Aveline (14 page)

Tiana’s life, Aveline learned, was filled
with empty hours of solitude interrupted by sleep, food and the
occasional visit by an irritable Matilda, who came for drugs and
left poisoned tea that Aveline promptly threw out.

The Hanover girl never objected to anything,
including Matilda’s ongoing abuse. She wilted and stayed still, not
moving until Matilda was gone. Despite knowing she should never
empathize with someone she was supposed to murder one day, Aveline
pitied the girl trapped in her room and treated like an animal by
the one woman who should love her. She tried to tell herself it did
not matter, that none of this was her concern, without success.

As each day passed, Aveline grew more
restless without the ability to train or spar and angrier with
Matilda’s visits and Tiana’s submissive reactions. She had nothing
to do but sit, stew and miss her father.

Tiana read and sewed all day long, hobbies
that left Aveline almost crying from boredom. In all Aveline’s
fantasizing about becoming an assassin, she had never once
considered there were lulls between action and danger or long
periods of … nothing. She had grown up listening to her father’s
tales, to those of Karl and other assassins, with wonder and envy
and never bothered to ask what happened when they were not on an
adventure.

I can’t bear this until
spring!
Aveline thought. Worse, the more
she thought about Rocky being in the prisons of the Shield, the
harder it was for her to justify lying around all day without
actively seeking a way to free him.

A week after assuming her new duty, she lay
on the floor, eyes on the ceiling. Tiana sewed so quietly, Aveline
glanced frequently in her direction to ensure she was still
present. The girl had not looked up once since meeting her. She
embroidered silk with her back to Aveline, no matter where the
lighting in the room was.

Without the daily dose of poison, Tiana’s
features had returned to a healthier shade of peach, and she smiled
more often.

“Are you hungry?” Aveline asked, desperate
for something to do.

“You have been stuffing me full of food the
past few days. I’ve eaten thrice today already, and we have yet to
eat dinner,” Tiana pointed out.

“You’re too skinny. You need to eat
more.”

“I am not hungry.”

Aveline sighed. “How do you live like this?”
she complained.

“How would I know what I am missing?”

“You wouldn’t. But don’t you ever wonder?”
Aveline twisted her head toward Tiana, who sat on the bed.

Tiana’s hands lowered, and her head lifted
as she thought. “Will you laugh if I tell you the truth?” she asked
hesitantly.

“Probably,” Aveline replied. Over the period
of a week, Tiana had stopped wilting whenever Aveline was too
straightforward. The girl was not ready to face the world outside
her room, but she was progressing each day towards discerning the
difference between harmless sarcasm and malignant words spoken in
earnest.

“I think about leaving the city all day
long,” Tiana replied.

“Why don’t you go?” Aveline asked.

“Where would I go? How would I travel? Who
would show me how to survive?”

“You have money. You could pay someone.”
Aveline grimaced. Tiana had a point. She would not survive two
steps past the entrance of her room for long without help.

“My father has money. I have nothing.”

“Your books would sell well.”

“But I love them.”

“Fine. Stay here your whole life.”

“Aveline, do you not fear the unknown? The
future?” Tiana asked.

“I don’t really think that
way. On the streets, you learn to live in the moment. It’s
acceptable to
hope
for there to be a future, but if you aren’t paying attention
to what’s in front of you, you die,” Aveline explained.

“I have nothing to do but think. Have you
heard of the Free Lands?” Tiana asked her.

“Rumors,” Aveline replied vaguely. “I heard
traders mention them when I went to the markets.”

“Then they exist.”

“They might. It wouldn’t matter if they did.
I never want to leave the city.”

“I do. I want to go to the Free Lands,”
Tiana said with rare conviction. “How many books would I give
someone to take me there?”

“Burn me, Tiana. You can’t just give someone
a few books and tell them to take you somewhere.”

“Why not?”

“You don’t have any idea how the world
outside your room works!” Aveline exclaimed. “What if the person
steals your books and leaves you in the inner city to die? What if
he leads you in the forest and does the same there? Or worse, sells
you to the slavers or to a brothel?”

