her back. Her light hair is pulled back into a topknot, her stare fierce as she knocks upon a familiar weathered door. My father kneels behind her, holding me against one shoulder and Darin against the other. I am four years old. Darin is six. Father kisses our faces over and over and whispers to us, though I cannot hear his words.

When the door opens, Nan stands there, hands on her hips, so angry that I want to cry. Don’t be angry, I want to tell her. You will miss her later. You will regret your anger. You will wish you had welcomed her with open arms. Nan catches sight of my father, of Darin, of me. She takes a step toward us.

Darkness. And then an eerily familiar place. A dank room. A light-haired woman within—a woman I finally recognize: my mother. And the room is not a room. It is a prison cell.

“The truth will free you from your illusions, Laia of Serra,” the Nightbringer whispers. “It will free you from the burden of hope.”

“I don’t want it.” The image of my mother won’t go away. “I don’t want to be free. Just tell me where Elias is,” I beg, a prisoner in my own mind. “Let me go.”

The Nightbringer is silent. Torchlight bobs distantly, and the door to my mother’s cell opens. Mother’s bruises, her wounds, her hacked hair and emaciation, are suddenly illuminated.

“Are you ready to cooperate?” The winter in that voice is unmistakable.

“I will never cooperate with you.” My mother spits at the feet of Keris Veturia. The Commandant is younger but just as monstrous. A high-pitched scream stabs into my ears. The scream of a child. I know who it is. Skies, I know. Lis. My sister.

I writhe and scream myself to try to drown her out. I cannot see this. I cannot hear it. But the Nightbringer and his brethren hold me fast.

“She doesn’t have your strength,” Keris says to Mother. “Nor does your husband. He broke down. Begged for death. Begged for your death. No loyalty. He told me everything.”

“He—he would never.”

Keris enters the cell. “How little we know of people until we watch them break. Until we strip them down to their smallest, weakest selves. I learned that lesson long ago, Mirra of Serra. And so I will teach you. I will lay you bare. And I don’t even have to touch you to do it.”

Another scream, this one deeper—a man’s voice.

“They ask about you,” the Commandant says. “They wonder why you let them suffer. One way or another, Mirra, you will give me the names of your supporters in Serra.” There is an unholy joy in Keris’s eyes. “I will bleed your family until you do.”

As she walks away, my mother roars at her, throwing herself against the door of her cell. Shadows move across the floor. A day passes, another. All the while, my mother listens to the sounds of Lis and Father suffering. I listen. She grows more crazed. She tries to break out. She tries to trick the guards. She tries to murder them. Nothing works.

The cell door opens, and the Kauf guards drag my father in. I scarcely recognize him. He is unconscious as they toss him in a corner. Lis is next, and I cannot look at what Keris has done to her. She was just a child, only twelve. Skies, Mother, how did you stand it? How did you not go utterly mad?

My sister shivers and curls up in the corner. Her silence, the slackness of her jaw, the emptiness in her blue eyes—they will haunt me until the day I die.

Mother takes Lis in her arms. Lis doesn’t react. Their bodies sway together as Mother rocks her.

A star she came

Into my home

And lit it bright with glo-ry

Lis closes her eyes. My mother curls around her, her hands moving toward my sister’s face, caressing it. There are no tears in Mother’s eyes. There is nothing at all.

Her laughter like

A gilded song

A raincloud sparrow’s sto-ry

My mother puts one of her hands on top of Lis’s head, shorn now, and another on her chin.

And when she sleeps

It’s like the sun

Has faded, gone so cold, see.

A crack sounds, softer than in my visions. It is a small noise, like the breaking of a bird’s wing. Lis slips lifeless to the floor, her neck broken by our mother’s hand.

I think I scream. I think that sound, that shriek, is me. In this world? In some other? I cannot get out. I cannot escape this place. I cannot escape what I see.

“Mirra?” my father whispers. “Lis . . . where is . . .”

“Sleeping, my love.” Mother’s voice is calm, distant. She crawls to my father, pulling his head into her lap. “She’s sleeping now.”

“I—I tried, but I don’t know how much longer—”

“Do not fear, my love. Neither of you will suffer anymore.”

When she breaks my father’s neck, it is louder. The quiet that follows sinks into my bones. It is the death of hope, sudden and unheralded.

Still, the Lioness does not cry.

The Commandant enters, looks between the bodies. “You’re strong, Mirra,” she says, and there is something like admiration in her pale eyes. “Stronger than my mother was. I would have let your child live, you know.”