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On this chilly October night, the Noceda house was quieter than it had been in months.
A few hours ago, Luz parked the station wagon in the driveway, and there was a momentary bustle as the teenagers jumped out of the car and Camila frantically rushed out of the house to meet them. There were hushed explanations in the other room as Willow helped Hunter out of his torn, blood-soaked sweater and into a clean shirt with a high neck. Everyone had silently agreed not to mention what had happened where Hunter could hear—not Belos, not Galderstones, not the fresh green patch of wood that replaced the skin on his sternum.
Camila made hot chocolate with cinnamon and Luz put on some animated movie, the teenagers all piled into the living room in a mass of pillows and blankets, and almost everyone fell asleep quickly, tired and empty from the day’s events.
Everyone except Hunter. Hunter was wide awake.
The fear and adrenaline from earlier that evening still lingered, only adding to the sensation of complete wrongness lodged deep in his gut. He felt like the world had disappeared and rematerialized two inches to the left, like maybe Amity pressed his Galderstone heart back into his chest cavity at the wrong angle. He had never felt right before, but he knew that somehow he’d never feel right again.
After arriving back at the house, the events of the night were a complete blur. Hunter couldn’t recall much of anything from the movie, just that there was a scene with bright and loud fire, that only reminded him of the twisted and monstrous form of his uncle—creator—tormentor—Belos—screeching as the flames raced up his spindly arms.
Now that everyone had fallen asleep and the house was silent, the world was back in focus. Hunter could feel the weight of the blankets piled on top of him, the warmth of Gus pressed against his side, the feeling of soft cardinal feathers nestled under his chin. He could hear Willow’s soft snores and the rumbling of the dishwasher in the kitchen. He could see Vee, her silhouette illuminated by the bouncing DVD screensaver still looping on the television. She was looking right at him.
Glowing yellow eyes met glowing magenta. So he wasn’t the only one awake.
Even after months of living in the human realm, Hunter still hadn’t gotten to know Vee that well. That first night, he was surprised to see a basilisk in what he thought was a very human house, but it didn’t even break the top ten most alarming things he had witnessed that awful day. And after that, Vee mostly kept her distance from him. Hunter might not have been the best with social cues, but he could tell that Vee knew exactly who he was. After all, the branching scars on his forearm drew attention to his Emperor’s Coven sigil, and there was nothing he could do about his recognizable and “annoying” voice. Hunter felt like they had developed an unspoken agreement—that neither of them would bring up each other’s or their own pasts. They had left that on the other side of the portal door.
Basilisk and grimwalker stared at each other from across the mass of blankets. For once, no one was awake to provide a buffer between them, to lead the conversation in a nicer direction.
Vee was first to break the silence. “Today sucked,” she said. Her voice was even raspier than usual. “I used to imagine the Emperor dying but everything just feels worse now.”
“Yeah,” Hunter replied. “It really does.” Even if it didn’t hurt to speak, he couldn’t think of much else to say. After dealing with the others tiptoeing around him all night, he was completely burnt out.
But Vee continued on. “You didn’t answer my question back there.”
“Hmm?”
“Did Belos make you too? Like he made us?”
“Oh. Um.” He thought back to earlier, when he was laid across Willow’s lap in a pool of his own blood. Vee’s question had been the last of many before he had burst into tears. He thought that his reaction had already answered it. “I—Yeah. He did. I only learned a few weeks before I got here.”
“I guess I always knew what I was. I can’t imagine what it must be like to have your perspective turned upside-down like that.”
Hunter couldn’t compute what Vee was saying. Didn’t he have it easier than her? When he could leave on weekends and didn’t have to live in a dingy cage? Wasn’t it better to spend sixteen (was he even sixteen?) years not knowing one’s unholy origin story? “I think you had it worse.”
“I think both our lives fucking sucked and there’s no use comparing them.” Why was she prodding him like this? Couldn’t she see that everyone else was sleeping?
“I remember visiting the castle dungeons before the basilisks escaped,” he whisper-yelled back. “I saw how awful the conditions were in those cages and I did nothing because I thought—I didn’t think you were people! How is that not worse?”
Vee looked at him with what looked like pity. He hated this. “And I heard you plead for your life tonight.” Her voice was even as she maintained eye contact with Hunter. “We’re well past the point where who had it worse even matters. What’s important is that we’re here, and he’s not.”
“Yeah.” He exhaled slowly through his nose, ruffling Flapjack’s soft feathers. “We’re here.”
“And we’re alive, and we—we deserve a good future. Both of us! And, like, everyone else too. We deserve to be happy and free because we’re alive.”
“But I—“
Vee sat straight up and narrowed her eyes. “And I know that even if you’re a grimwalker—though I don’t really know what that is—you still deserve it. I’ve already been through this myself. You deserve to be okay and to not be—whatever the hell happened tonight! Do you get it?”
“I—yeah. I guess.” Vee really was like the rest of her family, Hunter thought. She’d forcibly dumped some kind of twisted, violently positive motivational speech on him while he was practically a captive audience. It made his chest strangely warm, if not still unsettled. His mind was quiet as he buried his nose into Flapjack’s feathers and fell asleep.
Hunter was the first one awake the next morning. He shuffled down to the basement and picked out his favorite wolf shirt from the neat stacks of his laundry basket next to the couch. He walked to the basement’s half bathroom and switched shirts as quick as he could without looking down.
He looked in the mirror. His face was the same, if not a shade paler than normal. His hair was disheveled from the couch. He looked down. Peeking up above the neckline of his shirt was a hint of green wood. He pulled his collar down. Below his collarbone were patches of gray-blue scales mottled with bruised skin. It was fascinating, like he was observing some newly discovered species. It was as if it wasn’t part of himself. He gingerly peeled off a scale and didn’t feel a thing. He released his shirt and looked back up at his reflection in the mirror.
All he saw was himself.