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A hint of a smile played on her lips. “The first thing he did was chastise me for playing in the river, and of course, I was infuriated and told him I was finding berries and had slipped. ‘Maybe don’t get berries, then,’ was his reply.’” Ava scoffed. “It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
“Ciru and I became as thick as thieves over the course of our first summer together. He taught me how to hunt game and forage—without almost dying—but it was clear he simply needed a friend. He never spoke about his parents, and when I asked him about them, he became so tense that I thought he would faint. Though he lived in a home with them, I knew they often abandoned him for long stretches of time, leaving him to fend for himself.
“A year passed, then two. Ciru was my closest friend, and I was his. My cousin, Zina, often joined us on our adventures. Everyone confused us for twins, except for Ciru. He always knew, even when we began playing tricks on him.”
Around them, the sounds of the den roughhousing died down. When Ava looked up, she was relieved to see Riaz was taking the kids out for a run. Riaz hated what’d happened to her as a child, and every time he heard the story, he’d internalize her pain. If she could spare him from it, she would.
"Ciru sounds like a good friend,” Cortana said softly. “What happened?”
Ava rolled her shoulders to ward off the chill that'd crept up her spine. "Looking back on it now, I can see the discrepancies, but I’ve never fully understood them. Ciru was starved for affection. His home life, though he spoke very little about it, had left him wanting. I knew his family were more likely to offer him the rod than a hug because of how eagerly he accepted any form of affection from either me or Zina.”
Ava, though, was the one who held his heart. Stolen glances, a sweet kiss on the forehead, a fish caught and offered to her: all tokens of affection that she had lapped up like a hungry wolf.
But all hadn’t been well with him—that much was woefully apparent.
“Often,” Ava continued, “he’d wear thick clothing in the middle of summer, refusing to remove it even when he became drenched in sweat. He’d never take off his shirt when we cooled off in the pond or waded into the river. When he failed at a hunt, he’d instantly leave, not returning until the following day.
“Once, when he accidentally slipped on a wet rock and took me down with him, he apologized profusely and disappeared before I’d even gotten to my feet. I knew his parents were the cause, but I’d never met them. When I brought it up, he’d adamantly refuse to introduce us.”
Desperate for information on her closest friend, she’d stealthily tailed him back toward his home one day. He’d caught her well before they reached his cottage and sent her straight home. That day was one of the few times she’d ever seen his temper erupt.
Fortunately, the tough times were few and far between, and the nights when Ava snuck out of her homestead to curl up with him under the stars were her favorite. Their tree, a giant oak that’d been around for more than a hundred years, stood tall and proud only a mile away from her village.
“Regardless, I trusted him.”
It was the beginning of the end. She could still remember the first shrieks startling her awake one morning. She had been a young teenager then, fancied herself an adult as most do, but the moment the horror began, she’d sought out her mother. The screams would forever haunt Ava’s waking moments and terrorize those spent in sleep.
“We had no time to prepare,” she recalled. “They simply appeared. One had begun dragging people out of their homes, another slayed them in the town square. My father went out to confront them while my mother attempted to hide me. Knowing they’d eventually come into our home, my mother hid me beneath a pile of wool blankets outside.”
Ava’s mother had been a stoic figure, determined to stand against the threat. None of the fear she must have felt showed on her mother’s face.
The blankets had laid roughly against Ava’s skin, the weight beginning to constrict the air in her lungs. A small gap in the blankets allowed her to peer out and notice her mother creeping to the front of the homestead to grab a weapon.
That was when she saw the first killer. The woman’s hair was long and black, pulled into a severe braid that hung below her waist. Maniacal brown eyes were wide with infinite darkness and her mouth was stretched wide in a grin that spoke of the cruelty that lived beneath her skin.
Her mother saw the other woman a second too late.
“Fast, too fast, the crazed woman who’d been slaughtering our village had cuffed a hand around my mother’s neck and began dragging her to the village circle where several other townsmen were huddled. That’s when I saw him. Ciru.”
Despite the blood-soaked ground around him, he had casually leaned against the trough in the middle of the village square.
Ava had nearly cried out to him, tried to warn him away, but something in his expression gave her pause. Ciru hadn’t given signs of shock or fright, he hadn’t been distraught or angry, frightened, or sad. He had been apathetic. Disinterested.
Bored.
Ciru had been watching the murderous spree of her village with indifference. He watched her screaming mother without showing an ounce of empathy. His face was a mask of absolute nothingness.
Ava could still remember her heart racing.
“I kept trying to figure out why he was there. He didn’t live in our village, and his parents hadn’t traded there. He’d visited only once and that was under the cover of nighttime. At most, he watched the village from afar, never coming too close.”
Swallowing against a throat gone dry, Ava recalled the moment it became clear. “The woman said, ‘This is how Raeths kill their prey. We coerce them into submission, taking as we please. Watch, my son, see how blood spills until life is drained. See how humans meet their end by our hands.’”
Shocked, Cortana sucked in a sudden breath. “Ciru was a Raeth?”
She nodded. “Ciru did just as he was instructed: he watched. He watched when my mother screamed my name, then as she took her last breaths. Every person they dragged forward was bled dry at Ciru’s feet while he watched impassively.”
Ava had made no move, frozen with fear and knowing she couldn’t leave without being seen by one of his parents. His father, a tall man with blond hair and piercing blue eyes, had the type of face that convinced women to throw themselves at his feet, only for him to bury them.
