“Andrea, what have you done?”

“I only did what I had to do,” she explained, though it sounded more like a defense than an innocent explanation. “The child pyre would have Slept without sharing her memories. She would have gone Graven. I could not let that happen.”

“So you took our child into this storm?” And my father collected me from her arms and pressed me against his warm body.

“I brought her back, did I not?” my mother exclaimed.

“You took her out into the cold with no coat!” And then he gasped. “Andrea, you took her with no shoes!” It was then that he rushed me to the nearest fire, holding my feet close to him and rubbing them. Truly, he worried for nothing, for there was no pain in my feet any longer. Really, there was no feeling in them at all. “Have someone fetch us warm water. Not hot, only warm,” he said with great urgency.

“Someone? My love, there is no one here but the two of us and Twilight.”

My father groaned. “Of course not. For you have dismissed our entire staff of pyres, Andrea! Principles are important, yes, but how are we meant to function? How are we meant to survive if you are set on helping slaves at the expense of our daughter? I can handle you choosing their welfare over mine. I am an adult man and I can choose to love you with all that entails. I can choose to love the risk of you. But Aurelie is a child. Your child. She does not have such choices. You are her only mother and you cannot choose an obsession with justice over the basic wellbeing, the basic survival , of a child who looks to you for protection.”

My father had not yet noticed the fang marks on my wrist. And he would never know how my adoration for the beings of light began that very night.

My mother paused for quite some time before she spoke again. “I will fetch the water, Favian.”

His voice softened, his words collapsing in on themselves. “You need to sit by the fire as well. Not venture to the kitchen. I will not have you freeze to death, my Midnight. I will go.”

“You are the only one who is warm. You must hold Twilight.” And there was something different in my mother’s voice. A sadness. Remorse? No. It was resignation.

“Andrea, you are worrying me,” my father confessed.

“Do not be worried, my Morning,” she said to him. And then she kissed my forehead. “She is the strangest human, this one. Is she not?”

My father’s voice trembled. “Andrea, now you are scaring me.”

My mother kissed my father’s forehead this time.

“Do not be afraid.”

Femme Andrea Rennington Kendrick went to fetch the warm water and never returned.

Episode 89: Alexander’s Thoughtfulness And A Young Woman’s Response