Page 82 of For the Ghastly and Beautiful

“Were we fighting?” he questions with a playful smirk.

“Sometimes a little distraction is all it takes to pull you out of your mind.” I nudge her with my elbow. “At least he didn’t throw water in your face.”

He chuckles. “It worked, didn’t it?”

“Yeah.” She sighs before nodding at the doorway in front of us. “In there?”

“I’ll wait out here,” Ecaeris tells us, leaning against the wall.

Rin grips my hand, and I let her lead our pace into the chilled room. I won’t force her to move further. This isn’t for me. I was Poko’s judge, jury, and executioner, delivering the final blow that stole his last breath. The least I can do now is stay at her side for support.

She stands tall over his lifeless body, her glare wavering as she studies him. “You do this?”

I scrunch my face. “More than half of the human body is water, so I figured something similar applied to the people in this world.”

“He’s a husk, Ada.”

“I dried him out,” I admit. “And then drowned him. I’m learning how to control my element, but I’m finding I can do things natives can’t. Or maybe they didn’t know there were more possibilities. I don’t have any preconceived notions about what I can or can’t do. I just reacted.”

“Being underestimated isn’t always a bad thing, is it?” she parrots my words from our first training session back to me.

“No. It’s not.” I shrug. “Water is all around us, Rin. In the air, soil, and stone… Even fire is capable of creating moisture. The only limits we have are the ones we set.”

She nods absently, then shakes out of her thoughts and glares down at the mummified Mongrel once more.

“I hope he rots in the deepest pits of the ocean,” Rin murmurs to me before she spits on his body

“I’m sure one of the krakens will eat him,” I comment without thought, still feeling no remorse or guilt after taking his life.

Those emotions won’t visit me on my darkest days or in my worst dreams. He doesn’t deserve them.

When she turns to me, the smallest of smiles graces her lips. The ghosts of her past won’t stop haunting her in a single day, but this is a step in the right direction. I know that from experience.

We all have trauma that needs healing.