{7}
It Calls‘What do you mean?’ Dandon asked in a low voice.
‘She’s dead, Dandon,’ Santha croaked, holding a dampened cloth with chilled water to her smarting left cheek. ‘Papa too. Something killed them.’
‘Blackguards.’ It was not a question.
Santha bowed her head and closed her eyes. She was so very tired. ‘I think so.’
Earlier that night, exhausted from crying, all she’d wanted to do was curl up in bed and sleep for days. But Dandon hadn’t allowed it. He kept her awake, talked to her, coaxing her out of her melancholy. He wanted answers. She’d looked at him, so safe in his ignorance, so unaware. The envy she’d felt was immense. And there was anger too. An anger that he would deny her the refuge of slumber and forgetting, if only for one night. But then she remembered who he was and
