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Keefe woke with a start, eyes opening to drink in the dark London night around him, body stiff as a board. His heart was jackrabbiting in his chest, and tear tracks streaked across his cheeks as his lungs strained for breath. And still, he couldn’t move a muscle, aside from the uncontrollable shaking that had taken up in his muscles and joints. Like a leaf blowing in the wind, he thought, and didn’t that make him feel helpless? All those adventures with Sophie, run-ins with the Neverseen, near-death adrenaline rushes that he had run head first into. And still, when the nightmares came calling, all he could do was cry in the night like a child missing their mother.
Mom.
Before, the thought of Keefe’s mother would have made him angry beyond belief. Fitz-level angry, chair-throwing and wall-punching included. Even a few days ago he would have at least felt a stab of paranoia, some ever-present fear of her plans for him and Stellarlune. Now, all he felt was numb.
Slowly, Keefe sat up in bed, rubbing his hands across his arms to chase away the jitters. Episodes like this always left him feeling cold and empty, hollow like wood. He dragged the comforter up over his shoulders and used it to wipe the wetness from his eyes before dropping his hands to his lap, breathing deeply.
The moonlight streaming in the gap in the curtains was different than in the Lost Cities. Duller, as if it were coming through a layer of dirt (which, considering all the human pollutants in the air, probably made sense). Still, dullness aside, the light was enough to see by as Keefe held his hands out and meticulously studied his fingers, eyes tracing over every knuckle and nail. Next were his forearms, then up his elbow and onto his bare shoulders. Twisting, Keefe glanced down his back to each side before getting up to examine himself in the mirror.
In the soft moonlight, Keefe looked pale as a ghost, fair hair and fairer skin. Behind him, shadows shifted in the corners of the room, making it feel eerily alive. In the mirror’s reflection, it looked as if they were gathering behind him to create some eldritch mantle. A ghost boy with a shadow cloak. What a joke.
Studying himself, Keefe began to slowly drag his hands up his arms and over his elbows, feeling for any abnormalities. He repeated the process on his back and across his chest before sweeping down his legs. When finished, he stood quietly for a moment, avoiding his reflection, before he turned and walked back to his bed.
How long is it going to be before I feel safe again? Keefe miserably wondered, laying down and dragging the sheets up to his chin. He was safer in London than he had been anywhere in the Lost Cities, but if his little nightly routine was anything to go by, true safety was still a far-off dream.
Keefe wasn’t quite sure when the routine had become such a habit in his life. The nightmares had started somewhere between learning his whole life was just one huge experiment to his mother and realizing she would stop at nothing to complete it, and with them came the paranoia, the fear, and the checks.
The first time Keefe had woken gasping for breath, he had dreamt of his mother stealing his blood for the entrance to Nightfall. Except this time, instead of a tiny prick along his finger, or a swift cut on his forearm, she had used all manner of weapons to extract gallons of blood. Throwing stars. Needles. Knives. Sharp rocks and her long painted fingernails. Scratches and gashes along his arms and legs and torso, all for her little experiment. When Keefe had woken shaking in his bed in Candleshade, his skin felt itchy with pinpricks of pain, like bee stings, and he couldn’t stop trembling until he had checked over every inch of his body, sure that his mother hadn’t stolen into his room in the night to take his blood.
Blood. Is that all he was to her? DNA and wasted potential? That’s why she’d married his father, after all. Because of their abilities’ potential. He was so, so tired of that word. It had hounded him all his life, ringing through the halls in his father’s disappointed voice and echoing around his head every time he brought home another detention slip. Potential, potential, potential. Why are you failing, when you have so much potential? You could do so much, Keefe, if only you applied yourself and stopped wasting your potential. How could you be my son, when you are so wasteful with your potential?
As if Keefe could ever be more than a disappointment in his father’s eyes. As if his mother would treat him like anything other than a botched lab experiment.
No, Keefe was a twisted study in eugenics. He was not destined for greatness, or glory, or immense power. He was a suicidally stupid sixteen-year-old with a knack for getting into trouble and a crush on a girl who was too busy making eyes at his best friend to like him back.
But still…
Was it so much to ask for his parents to be proud of him? To love him like Alden loved Fitz, like Edaline loved Sophie? Keefe had seen the easy intimacy Sophie had developed with her adoptive parents. All the raspberry swirls and hair ruffles and “kiddos”. They made it look so easy. So effortless. Her parents enjoyed spending time with her and worried about her when she was gone. Keefe doubted his father had thought about his whereabouts beyond the effect it would have on his image, to say nothing of his mother’s heinous plans for him. Plus, Grady and Edaline weren’t even Sophie’s first family! Keefe didn’t know much about Sophie’s human parents, but from the scrapbook memories and the wistful way she talked about them, he knew they had been close. Closer than Keefe and his parents had ever been or ever would be. It’s not like he was expecting a heartfelt, tearful apology anytime soon.
Scoffing, Keefe turned over in bed and eyed his blue Pathfinder on the nightstand, gently glowing in the darkness.
It’s just–what had he done to deserve a life like this? What was so different about him compared to his friends and their perfect families? Sure, maybe he was a bad kid, but it’s not like he wasn’t trying. Their world was complicated and messy, and he was doing his best to do the right thing, so why was he always such a letdown?
Even now, hiding out amongst humans to protect his friends, he knew they deserved better. He knew Sophie deserved better than a hastily written note as goodbye. He may have come to the Forbidden Cities to keep his friends safe, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that in actuality he was just running away from his problems, dooming his messes to be solved by the people he left behind. It was exactly the type of thing his parents would do, what Keefe was sure his friends had come to expect of him. Always running off on his own, trying to solve things and only making them worse. He was the problem child through and through, and if he ever saw his friends again, he wasn’t sure he could handle the shame. He had let them down at every turn.
Maybe it would be better for everyone if he just stayed in the Forbidden Cities, harmless and alone.
Slowly, Keefe could feel that age-old heaviness invading his heart, moving like a storm cloud through his ribs. With his empathy intact, he might have been able to do something about it. Shove the hurt somewhere deep inside his mind where it couldn’t be poked or prodded into action. Now, laying in bed, a thousand miles away from anyone who actually cared about him, he let the feeling in, layering atop him like dirt.
He was a ghost boy in a Forbidden City, left to drift alone and soon to be forgotten. The only legacy he would be leaving behind was the mark of everything he could have been, and even that would waste away soon enough.
Closing his eyes, Keefe succumbed to the sweet oblivion of sleep.