She had. It hadn’t been on purpose, Evie was sure of it, but it happened. He’d died right there, and Evie had collapsed to the ground in a fit of shocked screams. She’d gripped the ground with both hands, not looking up until she heard Lyssa’s cries. Her baby sister had been set beside her in the sling from her mother’s neck.
And her mother was gone.
Closing her eyes tight, Evie sighed out a heavy breath, willing her heart free from the vise it was currently in. “Do you hate her, Papa?”
A singular tear rolled down her father’s rough cheek. “Some days, I wish I did.” He pulled the medallion from the inside of his shirt and rubbed it between his fingers. “She gave me this when we first met. I keep it close because, despite myself, I miss her.”
“I do, too, sometimes.” She missed her mother’s laugh and the way the house always felt warmer with her inside it, but mostly she just missed the before.
Before life became harsher, before circumstances grew desperate, before Evie had irrevocably changed. Who was she before the last ten years?
Her father seemed to be contemplating the same question. “But it’s also a reminder, Evie, to protect your heart, for it so easily can be broken.”
Thoughts of Trystan, The Villain, clouded her mind. She wondered how long she would’ve kept the secret if she hadn’t quit, wondered how many times she could look at the people she cherished most in this world and deceive them.
It reminded Evie of a vase Lyssa had knocked off the windowsill a few years prior, how the two Sage daughters had sat side by side, gluing the pieces back together.
But that effort had been useless in the end.
A month or two after that, Evie bumped into it, knocking it over once more, shattering it a second time.
“Can we fix it?” Lyssa had asked. “With the paste?”
“No, love.” Evie had sighed. “It’s hard enough to put something back together once. A second time, I’m afraid, is far too much to hope for.”
They’d thrown the pieces away.
Her head and heart fixated on that moment until her breathing grew shallow and sweat stuck to her hairline. Too many lies. It was one thing to be living a double life but another altogether where she wasn’t trusted, as if her opinions and her confidence weren’t worthy.
Constantly fighting for a place, one that feels important, was the single most exhausting task Evie had ever given herself.
And she was exhausted; she felt it in the ache of her limbs and the weight of her eyelids as she laid back against the comfortable chair and closed her eyes.
Sometime later, the sound of her father’s groan startled Evie awake. She bolted from her seat and leaned over him. His eyes were closed, and his complexion was dull and colorless. “Papa?”
“Worry not. It hasn’t taken me yet.” Her father smiled lightly, opening his light-blue eyes.
“That isn’t funny, Papa.” They both laughed anyway, and Evie reached for his hand, bringing it up to kiss the back of it.
Her father was strong. After her brother died and her mother left, he did his best to keep busy at the butchery, ensuring that his remaining two children never wanted for anything. They saw less of him at home, but that had been fine. He’d hired a private tutor for Evie so she could stay away from the school and avoid conversing with the other girls in her village who reminded her of her past, girls Evie no longer seemed to have anything in common with.
Tragedy did that to a family, isolated them. Her father seemed the only one who still felt comfortable among the living, his many friends in the village by his side, comforting him in the months and years to come. As for Evie, she had been content to live with the ghosts.
Lyssa had grown up to be a social butterfly, enchanting every person she set her eyes on, untouched by the tragedy she witnessed as an infant, and Evie had remained just as she was. Odd.
Always saying the wrong thing, her mind and thoughts not built for polite company. It caused Evie such pinched worry with every interaction that she’d eventually stopped trying, had stopped living.
It had only worsened when her father grew ill. More of an excuse to bury herself in a job than actually letting herself be a person. Until she had begun working for The Villain.
It was ironic that a man who dealt with so much death seemed to have brought her back to life, but now it was over. Evie would slowly regress backward until every part of her burned to ash, like blackened dandelions.
Tears burned, but Evie blinked them back and smiled wide for her father. “Everything’s all right,” she said, echoing the words she’d spoken to Lyssa in that field of burned-up wishes all those years ago.