Tiana sighed. “I understand. I would not
know who to trust. I could be sitting next to someone who wanted to
kill me, and I would never know.”

Aveline blinked, uncertain how to respond.
It was the second time in as many days an innocent statement by
Tiana had hit too close to the truth. Aveline sensed there was more
depth to the Hanover girl than she initially assumed.

Uncomfortable with Tiana’s too accurate
guess, Aveline rose and paced. Her gaze settled on the boarded up
window in Tiana’s room. “I haven’t seen the sun since I got here a
week ago! Have you ever even been outside? You’re whiter than a
Ghoul.”

Tiana giggled. “I go outside once a
year.”

Aveline shook her head. If she were Tiana,
she would be consumed by madness. The isolated girl appeared too
accustomed to being imprisoned by her own family to question it.
That she had aspirations of going somewhere so far away from here
surprised Aveline.

“This is ridiculous.” Aveline went to the
window. “The least we can do is open this damn thing so we have
fresh air!” She dug her fingers into the area between wood and sill
and yanked.

Tiana gasped. “No, Aveline. You must
not!”

“Why not?” Aveline asked with a grunt.

“Matilda will be angry.”

“Your stepmother is a bitch. It’s in her
nature to hate everything you do, so why not be happy doing
it?”

Tiana said nothing.

The wood boards gave an inch. Aveline
dropped her hands and stretched towards the table to grab one of
her steel weapons. “Time to see how strong metal is.” She shoved a
pointed stake into the windowsill and pushed on the end, creating a
lever. One of the nails popped out, and she went onto the next.

“She will know I did not do this,” Tiana
said.

“I don’t care.”

“I do. I do not wish her to harm you.”

Aveline laughed. “If she sends me away, you
will have no more strawberries. Is this what worries you?”

“You should not laugh at me.” Tiana’s voice
held a note of sadness.

“Toughen up, Tiana,” Aveline ordered. “Has
your father forbidden you from taking down the boards like he has
everything else?”

“No.”

“Then you can bitch at me or help me.”

Aveline neither knew nor cared what Tiana
would decide to do. This was for her own sanity, to prevent her
from going stir crazy. She needed the sunlight and to smell the
city she grew up in.

After a hesitation, Tiana moved to the other
side of the window and began tugging the board loose. Aveline
loosened a few more of the nails and found most of them were rusted
and rotted in place, as if the window had been covered for many
years before Tiana assumed residency in the room.

“Pull,” she said and gave her side another
yank.

Tiana did so, and the board splintered,
groaned and then gave. It snapped off fast enough to knock her
down. Aveline almost fell with her but caught herself and kept the
board from falling on the blonde girl.

“We did it!” Aveline exclaimed and put the
heavy wood down, leaning it against the table. She peered out of
the window, admiring the view overlooking the city and surrounding
prairie with glimpses of the forest visible from the top of the
largest structure in the city. The day was a typical gray, cloudy
mid-winter day, but the moment the wintery air chilled her lungs,
Aveline began to relax. She belonged outside, not trapped in the
tiny room.

Tiana joined her, and Aveline heard her
breathe in deeply several times.

“Beautiful,” Tiana murmured. “Had I known
this awaited me, I would have taken the boards down myself long
ago.”

“No you wouldn’t have,” Aveline replied,
amused.

“I would have
thought
about it,” Tiana
said sheepishly.

“Don’t you ever …” Aveline glanced at her
ward, and the question stopped in her throat.

In nearly every way, Tiana
appeared normal. That was, until Aveline saw why Tiana kept her
gaze downcast. She had no pupils. Or maybe, her eyes were made up
solely of
pupils. Aveline was not certain
which was correct. Tiana’s almond-shaped eyes contained inky black
irises that filled the entire eyeball with only a fleck of white
peeking out on either side and no differentiation between the pupil
and iris. The unnatural condition was impossible to miss once Tiana
looked up.

