Eye of the Storm Read Online Free Page B

behind. The doula bears an unmistakable resemblance to Asher, but with gray braids and a plumpness that doesn't come from pregnancy. My mother isn't looking at the camera. In the picture, it looks to me like she doesn't see anything at all. Anything except the baby in her arms. Pink and mostly swaddled, a shock of yellow-orange hair protrudes from the little white cap on the baby's head. My head. I know it's me.  
    Mira gets up to see what we're staring at. "Fucking hell, Storme."
    "That was taken just before the doctor came in and took you. I couldn't bring myself to take any pictures after that." Asher's face goes so stony that I start to believe her before I can help myself. I know that look in her eyes, that look of having borne the pain of a loved one for far too long. "To say Eve took it hard would be like saying the sun is rather bright. She locked herself in her bedroom for two weeks and didn't come out for work. She got fired. I picked up extra shifts to cover the rent. When she finally came out, I was just getting home from work and she'd already thrown out the baby furniture and painted over the bears in the walk-in closet. She'd moved her clothes back into it and any trace that she should have been a new mother was wiped from the apartment. She didn't want comfort. A couple weeks later, she got a job at the library. I didn't think much of it, but then she started working doubles almost every day. When I stopped by once to bring her dinner, I found out that she'd been off the clock for hours and that she'd been spending half her days in the study carrels reading every page of Mediator history and demonology she could get her hands on."
      That gives me a start, and I'm not alone in the reaction.  
    "What for?" Mira stays next to me, and Evis stops turning pages in the album. Jax and Mason watch keenly, their eyes searching Asher's for something I can't fathom.  
    "She wanted to help you. Even though I'd known her for most of her life, she didn't confide in me until sometime later. Eve was always a private person, but it was the first time she ever locked me out like that. When she told me almost a year later what she wanted to do, she had put together such a meticulous plan for herself and for me that I couldn't help but agree."
    Again, I get the sense from Asher that she's not telling me everything. The feeling is oddly familiar, and I can't place what this conversation is reminding me of. I can allow someone the luxury of not spilling every single one of their thoughts, but in this situation it just leaves me feeling nervous.
    "So what did she do? What was this plan?" Mason pipes up, much to my surprise. I can't read his expression, and the scars on his cheeks are still angry and pink from where Gregor sliced him up.  
    "Eve wanted to learn everything there was to know about the Mediators. Most norms just know the basics — that the hellkin want in to our world and that the Mediators stop them as much as possible. Eve wasn't any different at that point. She knew there were professors who studied Mediator methodology and history, and she wanted to learn everything she could without paying tuition to do it. She thought that maybe if she learned enough about demons and the hellkin in general and about the Summits that perhaps one day she might be able to help you, Ayala."
    I look at Mira. "It's pretty unheard of, isn't it?" It's a genuine question; I don't know if any parents of Mediators turn up on the Summit doorstep wanting to help their offspring or what happens. Until hearing Asher's account of my birth, I don't think I ever let myself fully engaged with the barbarism of how we happen.  
    Maybe some reluctant mothers here and there are relieved to have their kid snatched away within seconds of birth, relieving them of the choice of adoption or the pressures of incipient parenthood, but for most who make it to the actual birth stage of pregnancy without ending it early on, it has to be traumatic. I wonder