17. Shelter

Later that day, Lauren woke in an unfamiliar place.

Her first instinct, too familiar by now, was to pretend she was still asleep. She had learned that listening before moving was sometimes safer. But almost at once, something felt wrong in a way she could not name. Her memory remained hazy, thick with fear, pain, and fever, but one thing was certain. She should not have been warm.

Warmth belonged to before, a time that would not return. For a few long breaths she stayed still under whatever had been laid over her and tried to understand the feeling. Softness pressed against her side instead of bare ground. Her body still hurt, but not with the same merciless cold ache she had felt before. No rope bit into her wrists, and no hand was already reaching to drag her upright.

The confusion broke through her restraint. Tears came before she could stop them.

She had known warmth like this once. A proper bed beside a wall that kept out the wind. A blanket that held heat. A roof that belonged to home. It had been half a year since those things had been part of her life instead of some distant memory.

After her parents died in what everyone called a farm accident, Lauren had been left to her aunt, her father’s younger sister. At first, the grief itself had been the worst part. The house had felt wrong without them. The world had felt emptier and less safe. Then the smaller cruelties began. Her cousins teased and bullied her. They played games that always seemed to end with her crying while they laughed. Her aunt told her not to complain. They were taking care of her, so she should be grateful. If the boys kicked her out of bed, she could bear it. If they locked her in the dark room, she should stay quiet until they remembered to let her out. If they put filth in her food, she should be a good girl and not make trouble, or else they might decide she was more burden than she was worth.

So she endured, and cried only at night, when no one was there to tell her she was ungrateful. For a while she believed that if she stayed quiet, things would stop getting worse. Then the woman began visiting.

Lauren had feared her from the first glance. No one else seemed to notice the wrongness beneath her smile. The woman was only some local speaking to her aunt, smiling, asking after the house, lingering over tea. But Lauren felt something foul under that smile. The woman’s eyes kept measuring her. In nightmares, she became a voidling wearing human skin.

The visits continued. The woman would call her over to inspect her teeth, ask whether she could read and write, how often she fell ill, whether she could sew, and whether she was strong enough to carry simple things. Lauren did not understand why those questions made her skin crawl. She only knew they did. No one else thought it strange. They only laughed and said the woman was concerned about her.

Then Lauren overheard one of the conversations. The woman was telling her aunt about a neighbor who had earned good money by sending a daughter away to serve on another island that needed hands. Poor families did it all the time now, the woman said. Larger places needed workers. The children received a better future. Families were compensated for the years they had already spent raising them. Everyone benefited.

Her aunt had found the idea strange at first. Lauren still remembered that much. But with each visit, the woman spoke of it more. And each time, her aunt objected less. She even began joking that perhaps she should send her own sons away and enjoy the peace. Lauren had known, even then, that those jokes did not include her.

Then one afternoon, just before leaving, the woman whispered a number into her aunt’s ear. Lauren had never seen her aunt’s face change like that.

Not long after, the woman came for her. It happened on an ordinary day. Lauren had still been hoping that days like that could last longer. Instead, she found her aunt packing her few clothes, two worn books, and the small toys she still had not been forced to surrender. The woman sat nearby watching with those same patient, hungry eyes while her aunt tried and failed to explain.

In the end, the stranger said it directly.

“You’re going to live somewhere else,” she told Lauren. “A better place. With more children and opportunities.”

Lauren had refused. She had tried to run back inside, but her aunt caught her by the arm and forced her down into a chair. Then came tears, explanations, promises she did not believe, and finally the truth: her aunt did not want her anymore. Another place had been found for her, and she should be grateful.

Lauren cried and begged, but none of it mattered. The last thing she remembered of her aunt was the way she looked at the heavy pouch in her hands. Not at Lauren. At the pouch.

After that, the pretense ended. Once the village was out of sight, the woman dropped all pretense. She beat Lauren when she cried. She starved Lauren when she resisted and starved her when she obeyed, too. A few days later they met the woman’s husband. Then came the road to Verevain, and the cold floor, and the ropes, and the long stretch of terror that taught Lauren not to believe any kindness was real.

Until now. Now she was somewhere warm enough that her body no longer shook uncontrollably. Someone had covered her. Her ankle still throbbed, and her ribs still hurt every time she breathed too deeply. But the place around her felt like home again. The realization made her cry harder.

The shelter holding that warmth had not existed that morning.

Alistair had built it in hours.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

He could not carry the girl back into town. As far as he knew, other people might still be involved in whatever trade had nearly chained her. A careless move in Verevain could place her straight back into the hands of someone worse than the couple he had killed. At the same time, he could not leave her out in the brush with an open wound, a fever beginning to rise, and the cold damp ground leaching strength from her by the minute.

So he did the only thing that made sense. He built a shelter.

He did not think of it as heroism. But he had clones and the means to make a child’s life a little less miserable. More than that, making a proper shelter would earn experience. Doing something good and growing stronger at the same time seemed like a fair bargain.

Because one clone still had to maintain his position at the tavern, Alistair could spare only four bodies for the work outside town. Shade had already exchanged places with Carver there. The swap itself had been simple enough: Shade slipped out through the back entrance during a narrow quiet moment, dissolved in a blind stretch beside the wall, and Carver, already waiting nearby, took his place and stepped into the small kitchen as if nothing had changed. The trick cost him almost nothing now that his clone duration had grown so much.