Nineteen
Chaos.
“Of course they’re connected! Why would two unrelated criminals attack the same household in the space of a month?”
“She’s still breathing, but I can’t wake her up.”
“Maroon, yes. And a scar on his left cheek. See if anyone knows anything Underground.”
Ryn is arguing with several guardians while three healers kneel on the floor attending to Mom and Dad. Violet has her arm around me as she speaks quietly into a mirror to one of her reptiscillan contacts.
I wish they’d all shut up. I wish they’d let me near my parents. I wish I could do something. Instead I’m sitting on the edge of an upside-down couch as that image—that image I will never be rid of—torments me: Mom and Dad lying with limbs bent at uncomfortable angles, a knife within Dad’s limp grasp, the stuffing from
