Colorless

41 - Black & Blue

Rinian worried that he was doing something wrong in not trying to run away. He'd been searching for his father for so long, and he didn't want to doubt him. He wanted to trust Kin. Even if it was stupid.

It was just that thinking about it made his head hurt, so he didn't think about it. He just blindly waited and trusted and stayed.

He covered his face with his arms, but his eyes were dry now.

The world felt different. The air had a different taste, different sounds reached his ears, and even the scenery around him had changed. Somewhere, deep down, Rinian knew that his entire life would be sharply different from then on, but that knowledge hadn't yet reached his thoughts. He still hadn't really accepted his mother's death or his father's role in it. He still expected her company. He thought he saw her in every shadow. He still thought that at the end of the day, he'd return home—or to whatever shitty apartment or inn they were staying at. Death was too big a thing to feel real. Too drastic to comprehend.

He heard them coming long before he saw them. Nell's voice reached him first. "How is he taking it?" she asked.

"I don't know. She was awful and unloving, but she was still his mother." Kin was quiet for a beat, his uneven footsteps carrying all the way to Rinian's ears. "I really wish he hadn't been there."

Rinian tucked his hair behind his ears. They didn't know he could hear them.

"And how are you taking it?" Another woman asked. Rinian recognized her voice, but he couldn't put a name to it. "To have to kill her again..."

"My son's alive. It's worth it for that."

The air stung his eyes despite his resistance to the cold. He blinked it away. Crying was for babies, and he was tired of doing it.

"What's his connection to Ianthe?" Nell asked. She sounded like her sister.

Rinian frowned. She felt like her sister too. Something had changed about her. Accompanied by Kin and that other woman, Rinian almost hadn't noticed the massive change in her power, but as they neared, it was unmistakable.

He reached for his knife, and his heart clambered into his throat. She was one of them.

Their shadows appeared first. Rinian pressed himself flat against the adjacent wall, waiting for a glimpse of her purple hair. When he saw her, he lunged.

The woman with blue hair was just as quick to react. She grabbed Rinian around the middle before he could reach Nell and restrained his arms to his sides, holding him in the air, his back against her chest. "You could hurt someone with that knife, kid."

Rinian writhed to break free. "She's a heart-eater!" he said.

"Oh," Kin said. He frowned at his son. "You can sense that, can't you? It's not what you think. Lyra, let him go."

Lyra didn't listen to him. "I'll let him go when he drops the knife."

Kin held his hand out to Rinian. "She's not a heart-eater, I swear. Will you let me explain?"

Again, Rinian was foolish and trusting and gave Kin the knife. Lyra let him go, and Rinian darted away from her until he was well outside of her reach. He glared at her, but she was unperturbed. She tightened her ponytail and swayed back to her heels.

Kin explained Nell's huge rise in power. Rinian didn't completely understand it, but he was shown Nell's weird, rainbow blood and that was proof enough that she wasn't a heart-eater. They had murky and dark blood, not pretty and pale blood. His head was starting to hurt again, so he gave up on asking questions.