and walks towards our room.
“Is that it?” I say, my voice rising.
“What do I say, my love?” he asks.
“You say yes! You say that you’ll not risk your family! That you won’t do this,” I say. “You’re putting us on the line for them. It’s not fair. Let the masses out there get their own damn food. Maybe they’d appreciate it more if they had to work for it.”
He doesn’t turn around while I yell at him. His shoulders slump, his head hangs down to his chest and his tail goes still. When I finish, he looks over his shoulder, but not at me.
“My love, I cannot do this,” he says.
“I’m your treasure! You always tell me you’ll do anything for me. This! This is what I want.”
“Amara, please, do not do this,” he says.
“Damn it, Shidan, I’m scared!” now my voice cracks, and the tears I’ve been fighting fall free. I wipe my sleeve across my face so rough it hurts my nose, which pisses me off even more. “You can’t make light of this.”
He turns around at last. His eyes are soft, and a frown is on his face, but he shakes his head.
“My dearest treasure, I am not,” he says. “You know I cannot fail to do this. I have responsibilities.”
“I’m your responsibility! Malcolm is your responsibility!”
“Yes,” he agrees. “This is true.”
“So stay!”
He closes his eyes, and I know he’s counting to ten because it’s a trick I taught him as I’ve been working to control my own temper. At last he shakes his head.
“I’ll leave Malcolm home,” he says. “But what we are doing now matters. It is the future we are creating.”
“You’re putting our future at risk,” I counter, rising to my feet, balling my hands into fists. “I… I can’t do this without you.”
He crosses the space between us in one long stride and wraps his arms around me. I stiffen, holding myself tight, not ready to let go of my anger. If I let the anger go, I’ll have nothing left to hold off the fear bubbling beneath it.
He squeezes me tight and my face rests against the coolness of his chest. He doesn’t say a word, holding me tight until I can’t keep the anger any longer. As it fades away my body melds to his and the fear bubbles out and over. Tears stream down my face as the yawning black swallows me into the pits of despair.
I’m sobbing against his chest. The one thing I’ve done my best not to do. I don’t want Malcolm to see this—he won’t understand. No matter how scary, it is a parent’s job is to make the world as safe as possible.
This though, there is no fighting this. It’s not like Invaders or Zzlo or even a zemlja. At least those you can see coming. I can fight those. This… this is silent. Invisible. Dangerous in ways we don’t even comprehend.
“Shhh,” he says, rubbing my back as he holds me.
“Mommy?” Malcolm asks.
Damn it. I pull out of Shidan’s arms and run my hands across my face, wiping away the tears the best I can. It’s not going to hide that I’ve been crying. My face and eyes are puffy and fresh tears are threatening right behind the ones I cleaned off.
“Yes, love,” I sniffle, hiding behind Shidan’s bulk while I try to pull myself together.
“What’s wrong, Mommy?” he asks. “Why are you scared?”
“I’m not scared, honey,” I say. “We talked about what’s happening outside and why you can’t play with Illadon or Rverre right now.”
“Sure,” he says. “I told you it’s going to be fine. Sure, bad things will happen, but we’ll be okay, eventually.”
I snort. Malcolm is always practical. He’s so tiny, still my baby boy, and yet too often he’s wiser than all of us. Especially me.
“You did,” I agree.
“Don’t you trust me?” he asks.
He walks around his dad and stares at me with an intensity that I’ve never seen from another living being. When he does this, I always feel like I’m on the spot. As if I were to lie to him, he would know it. I think, sometimes, he does, though he hasn’t ever called me out for it.
“I do,” I say, kneeling in front of him.
“Okay, Mommy,” he says. “Don’t worry. Tajss has a plan.”
“Malcolm,” I say, placing my hands on his tiny shoulders. “You know I don’t like it when you talk like that. You can believe in things for yourself. You don’t have to say that