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The boats were all docked. The pavements were empty. The windows of every house, shop, and restaurant were dark. And a seed of desperate, masochistic hope took root in my chest.
Howth was a ghost town. We weren’t sneak-attacking them—the residents had already left.
“Crewmen, deploy the tanks and head straight to the harbor. Infantry and intelligence, follow in the rafts. Once the bombing has stopped, set up an encampment, establish roadblocks, and deploy the drones to look for survivors. Artillery troops, remain on deck and report to your assigned officer.
“Tonight, we show the UIB that a crime against President Abramov is a crime against Russia, and Russia … never … forgets!”
The cheering was deafening, but I didn’t feel a fucking thing.
“Lieutenant,” Petrov bellowed, clapping me on the shoulder as he steered me off the stage. “You are a lucky man. Your platoon has been assigned to short-range shelling.” He swept his sausage-like fingers over the Howth coastline. “It is much more fun when you can see the shit that you are blowing up, no?” He laughed, giving my shoulder a series of shakes. “My men on the rocket launchers will be jealous.”
I wanted to rip his hand off and stab him in the throat with the severed bone.
Instead, those marionette strings forced my own hand to lift in a salute and my legs to march over to the artillery guns, where my platoon was awaiting my instruction.
I couldn’t change what was about to happen. Despite the authority implied by my officer’s uniform and the patches on my chest, I had no power here. I was just as much a prisoner on this ship as I had been in the Kletka. The only thing I had control over was whether or not they broke me. And at that, I would never fail. I would bury my humanity so deep that even I couldn’t find it. I would carve out my heart, snuff out my soul, if that was what it took to deny them the satisfaction of my pain.
And that was exactly what I did. I took solace in the fact that the town had been evacuated, I accepted the situation, and I armored the fuck up.
CHAPTER 4
CLOVER
Itried to avoid looking at the decor in Odie’s nursery as I placed him in his crib. In fact, I tried to avoid going into that room as much as possible. It wasn’t that I disliked Sheila’s coastal-chic theme—although the vintage fishing nets hanging from the ceiling did make my skin crawl, for personal reasons; it was what those decorations signified that was so hard to stomach. Every starfish and seashell reminded me that Odie had a mother who loved him very much.
And I didn’t.
As soon as he was settled, I practically sprinted back down the hall, thankful that my bedroom door was shut so that I wouldn’t have to see the faded field of green and purple lining the room. My ma had painted a garden of clover and bluebells along the bottom of my walls before I was born, knowing that she was going to name me after a quote from her favorite poem, but now, the sight of them made my chest ache. Those chipped, cracked leaves and flowers were the only things left in the house that still looked like her.
Other than me. A fact that had made me the target of my father’s rage since the day she’d died.
In the sitting room, Sheila clutched a crab-shaped pillow to her chest and stared at the news in horror while Oliver continued his diatribe about how this new Russian threat was “just made up by the BBC to scare all of us because they’re still fucked off about us taking Northern Ireland back.” Neither of them gave me so much as a glance as I bolted through the room and out the back door, which was a relief because my tears had already begun to fall.
By the time I pulled the door closed behind me, I could feel the sob climbing its way out of my throat. I ran to the shed and barely made it inside before I sank to my knees and let it all out. I hated that he made me feel that way. I hated that I was too weak to stand up to him. But mostly, I hated how much I wanted him to love me. It only made it hurt that much more when he reminded me that he didn’t.
With a deep, shaky sigh, I wiped my eyes on my sleeve, pulled myself off the ground, grabbed a net big enough to hold a few lobsters—God willing—and tucked a handful of rubber bands into my pocket.
Then, I shoved my feet into my ma’s old yellow wellies and headed off toward the cliff trail.
Scanning the sea, the sky, and Ireland’s Eye, I was surprised to find that the cruise ship was the only vessel in the water. After that news report, I’d expected to see Russian warships closing in from all sides and fighter jets zooming overhead—we were that close to Dublin. Our house was on the northern side of Howth Head peninsula, the sea side, but the southern side bordered Dublin Bay, which funneled right into the heart of the city.
Maybe Da was right, I thought, feeling the tiniest bit of relief. Maybe the news really is full of shite.
The cliff path meandered around the edge of the peninsula, flanked on both sides by wispy purple heather and waist-high yellow gorse bushes. I usually had to duck and weave through the photo-taking tourists this time of year, but the trail was eerily empty. Just as I began to appreciate having it all to myself again, a swell of familiar voices came rolling over the next hill.
Unfortunately, those voices were followed by the arseholes they belonged to—Liv, Sophie, Caiden, and Cash. They lived near the golf course and didn’t have chores or jobs … or a single redeeming quality among the four of them. As soon as they saw me, their voices dropped to a whisper, but I could hear everything they said, thanks to the sea winds barreling up the path.
“Ah, look. It’s Crazy Clover.”
“Where the hell do ya s’pose she’s goin’?”
“We’re under evacuation orders, and she’s out here, takin’ her imaginary friend for a walk.”
They all burst out laughing.
Crazy Clover. I’d had that nickname since second class. And they were right; I did have an imaginary friend. At least, I had back then. He was the main character from one of the books Ma used to read to me at night—a handsome young fairy prince who could be found in the forest of Glenshire, a small farming village where the author lived. The author’s descriptions had been so vivid that I could practically feel the velvety fuzz of the moss covering every tree trunk, the tickle of the bluebells against my bare legs. I could taste the sour burst of blackberries on my tongue. And I could definitely picture the boy.
He didn’t have wings or pointy ears, but he looked special nonetheless, both because of his beauty and because he was completely colorless—wild black hair; pale, porcelain skin; and eyes the color of smoke, if you were lucky enough to see them. He never spoke, but he liked to play. The author said she often found him playing in the ruins of an old stone cottage out in the woods, and although it was a very serious offense for a fairy to allow themselves to be seen by a human, for a few vanilla custard creams, he could be persuaded to let her play with him.
