1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

T he heating was playing up again.

That happened sometimes, though it seemed especially unlucky that it was happening on Christmas.

“Chin up, Iris,” Nana said sternly. “Are you not grateful for this delicious dinner?”

“I’m very grateful, Nana,” I replied immediately, straightening up and silently instructing myself to stop shivering.

The dinner was a little chilly too, but it always took a little while to make its way up from the dining table downstairs where my parents and twin brothers ate to the attic where Nana and I lived.

“Have you tried the turkey? It’s very good, Iris. Even better than last year’s.”

My fingers twitched, wanting to touch the food on the plate so I could build a picture in my mind of what I had and where it was, but Nana hated when I did that. Blindness was not an excuse for poor etiquette, as she always reminded me. Instead, I gingerly moved my knife and fork around the plate, softly prodding and poking until I found something that felt like meat.

I couldn’t reply for a long moment as I made my way through the small bite I had taken. It had a much chalkier texture than I expected, but perhaps that was normal.

“How is it?” Nana asked, a sharp edge to her voice that dared me to complain.

“Delicious,” I rasped, immediately grabbing my glass of water to wash it down as I struggled to swallow it.

“Yes, it is,” she said firmly. “Eat the rest of your food, Iris. Then straight to bed.”

“Yes, Nana.”

“We have much to be grateful for this year,” she mumbled. Her utensils chittered faintly against the ceramic plate—they always did, her hands were increasingly shaky with age. But it was worse than usual tonight. She was shivering more than I was.

“Perhaps I could ask Clara to bring up that little space heater we used last time?” I suggested tentatively, not wanting to anger Nana by complaining but also not wanting her joints to ache from the cold.

“What on earth for?” she snapped. “Clara doesn’t want to spend her Christmas hauling appliances around the house.”

“Of course,” I replied quickly. “I’m sorry, Nana. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

She tutted. “No, you shouldn’t have. You were thinking of yourself, Iris. Thinking of what might make you happy and not at all thinking about poor Clara and the inconvenience it would cause her.”

I’d been thinking of Nana, but it would only upset her more if I pointed that out, so I forced another cold potato into my mouth instead. Clara had worked with our family for years—she was a Hunter who’d sustained an injury bad enough that she wasn’t able to hunt any longer, and had been assigned to domestic duties here instead. There had been a helper like that before her too—Margaret—who’d worked for our family until she died, and she’d been much friendlier.

I shook off the disrespectful thought. Clara hadn’t wanted to be here, and from what I understood, knowing about my existence put severe limitations on her life. I should be more grateful.

Be grateful, be grateful, be grateful.

“I worry, you know,” Nana sighed heavily. “You’re getting more difficult each year. More opinionated. Sometimes, I think you don’t even care about being kind anymore. You used to be so good at remembering that it was the most important thing you could be.”

I nodded, immediately contrite. Kindness was free. Kindness was unlimited. Kindness required nothing but my own effort.

“I won’t be around forever,” Nana continued. “You’re going to have to prove to your mother that you’re not a burden. That you shouldn’t be sent away to one of those awful places—you don’t want to go there, Iris. They’ll do awful things to you there. And there’s no one else who can watch you once I’m gone. Certainly, no one would expect your brothers to undertake such an onerous task.”

I bowed my head over my plate, letting my hair fall around my face like a curtain as I blinked back tears. I didn’t like thinking about my future. Nana was the only person who’d ever cared for me. I’d be all alone in the world once she was gone, and I had no idea how Moriah and Giles would respond.

I didn’t want to go to one of the group homes where the other broken Hunters went. I was so fortunate that I hadn’t been sent there already. Moriah had been very generous in letting me stay.

Tilly whined at my feet, leaning heavily against my legs. It was probably only her body warmth that was stopping me from shivering more. She was my guide dog in more ways than one. Tilly was my eyes, my heart, and my best friend. Nana had gotten her for me three years ago, and the fight between her and my mother had been so bad that I couldn’t even think of it without my hands trembling.

“Oh, don’t cry now, my Iris,” Nana grumbled, hating displays of emotion. “There’s no need to cry. You just have to do the right thing. Put your best foot forward. Don’t make life difficult for your mother; I’m sure she’ll let you stay in the attic alone. You’re more than capable, so long as Clara helps out now and again. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes. Of course,” I agreed in a raspy voice. It would be the height of ingratitude not to, even if the idea of spending the rest of my days in these few rooms was…

Well, a little disheartening.

What was the world outside this house like? What were people outside my family and Clara like? Nana liked having the TV on most of the day, and I had list upon list in my head of all the things I’d heard about from her films and shows that I’d like to try for myself.

Cheesecake. Champagne. Sand between my toes. Swimming. I wanted to go on an airplane and sit on the back of a motorbike. Failing all of that, I’d settle for going for a walk on a concrete sidewalk instead of the dirt paths that wound through the forest around our house. I wanted to experience something . Anything.

