Page 91 of Fangs
“Trey, Sam, and Mac?”
“Yep. While I was in training, my grandma’s heart gave out, and she passed. I took it real hard. I felt so guilty I hadn’t been there. I think that’s about when Trey decided we were all gonna be a family since none of us had any.”
I felt another stab of guilt that I hadn’t bothered to learn anything about them until now. “What about Raven? And…Lana and Exo?”
He didn’t answer for a moment. “Lana was Raven’s roommate. She didn’t want to join the guards, but Exo was her only family left, and she was terrified of being separated from him. They were both Rusters, and her options were real limited. Her choice was to join the guards or join the brothel.”
I winced.
“She wasn’t cut out to be a fighter, and she was at the very bottom of the pecking order until Raven broke down and took Lana under her wing. But even with Raven’s help, she was barely passing and still got beat up pretty regularly. Exo would lose his shit when she got beat up and was obsessed with avenging her, but he was a pretty scrawny kid and always went in way too hot and ended up getting the shit kicked out of him, too. So she stopped telling him about it to try and keep him from gettin’ involved and hurt.”
“Gods,” I muttered under my breath, and he paused.
“That sorta thing is encouraged…or was, I guess. The trainers never intervened 'cause they said it was nature’s way of weedin’ out the weak. Not many people got kicked outta training, but plenty of ’em quit or died. Things with Lana escalated pretty bad, but she refused to quit 'cause she wanted to be with her brother. Our second year, Mac caught some of the other trainees practically torturing Lana, and he beat the shit out of ’em and told ’em Lana was under his protection from then on. That earned Raven’s respect, and I’d known her and Exo from when we were kids, so they just naturally merged with the rest of us.”
I lay silently, Lana’s red-rimmed eyes full of hatred lingering in my memory.
“Lana was a…complicated person,” Griz continued quietly. “She’d been hurt her whole life, and Exo was the only one who tried to protect her before she met us. I dunno what she needed, but I think it was more than we could give her. She got stronger physically but always seemed…on the edge ofsomethin’. Mac and I had a whole conversation a few years ago about what would happen if Exo died.” He sighed. “I was afraid she’d snap and hurt herself. I never would’ve guessed she’d hurt someone else.”
I didn’t want to feel sympathy for Lana. I still had nightmares about Dale and Pike, but the ache in my chest couldn’t be ignored. I knew far too well what layers and layers of pain could do to a person.
“I cared for Lana, but when she asked me to intervene in bein’ exiled, I told her I wouldn’t. Raven told her the same thing. I guess we all kinda took a step back and really looked at her and saw how she used her pain as a weapon. Not just toward you, but toward everyone.”
The pain in his voice was easy to hear, and guilt clogged my throat. “I’m sorry?—”
“No, Em,” he interrupted firmly. “None of this was your fault.”
I stared at the firelight flickering on the ceiling and worried my bottom lip between my teeth. Lana and I seemed more similar than I’d thought.
“I can hear you thinkin’ from here.”
I huffed.
“What are you thinkin’ about?”
“Just…Lana and I… we’re not that different?—”
“Yes, you are,” he interrupted again. “You’re practically opposites.”
“But—”
“Em, gettin’ to know you is what helped me see the kinda person Lana had become. Sure, you both had a lot of hurt, but Lana wielded her hurt, and she was good at manipulating people with it. She thought the world and everybody in it owed her 'cause of what she’d been put through. And then there’s you.”
The fondness in his voice made my eyes well up.
“You acted like you owed the world every piece of you. And I’m not sayin’ that’s a good thing, ’cause it’s not, but your natural inclination was to give and give while Lana’s was to take and take.”
“I used my pain as a weapon—” I argued, my voice wobbling.
“No, I think you used your pain as a shield,” Griz corrected. “I’m not sayin’ you haven’t done anything wrong or that you haven’t hurt people, too, but at the root of it, the two of you are day and night.”
A tear trickled down my face and into my ear.
“She wasn’t sorry for what she’d done,” he added. “She was angry because she felt like we’d picked you over her. She kept actin’ like she’d done nothing wrong, and when we’d remind her, she just brushed it aside.”
After a short silence, Griz started telling another story about his grandma, and eventually, his low, soothing voice lulled me to sleep.
15
