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When the guards had locked hiled as Julianna and Collette’s cell was opened Oliver tensed inwardly, hoping that there would be no beating for them On the day after they had tried to reach Frost, Julianna had been groped by a guard Had she been raped, Oliver would have attacked the next Atlantean to coht mean his life

But they hadn’t raped her Yet

She and Collette had both reassured hiht he had heard Julianna crying and forged a new hate inside him

Today neither his fiancée nor his sister uards isecracks, the way Oliver had That was for the best He did it because he couldn’t help it, and because the pain they gave hi But Collette and Julianna kept quiet and the guards did nothing but leave their food and lock the door to their cell again

Boots scuffed the stone floor as the soldiers marched back up the corridor, then up the stairs out of the dungeon And they were alone again

Oliver sucked on his split lip and spat some blood onto the floor He pushed away froe people, souards did not norory, but he had learned caution Oliver peered through the gratedbut saw no one He heard his sister and Julianna speaking to one another quietly but could not h the grate in their door They were still choking down their food

He ran his fingertips along the rooves between the stones that made up the wall of his cell Eyes closed, Oliver cleared his mind Sometimes he tried this trick on the outer wall, teht--if what she’d done at the sandcastle hadn’t been so outside wouldn’t solve their probleht… Oliver knew his doubt had to be a problem, but he could not seeain, huh?"

He opened his eyes Julianna was peering at hi a sharp pain from his split lip A flicker of concern passed over Julianna’s features Her face was filthy, her hair tangled and wild, but her eyes had a light that woke so in him, just as it always had With just a look, she could re

"Yeah Not loorate

"Collette, too She’s getting frustrated"

From within the cell, Oliver heard his sister’s voice "Of course I’ frustrated This is bullshit We can do this We can get out of here"

Oliver grinned, hissing with pain and touching his bleeding lip "Yeah We’re so out of here"

Julianna frowned, angry with hi us here"

"Hey--"

"Hey, nothing, Mister Bascoend Borderkind All your life, your father tried to druic didn’t exist to try to convince you of the saainst the mortar "But it does exist"

"Of course it does!" Julianna replied "Don’t you get it? That’s why he acted the way he did To protect you"

A knot of ice for he had not already considered, but to hear Julianna talking about it, to have the thoughts spoken out loud, troubled him

Nobody who had known Max Basconore how drastically theas Oliver had been at the tiether often He cherished theat the New Year’s Eve party they’d thrown at the house, picnicking on a blanket on the back laith the Atlantic Ocean stretching endlessly in front of them, and a handful of ti or locked in a kiss

Her death had extinguished a light inside Oliver’s father Frori to take little joy in them Oliver, in particular, had vexed the man His father had steered hied cartoons On one birthday, Julianna had given hiic set Oliver had played with it for hours, but when he woke in thefor it, thinking Friedle or the cleaning wo moved it at all It had taken Collette to otten rid of it

Later, other items vanished in similar fashion Neither father nor son would say a word, but the gulf between them widened His complete set of The Chronicles of Narnia disappeared a week after Christlish teacher had assigned Charles Dickens’s Hard Ti echo of his own relationship with his father The diatribe that opened that book had remained with him all of these years: Facts alone are wanted in life Plant nothing else, and root out everything else You can only for else will ever be of any service to the away in the town library, reading s his father would never have approved of And whenever he had a part in a play in school, or with the Kitteridge Civic League, his father would never be in attendance More than once, he had forced his son to quit the drama club, only to relent when teachers intervened on Oliver’s behalf

And Julianna thought his father had done all of those things to protect him?

"It’s true," a softer voice said

Collette had stopped trying to take the wall apart On tiptoe, she looked at hirate

"She died because of what she was, Oliver It’s the only thing that makes sense," Collette said "Dad was afraid we’d end up dead, too He feared ere because he didn’t want to lose us"

"Funny way of showing it"

"Do you reave you Phantastes?"

As painful as the hed softly

"How could I forget?"

As cold and distant as his father could be, it had given him a certain amount of pleasure to piss the man off Any kind of eer

Collette had read George MacDonald’s nineteenth-century fairy tale--about a ic and fairy courts, a tale that now resonated powerfully with Oliver--for a college course, and had brought it ho, Oliver had co by the table, reading the back cover of Phantastes Oliver had left the book there the night before, forgetting to return it to his roolanced up at hier had flashed in his eyes and he had held the book up and begun to tear pages in half

"Enough," he had said "Haven’t you learned by now? That is enough of this shit You keep your head in the real world, son, or you’re never going to haveyou now, and you’d better believe I’ll tell your sister as well No more"