She grunted a sound of assent. “Finish your dinner, and as a treat, we’ll stay up and watch a Christmas movie. How about that?”

“That would be lovely. Thank you, Nana.”

“And then you can play me Silent Night before we go to bed.”

I perked up immediately at the thought of playing my harp. It was always such a centering activity for me. I had a lot to be grateful for. Life in the attic was all I’d ever known, and while the idea of doing it without Nana was a scary one, it wasn’t one I needed to think about now. The future was a distant, nebulous thing. We had the present—Christmas dinner and a cozy movie and some music before bed, and Tilly on my feet to keep me warm until the heating kicked on again.

Grateful. There was a lot to be grateful for.

I huddled down in my blankets, trying to ward off the chill in the air. The heating must have gone out again—it was freezing today. Usually, Tilly woke me up each morning with her demands to be let outside, but today it was the noise from below that had me stirring. The hustle and bustle downstairs was loud, and the sound drifted up through the vents into my room so that I heard almost every word with perfect clarity.

“We need to be on the road already,” Moriah was saying. “Isn’t Lucas Thompson a cousin of yours? A relative somehow? He’s the one who found her—this could be a real advantage for us, Giles. I don’t want to squander it.”

Giles grumbled in response. “Fourth cousin or something, I don’t know. How certain are we that the woman is even who he says she is? What did you say her name was?”

“Verity de Jager. The pictures we have of her are years out of date and she’s looking a little worse for wear having appeared unconscious in a canyon, but I think he’s right. This is our chance to make an example of one of the traitors. To really restore the family reputation.”

Giles groaned as Tilly wriggled and huffed by my feet. Apparently, it was early enough that even she wasn’t in a rush to get up yet.

“The entire Council is going. Why do we have to?” Giles complained. He’d never been particularly fond of leaving the house. Or of change. Or people. Nana said that was why her daughter had married him. Moriah had needed the balance of being public enough to maintain her career in the Council, while being private enough to hide me. Giles had given her both.

He and Nana had never particularly gotten along, but someone had to take care of me, so Nana lived here in his grand house too. Well, in the attic with me. It was harder for Nana here than it was for me—once upon a time, she’d lived her own life. She’d been a valued member of the Hunters, and her husband had served on the Council like Moriah did now. But as Nana liked to remind me, age came for us all.

“Imagine how it would look if we didn’t?” Moriah objected. “My reputation is already in tatters—”

“Who’s fault is that?”

She let out a sound of frustration. “Perhaps if you were a more supportive husband—”

“I’ve done nothing but support you,” Giles interjected, raising his voice. I pulled the covers up a little higher, wrapping myself tightly in the familiar, threadbare fabric. “Every decision made under this roof revolves around you— your career, your dreams, your reputation. And for what? It’s all gone so fucking disastrously lately, I’m questioning what the point of it all was.”

“Giles,” she gasped while I winced under the blankets. From what I’d overheard, things hadn’t been going well for Moriah at the Council recently, but Giles had never been anything other than supportive. “Yes, things have been difficult lately, and perhaps we were too ambitious in some of our plans, but here is the opportunity to fix that! Half dead in a canyon, ready for us to take control of the narrative. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, Giles.”

I kicked off the blankets and crept out of bed, not wanting to hear anymore. I hated when Moriah and Giles fought—neither of them ever remembered to be kind. Nana said that they didn’t have to because they were busy and important, but it seemed as though life would have been a lot more enjoyable for them both if they did.

Or perhaps their lives would be more enjoyable if they weren’t quite so involved in the Council? From the conversations I overheard, it sounded very stressful. And everything they talked about was so negative and frightening—it was enough to put anyone in a bad mood.

Once I was up, Tilly leaped off the bed with a loud yawn and followed me into the shared living space, making for the outside door with the stairs that led down to the yard. I let her out, leaving the door open before heading for Nana’s room. It was unlike her not to be up already—she wasn’t a very good sleeper—and sometimes, she needed a cup of tea to help her get up and moving, especially if her joints were bothering her.

“Nana?” I called, making my way through the living room that I knew like the back of my hand to knock gently on her bedroom door. “Nana, do you want a cup of tea?”

There was silence on the other side of the door, which was very unusual. I knocked again and waited, a strange foreboding feeling settling somewhere between my shoulder blades.

I hadn’t ventured into Nana’s room in years—not since I’d outgrown the nightmares I’d gotten as a child—but that heavy feeling of dread nudged me forward, insisting that I go inside—that I verify what I was pretty sure I already knew.

I wasn’t sure how or why I knew it was true. Only that I was deeply, deeply certain of it.

I fumbled around, knocking something over as I searched for the cast iron bed frame.

