The boy and the woman had the same blue eyes, and they were peering into one another’s, bright faces caught mid-laugh, as the woman spun the boy around and around in the air. The look on the boy’s face spoke of excitement. The look on the woman’s face spoke of love.
A tear dropped onto the photo, right above the woman’s face, and ran down the laminated paper in a faint streak. “She loved me?”
“She did,” Tildrum said. “But she never got to tell you that when you were old enough to truly comprehend such profound emotion.
The enemy took that opportunity away from her, and from you.”
He stared down at the photo, something raw and painful caught in those catlike eyes. “Her name was Iona. She was your mother. She loved you, deep and true. And they killed her because she loved her people too.”
He leaned so close to me that I smelled the thirst for bloodshed on his breath. “Avenge her,” he hissed.
Then he was gone, nothing but a fluttering ribbon in the wind.
I sat in stunned silence for an eternity in seconds, a raging storm of emotion crashing against the walls of my chest. I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe. I didn’t think. I couldn’t do anything, not with the weight of all I’d learned crushing my chest and threatening to shatter the cracked remains of my heart and soul.
I had spent so long wanting answers to so many questions, and I’d learned everything I wanted to know, more than I wanted to know.
The age-old adage had returned to haunt me yet again— be careful what you wish for —and it was all I could do not to collapse into a fetal ball and sob until I ran out of tears.
It was just too much. Far too much. It would always be too much…
Soft footsteps sounded on the sidewalk just beyond the fence.
They paused at the gate I’d left open, and from the darkness of night and the cloak of lingering smoke resolved the form of someone I had always leaned on to help me shoulder the weight of life’s problems.
Someone with whom I’d shared great pain and in response received only soothing balms. Someone from whom I’d learned how to cope with the worst humanity had to offer, and who’d only ever asked for honest effort as my payment. Someone whose keen gaze could diagnose any problem, and whose smile could always act as the cure—though often, I suspected she didn’t know how much brighter she made the world.
Someone who was smiling even here, even now, with nothing but a wreck of a city and a ruin of a world as her backdrop. Because even in her darkest hours, with depression a cord wrapped tight around her neck, she could find a reason to be happy. And she was always willing to share that reason with you, like a kind stranger sharing hearth and home on a cold day’s night.
“Vince,” said Saoirse Daly, “welcome home.”
To Be Continued
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IN WHAT NIGHT CONCEALS !
Coming soon!
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Books by Clara Coulson
CITY OF CROWS
Soul Breaker
Shade Chaser
Wraith Hunter
Doom Sayer
Day Killer
Spell Caster
Dawn Slayer
Novellas
Dream Snatcher
THE FROST ARCANA
What Fate Portends
What Man Defies
What Gods Incite
What Dawn Demands
What Dusk Divides
What Night Conceals
About Clara Coulson
Clara Coulson was born and raised in backwoods Virginia, USA.
Currently in her mid-twenties, Clara holds a degree in English and Finance from the College of William & Mary and recently
retired from the hustle and bustle of Washington, DC to return to the homeland and pick up the quiet writing life.
Clara spends most of her time (when she's not writing) dreaming up new story ideas, studying Japanese, and slowly reading through the several-hundred-book backlog in her budding home library. If she's not occupied with any of those things, then you can probably find her playing with her two cats or lurking in the shadows of various social media websites.
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What Dusk Divides Page 26
