his head to the side. “You said your family is complicated and that Ailin Ellwood is kind of your dad. What’s that mean?”
I blinked at him. “Wow, you really aren’t from around here, are you?”
He shook his head. “Nah. Only been here about three years, well, kinda close to four now, I guess.”
“It’s weird for me to run into someone that doesn’t have their own opinions about my life and the things that have happened to my family.”
He lifted a shoulder. “Will you tell me?”
“Sure. Uh, when I was six, every adult in my coven was murdered by a group of wendigos and orcs, along with some warlocks.”
His eyebrows rose. “Every adult?”
I nodded. “Yes. My coven was strong, and my parents, aunts, uncles, and my parents’ friends—we called them aunts and uncles, too.” I waved that away as unimportant. “They all fought, but they had sent a small army after us. It was… it was really bad. They were slaughtered. My parents, aunts, and uncles brought all the kids to the big house and put us in the basement because that was the most well protected place on all of our land. Ailin… he was sixteen at the time, and the oldest, so he was in charge.” I swallowed hard.
I didn’t like talking about this. I didn’t remember much from that night, but I sometimes had flashbacks of my parents panicking, and of Ailin trying to keep everyone calm. I knew some of my siblings had been unlucky enough to see some of the carnage that day, but I’d already been in the house when it started, so my parents had simply pushed me into the basement and told me to stay with my brother. That was the last time I’d seen them alive.
Hiro surprised me by reaching across the table and squeezing my hand. That gave me a little boost, so I cleared my throat and continued, “Once they killed our parents, they came for us, and… that was the night Ailin came into his full powers. His magic shielded us while he basically set a magical bomb off in our house. He killed anyone close to us, and the house came down on top of us. But his shield kept us safe.”
I took a sip of my water, stared at the table, and sighed. “When the Supreme Assembly finally showed up the next fucking day—of course those assholes were too late to actually help or save anyone—but they helped us out of the basement and rubble. Ailin was the oldest, and since his power came out, at the time, he was the most powerful witch in the world. When they wanted to separate us into foster care, he told them no, that he was the coven leader now and that he was going to take care of us.”
After a few seconds, Hiro quietly asked, “And he was only sixteen at the time?”
I nodded and finally met his eyes. “Sixteen with fifteen other kids to take care of.”
“Fifteen?”
“Yeah. He… he claimed responsibility for fifteen other kids, and because he was more powerful than the asshole leaders, they let him take charge of us—and I’m grateful for that, otherwise we would’ve been split up.”
Hiro sat there with wide, blinking eyes.
“So anyway, Ailin is biologically my older brother, but he’s also the only parent I had growing up after that night. My older sisters Aspen and Opal helped raise us, too, since Ailin was also Sage—a witch leader—when he became so powerful, but yeah… so it’s complicated. And my brothers and sisters aren’t all blood related to me, but that doesn’t make them any less my siblings than the ones that are blood.”
He nodded. “That makes sense.”
“So yeah, that’s my fucked-up childhood story… or one of them, anyway, but maybe one’s enough for today.”
“Yeah… ‘course.” He squeezed my hand. “I’m sorry if I upset you.”
“You didn’t.”
He scrutinized my face for a moment before nodding. “My parents died when I was young, too.”
“They did?” I was a little surprised that he was offering up any information about himself, to be honest, but I’d take anything he gave me.
“They were killed by a vampire they were hunting when I was ten. My uncle raised me after that, but he died when I was seventeen—that was the same year I met Millie.”
The way he glossed over the death of his parents and uncle made me think that he didn’t want to talk about it, so I went for an easier topic—well, maybe not easier,