“Sorry,” I whispered into the silence, acutely aware that Nana would have told me off immediately for my carelessness if she could.

My fingers traced the intricate stitching of her quilt as I made my way up the side of the bed, feeling around until I touched her arm above the blanket.

“Nana?” I asked again, startling at how cold her hands were. “Wake up, Nana. It’s morning time. You need to wake up now,” I rasped, suddenly feeling very small again. Like the little girl she’d carried around the house for so long to stop me from bumping into things that I hadn’t learned to walk until I was nearly three.

No. No, this wasn’t happening .

Except that it was. It was happening right in front of me, and yet I felt incredibly far away from it all like I was in someone else’s body.

“Mommy is yelling,” I whispered, kneeling down next to the bed, still holding her hand. “Mommy and Giles are fighting. Wake up, Nana. I don’t know what to do. What am I meant to do?”

At some point, Tilly was at my side, which was strange because she knew she absolutely was not allowed in Nana’s room. I had no idea how long I stayed there, the attic growing increasingly chilly from the outside door that was still open, occasionally banging in the wind.

Perhaps it was the sound that caught Clara’s attention, eventually. Her footsteps thundered up the stairs—the easiest way to tell when she was in a bad mood. I felt as though I was taking it all in while floating above my own body somehow.

“What is going on up here?” she demanded from the living area, pulling the outside door closed with a bang. My voice wasn’t working anymore. I opened my mouth to formulate a response, but nothing came out. Maybe because my soul still felt disconnected from my body. “Where are you both? What’s going on?”

The light switch clicked, and Clara screamed. I stayed still and quiet because there was no point making noise. There was no point in anything.

“Get back, Iris!” she shouted, grabbing me beneath my armpits and hauling me backward. I landed on the ground with a thud, pain radiating up my tailbone. “Get out of here. Get out of this room.”

“I need to stay with Nana—”

“OUT!” Clara yelled, her shrill command penetrating the haze in my brain. I crawled along the floor to the door, too disoriented to get to my feet, while Tilly whimpered next to me, pressing her body against mine. I kept going until I found the sofa in the living area, clambering onto it and curling up in a ball with Tilly half on top of me.

I wrapped my shaking arms around her middle, burying my face in her fur. She felt like the last tether that was stopping me from floating away entirely. Tilly needed me. We needed each other. Through every family argument and freezing cold night and moment of frustration where I longed for my life to be more than what it was, she’d been by my side.

For Tilly, I had to be strong.

Why did I go into Nana’s room this morning? I never went into her room. I should have stayed in bed. Gone back to sleep. Started today over. Maybe it wasn’t too late. Maybe I could reset it all.

“What’s going on?” Moriah yelled, several sets of footsteps coming up the stairs. “What is all the screaming about?”

The words were muffled; I didn’t hear anything else. No one paid me any mind as I shrunk further and further down into the sofa cushions, wishing that I could be anywhere but here.

“She’s a curse!” Clara was arguing, and I forced my brain to focus. “First Margaret, now your mother! I’ll be next!”

“They were both old!” Moriah shouted back, the frustration clear in her voice. “You will stay here and watch Iris because that is in your job description!”

Clara let out a noise of frustration. “If you put me in such a high-stress situation, who knows what I might accidentally say when I’m talking to my friends and family.”

Silence .

No one could argue with that.

Nana said that Clara had signed paperwork that said she couldn’t tell anyone about me, but ultimately, it didn’t matter. If word got out, the damage couldn’t be undone. The knowledge Clara held meant that she always had the upper hand.

Giles was arguing back, but it didn’t sound like he was having much success. I squeezed Tilly tighter, wishing we could fly away somewhere, just the two of us. Somewhere peaceful. Quiet. Welcoming. What would that be like?

“What are we going to do with you?” Moriah asked coolly, making me startle. I hadn’t heard her approach, and now she must have been standing right over me. “We’re all going to Utah. We have Council business to attend to.”

“Oh,” I said, understanding dawning. I didn’t want to be a burden. I didn’t have to be. I didn’t want to be sent away. “I’ll be okay here on my own. I can look after myself.”

“No you can’t,” Moriah snapped. “You can’t see . You’ll probably fall down the stairs the moment we’re gone. We’ve got enough on our hands to deal with right now.”

“She’ll have to come with us,” Giles grumbled. “Call your brother to come and deal with… your mom. The body. God knows he didn’t take care of her when she was alive. Seems like the least he can do now she’s dead.”

Dead. It was such a harsh, permanent word. Did he have to say that? I couldn’t think of Nana that way. I couldn’t .

“Come with us?!” Moriah shrieked, ignoring the latter half of what he’d said. “Do you have any idea how many high-ranking officials will be there? What do you mean, come with us ? Someone will find out about her!”

