Chapter 10 

Selene's POV 

The morning light filtered into the east sitting room just as it had on the first day-a soft, golden wash more gentle than seemed appropriate for such a deeply secret house. I arrived early, carrying the workbook Tibet had left on my doorstep along with a small tin of coloured pencils I’d dug out of a bottom drawer my hands were perfectly steady, my heart less so. Maya was there already.

She was sitting, just as she had on our first lesson, her knees pulled up to her chest in the simple white dress from the previous day, the dark circles under her eyes seemingly larger than on the morning before.

She did not respond, or acknowledge, my greeting. "Good morning, Maya," I murmured, laying the workbook and pencils on the low table between the chairs, and sinking into my own. No response her eyes remained fixed on the garden through the windowpanes. I waited.

Five minutes, then ten-the quiet between us stretching into an entity in its own right.

Maya finally slid down from her perch, walked to the table, and picked up the workbook. I almost braced myself, thinking she might finally open it, but instead she looked directly at me, her expression utterly blank and purposeful, and ripped the first page cleanly in half the tearing sound, unnervingly loud, was the first punctuation. She tore the second, then the third, until pieces of paper rained to the carpet like the shed feathers of a fallen angel she only stopped and walked back to the window seat once half of the workbook lay in a shredded heap at her feet, curling back into herself.

My voice remained level. I did not chide her. I did not attempt to salvage the ruined pages-correction would only serve to solidify her conviction that adults inevitably became cold, demanding automatons she had already declared that adults lied, and that I would not stay I would not give her reason to.

Instead, I began painstakingly gathering the torn sheets, stacking them neatly on top of each other on the table, and pushed them to one side.

I opened the pencil box and took out a fresh page from the back of the undamaged workbook. "Would you like to draw with me instead?" I asked softly. Maya's eyes flickered toward me, suspicious but unreadable.

I immediately started sketching without waiting for a response a jagged tree first, then a simple house nearby, then a path, then the girl standing under the tree.

My lines were thick and wobbly, but I kept drawing, my pencil a point of stillness. "Once," I said, my voice quiet enough that it was barely more than a whisper, a secret only the paper could hear, "there was a girl who lived in a house with too many locked doors. They were very tall, and she was very small, and whenever she tried to open one, somebody told her that she must not.

So, she started drawing her own doors on paper doors that only she could open." Maya's body shifted, the smallest infinitesimal alteration but it was something. She was listening.

I continued to draw another tree, then a bird.

"The girl drew doors that led to a garden where no one could find her. She drew doors that opened onto libraries full of stories no one had ever told her. One day she drew a door that opened onto a friend who never left, even in the loudest, scariest parts of the night." I slid the paper toward the edge of the table with a few crayons so that she could reach it if she wanted, then began a new picture myself, continuing the story as though her silence were just another beat in the narrative.

Slowly, she slid off the window seat, came closer and hovered for a moment, then picked out the blue crayon and began filling in the sky above my lopsided trees.

We sat side-by-side, creating nothing but images on paper, for a long time, each of us absorbed in our quiet artistry finally Maya picked up the blank sheet and began to draw her own picture, a simple circle, two small ones inside it, then tentative lines that became a face, incomplete but deliberate. I kept talking. This time I told a simpler story about a girl who collected shattered objects and pieced them back together with pure gold Maya's shoulders began to relax, the rigidity in her spine loosening with each of my sentences.

Once, when I reached the part about the girl finding a delicate, fractured cup and mending it with golden lines, Maya’s pencil stilled, and she looked up at me from under her lashes-that same look of pure, suspicious distrust, mixed with something new a flicker of curiosity perhaps, or the very first thread of actual trust. I looked up then as the door opened to reveal two maids with trays in their hands, staring in openmouthed wonder they would have been expecting raised voices, tears at the very least, the cold, authoritative tone all previous tutors must have employed, but the air between Maya and myself was peaceful. One of them whispered to the other, and then they quickly lowered their eyes and retreated down the hall.

I looked back at Maya who, having completed her drawing of a face and the outline of a larger figure beside it, placed her pencil down carefully, looked at the picture we had made, and then-for the first time-glanced at me before walking from the room.

I gathered up our creations carefully, placing them on top of the remnants of the workbook, feeling only a fragile sense of having successfully held off the darkness for one afternoon the dark circles were still under Maya’s eyes, the nightmare would still be waiting to claim her again when night finally fell, but something small had been unlocked between her and I. As I turned to take the papers back to the guest wing, I did not realize that two floors above, hidden in the shadows of the landing, a pair of cold eyes watched my every step. Liana remained there for a long moment, her right hand clamped so tightly to the banister that her knuckles had turned white the healer’s expression was controlled, but the hate in her eyes burned with a steady intensity.