The blonde girl’s smile faded when she
realized Aveline was staring at her. She quickly averted her eyes
to the ground again, whirled and ran to the closet. Tiana slammed
the door closed, and Aveline heard the slide of the lock into
place.

“Burn me,” she muttered. Unprepared to
witness Tiana’s deformity, Aveline had reacted differently than she
would have liked. It had taken a week for Tiana’s fragile trust to
emerge, and Aveline had destroyed it in seconds.

Aveline went to the closet. “Tiana? You can
come out. I didn’t mean to stare.”

No answer. Aveline sank down with her back
to the door, uncertain what to say. “It’s not that bad,” she
said.

“It is so!”

“You aren’t missing a leg or something. I
understand why you don’t leave your room, because your father would
probably burn you at the stake but you’re not … ugly.”

Tiana’s soft sniffling reached her.

Aveline rolled her eyes. “Tiana, I don’t
care if your eyes are strange. My father massacred a thousand
people in three days. I didn’t judge him for it and I don’t judge
you for your eyes.”

“You should,” came the choked response.
“When you understand everything, you will leave me or hate me or
–”

“Why? Because your horrible family does?”
Aveline snapped.

“No. Because …” Tiana’s mumbling was too
choked by crying for Aveline to understand.

The ever-present charge in the air became
almost stifling, until the hair on Aveline’s arms stood up on end.
Movement from her peripheral drew her focus away from Tiana.
Aveline sprang to her feet before she was able to register who –
rather, what – was moving.

Pillows were lifting into the air off the
bed, followed by the coverings and then by the bed itself. The
armoire was next to float, then the vanity and everything on top of
it. Aveline’s weapons floated into the air next.

Aveline blinked. She rubbed her eyes to
ensure she was awake then reached out to one of the knives drifting
towards her. She plucked it out of the air. It was solid, cool and
heavy in her hand.

“Are you … are you doing this?” Aveline
asked.

“Y…yes.”

So maybe Tiana had a few, extremely unusual
traits working against her. Aveline absorbed the sight of the
hovering inanimate objects in silence. She had never heard of
anyone lifting objects without touching them, and she had no idea
why Tiana’s eyes were so strange. Granted, the daughter of the
Devil, who carried the blood of a demon, was not normal either.
Until this incident, however, Aveline had never considered more
people than the members of her family had been touched by demon
blood.

“Is this magic?” she asked.

Tiana did not answer. The furniture and
belongings settled onto the ground.

Uncomfortable with the display, Aveline
nudged the bed to confirm it was too heavy for one person to lift.
How had the frail girl hiding in the closet managed to use her mind
to do this?

Why did it feel hot in here?

“I’m going for … food,” she said loudly
enough for Tiana to hear.

Aveline fled the room faster than she
intended to, blaming it on the heat and electrical charge. In the
week she had been with Tiana, she had become complacent, not in
guarding her ward, but in asking questions to satisfy her insistent
instincts. After the display, her insides were wired and her inner
voice agitated.

The energy did not release her until she was
at the elevator. Only then was Aveline able to coax her tense
shoulders back into place. She shivered. Part of her was amazed by
Tiana’s gift, but it was the buzzing instinct of warning that
bothered her. She never sensed danger from Tiana – but there was a
threat in Tiana’s magic this time, as if the floating furniture
were a few harmless drops of rain foretelling the approach of a
violent thunderstorm.

Aveline was in the basement before she had
completely shaken off the unnerving sense of being caught in a
spider’s web of electrical currents. She sought out George and,
unable to find him in either of the places she knew to look, she
roamed the corridors in the hopes of crossing paths with him.

He was not around. She ventured into a part
of the basement she had never visited before, as restless from a
week trapped in the room as from the buzzing energy of Tiana’s
unusual skill. The lights flickered out, and she froze in the
darkness. Within seconds, fire sprang to life in the sconces
stationed beside the electric powered bulbs.

The corridor was dimmer, and she began
walking again, glancing at the torches. She had forgotten how much
friendlier firelight was. Electricity was amazing, but she missed
the warmth of dancing flames lulling her to sleep each night.