Daughter of Deep Silence Read Free Page B

even realize that I’m screaming until firm hands pull me from the TV. My fists flail at it and smears of red mar the screen, blood from where I’d ripped out my IV in my scramble from the bed.
    “They’re lying,” I shout, still flailing. “The ship was attacked. There was no wave. It was men with guns—they killed everyone!”
    A crewman holds me steady as the medic slips a needle into my arm. “Shh,” he murmurs. “It’s okay.”
    “No,” I whimper, shaking my head. But everything feels so much heavier now. My protests, fuzzy and indistinct. “You don’t understand.” He carries me to the bed, and when he tries to leave, I fumble for his wrist, holding him. “You have to believe me. They’re lying. Please.” A tear leaks from my eye, the first since I’ve been rescued.
    He gently frees himself. “It’s okay,” he says softly, pulling another blanket over me. “You’re safe now.”
    But I know that’s not true. May never be true again. “
They killed them all and sank the ship
,” I whisper, my voice weakening.
“They killed my parents.”
It comes out slurred.
“Please believe me.”

THREE
    I t’s still dark when I wake again. The yacht rides the swell of the waves, rocking me gently. And I suddenly realize how strange it is to be alone. Not just here in this room, but in life. There is no one who cares about where I am right now. No one to notice whether I come home or not.
    There is no one in charge of me, to tell me what to do. Where to go. How to recover. As the breadth of my isolation yawns open ahead of me, I begin to tremble. I will no longer live in my house. Sleep in my bed. Pull clothes out of my dresser. Brush my teeth in my bathroom. Leave shoes lying at the base of the stairs.
    Where will I live, I have no idea. A foster home? Do they even have orphanages anymore? The thoughts come faster and faster, tumbling over one another, inciting panic. I find myself wheezing, the room spinning.
    My parents are gone. My life is gone. Everything. Everything—it’s all gone.
    I pull free of the IV again and push from the bed, stumbling toward the door. I ache for anything familiar, someone to tell me it will be okay. But there’s no one left.
    Greyson Wells
, a voice whispers in the back of my head and an image of him from the TV flashes in my mind. My stomach roils, and if there’d been anything in it, I’d have vomited.
    I shuffle down the hallway, fingertips pressed against the wall to keep myself steady. My steps are halting, pained, and I don’t even realize what I’m searching for until I’m there. Standing in the doorway.
    She’s on the bed, an insignificant lump under the crumpled covers. Her back is toward me, the sharp tips of her wing bones barely visible under the stretch of her shirt.
    Libby.
Even dead I feel that pull to her, the connection that drew us tighter and tighter as our lives slipped through our hungry fingers and into the ocean. Her blistered cheeks are masked by a tangle of hair, and I want to tuck it behind her ear. She hated it in her face. But even as I stretch my fingers toward her temple, I know I can’t bring myself to actually touch her. Doing so would make it real.
    “
It should be you standing here
,” I whisper, my fingertips hovering a breath away from the curve of her jaw. She had family and friends waiting for her. I have nothing.
    “You remind me of her,” a quiet voice says from the doorway. My heart jumps and I stumble, spinning to press my back against the wall. Libby’s father stands just across the threshold.
    “When they pulled you in,” he continues, stepping into the room, “I thought you were my Libby at first.” He sighs and gestures toward a chair. I sink into it and he takes the one facing me. “Frances Mace, right?” he asks. The words come out weary, the sound of them as heavy and thick as the bags under his eyes. I nod.
    “Your family was on the
Persephone
as well?”
    I nod again.
    “And they didn’t make