The Sixth Child

Chapter 1

"Kailey??"

The sharp hiss from beside her made Kailey jump slightly, whipping her head to the source of the sound.

What she saw were her friends, Iris Johanson and Bella Watson, staring at her with concern written across their faces. She smiled, trying to ease their concern.

"What's up?" She whispered back, trying to keep her voice from trembling.

Her two friends exchanged a look and it was then that Kailey felt the tears that were dripping down her cheeks onto her hands. Hands that were fiddling with her heart locket, just like she always did in these situations.

Some days were fine, she kept her past at bay, desperate not to think about it. That day she had lost her closest friend. She would never again see his smile or hear his laugh. She would never be able to tell him how she truly felt.

Kailey took a shuddering breath, clearing her thoughts. With a shaky hand, she wiped away her tears and again turned to her friends.

"I'm fine." She lied, a bright smile on her tear-stained face.

"Ms Anderson, Ms Johanson and Ms Watson. Is there something you would like to share with the class?" The teacher called, startling the three friends.

"No Sir. Sorry, Sir."The girls mumbled, turning away from each other.

The teachers studied Kailey's face for a moment and she prayed he wouldn't see through the glamour she had put in place to hide the tear stains. She would take the glamour off when the tear stains had faded but until then it was a necessary precaution. She didn't want people asking too many questions. Though questions were rather difficult to avoid considering she had just randomly shown up at the start of the year, with no record of her previous education. It had been easy enough to say that she had been homeschooled by her biological parents.

That was another thing people were desperate to know about. Her biological family. Nobody knew about her past, not even her adoptive family. Well, she had told everyone the barest details, she had 5 older brothers, 4 of them half brothers and 1 of them full. She tried not to mention Navaoru, any mention of him had her fighting back tears. She didn't want to tell them how she had failed him and left him to die by the hands of his own brother.

'Stop. He would not want you to blame yourself.'

But did it really matter anymore? He was dead and-

'No.'

She felt her flames rise up, warm and comforting. That was one of the few good things about everything. She was getting her powers back. It had started by simply being able to maintain her own glamour but, in the past few months, her flames had been returning too.

Kailey sighed softly through her nose. She should focus on the class. Maths. God, she hated maths. She stared down at her worksheet and sighed again. All it was was a mess of numbers and letters. Why were there letters in maths? From how Raestrao had talked about it she had thought it would be all about numbers but here she was in maths having to 'solve for x'. After 7 months in school (and one month before that which she spent trying to learn as much as possible about the human world) she still had no idea how to do that. She knew she had to find what number x was but she didn't know how and she really didn't care either. Why should she care what x was? If Raestrou were here he would probably love this. No wonder Aomaris and Zecaeru had always teased him... What a nerd.

She fought the rising smile that tried to creep onto her face at the thought of her brothers' teasing of one another. Aomaris would probably be so proud of her if he heard her calling Raestrou a nerd.