A fresh lump rose in my throat at the reminder of how very unwanted I was, and I swallowed it down painfully. There was no point getting upset about that—it wasn’t anything I hadn’t heard my entire life. It just felt a lot more frightening without Nana’s presence to soften the blow. I’d been a burden to her too, but at least we’d been in it together since Moriah and Giles had struggled to accommodate her needs too.

Still. The idea that my very existence would cause problems for my family never ceased to pain me. If only I could be who they wanted me to be. Who I was supposed to be, if I’d been born with eyes that drained the way they were meant to.

“Obviously, Iris will have to stay in a separate hotel. I don’t want her in the house alone, Moriah. What if she burns the place down? It’s been in my family for generations. You’ve just gone and pissed Carla off—”

“Don’t blame me for Carla’s attitude—”

“We don’t have time for this. If we’re driving, then we need to get on the road now if you don’t want to be too far behind all the other Councilors who are flying in.”

“Why don’t we just fly?” Justin asked in a whiny voice, entering the attic.

“Your mother doesn’t like flying,” Giles snapped. “Make a decision, Mor. Iris will be fine in a hotel room alone during the day. The boys can drop off food in the evenings. We’ll figure out a long-term plan for what to do with her when we get back.”

I bit my lip, wondering if saying anything in support of Giles’s idea would ruin it. Would I really get to leave the attic? Even if it was just for a little while and I was only going to be trapped inside another room, it would still be somewhere different from here. At any given moment, I wanted to explore the world outside the attic, but now more than ever. The memories of Nana were everywhere in these rooms, and I needed a reprieve from them before they overwhelmed me.

Maybe I could prove to Moriah and Giles that I was able to look after myself just fine in the hotel room, and they’d realize they didn’t need to worry about me so much.

Maybe if I was really good, they’d let me live by myself somewhere. I knew from their conversations that they owned lots of properties around Denver. They could put me in one on my own and I’d be as quiet as a mouse and never let anyone know that I was related to them. And they wouldn’t have to worry about me making any noise in the attic when they had guests over and giving my presence away. It would be to everyone’s benefit.

Giles and Moriah moved away, and I couldn’t make out the quiet words he was giving her but I could tell from the tone that they were ones of comfort. Giles was such a soothing presence for Moriah. Nana had always been proud that her daughter had found such a wonderful, perfect husband.

The second time around.

“No one wants you there,” Travis hissed, startling me. He was so very good at sneaking up on me.

“I won’t get in the way,” I whispered, trying to make myself smaller.

I bit my lip to stay silent as he gripped the skin of my arm between his thumb and forefinger, pinching until tears sprang to the corners of my eyes. Boys will be boys, I reminded myself, breathing through the pain. That’s what Nana would always say. She’d shoo them away at the same time, though. She was the only one who noticed how rough they could be.

My last line of defense was gone.

“Please stop,” I whispered, not wanting to enrage Moriah anymore by crying out.

“No,” Travis replied, tightening his grip while I clapped a hand over my mouth to stop myself from screaming. “No one is going to save you now, Iris.”

“We can have all the fun we like,” Justin added, popping up on my other side until the twins were boxing me in. They were seven years younger than me, and it felt like just yesterday that they’d been smaller than me. They certainly weren’t now. “Look how upset Mom and Dad are because of you. You always get in the way.”

“It doesn’t seem fair that we have to stay in the RV at some random Councilor’s house with Mom and Dad while Iris gets to stay in a hotel by herself,” Travis pointed out, finally releasing me. I sucked in a breath as the blood rushed painfully back in.

“Yeah, that’s bullshit. Mom! Why can’t we stay in a hotel?”

“We’ll sort it out on the drive,” Moriah snapped. “And Samuel Winston is not some random Councilor . If you were more respectful, perhaps the two of you would be in more impressive positions within the Hunters by now. Do you know how humiliating it is that my own sons have such mediocre records?”

That definitely silenced the twins. I wasn’t quite sure what made them mediocre—that didn’t usually come up as a topic of conversation through the vents. Perhaps Giles and Moriah didn’t like to reflect on it too often.

“You and your mutt will have to travel in the RV, Iris,” Moriah added. “There’s no room in the truck for you. Let’s go.”

“Don’t fuck up,” Travis taunted in my ear, his voice too low for anyone to hear. “You’re not supposed to exist, remember? If you make a mistake, they’ll kill you.”

“No, they won’t,” I whispered tentatively.

“If they don’t, we might,” Justin laughed quietly. My brothers were always saying things like that—Nana had told me they were just rambunctious. They just had overactive imaginations and a silly sense of humor.

I hope you’re right, Nana. I wish you were here to reassure me.

But she was gone, and I was alone except for Tilly. It was terrifying, but I was also leaving . Venturing out of the attic, if only for a little while, and experiencing some of the world around me.

Nana, I’m going to make you so proud.