Hidden: House of Night: Book 10

make it flee.”
    “That’s whyyou killed Dragon. Because he tried to protect Rephaim,” she said.
    Aurox nodded, bowing his head in shame. “I did not want to kill him. I did not intend to kill him. Darkness controlled the beast, and the beast controlled me.”
    “Not now, though. The beast is not here now,” Grandma said softly.
    Aurox met her gaze. “He is. The beast is always here.” He pointed to the middle of his chest. “It is eternally within me.”
    Grandma covered his hand with hers. “That may be, but you are here as well.
Tsu-ka-nv-s-di-na
, remember that you
did
control the beast enough to flee. Perhaps that is a beginning. Learn how to trust yourself, and then others may learn to trust you.”
    He shook his head. “No, you are different than everyone else. No one will believe me. They will only see the beast. No one will care enough to trust me.”
    “Zoey shielded you from the Warriors. It was because of her protection that you were able to flee.”
    Aurox blinked in surprise. He hadn’t even thought of that. His emotions had been in such turmoil that he hadn’t realized the extent of Zoey’s actions. “She did protect me,” he said slowly.
    Grandma patted his hand. “Do not let her belief in you be wasted. Choose Light, child.”
    “But I already tried to and failed!”
    “Try harder,” she spoke sternly.
    Aurox opened his mouth to protest, but Grandma’s eyes stopped his words. Her gaze said that her words were more than a command—they were a belief.
    He bowedhis head again. This time not in shame, but in response to a tentative glimmer of hope. Aurox took one small moment to savor the new, wonderful feeling. Then, gently, he took his hand from under Grandma’s and stood. In answer to her questioning look he said, “I must learn how to prove you right.”
    “And how will you do that, child?”
    “I must find myself,” he spoke with no hesitation.
    Her smile was warm and bright. Unexpectedly, it reminded him of Zoey, which made the tentative glimmer of hope expand until it warmed the center of him. “Where will you go?”
    “Where I can do the most good,” he said.
    “Aurox, child, know that as long as you control the beast, and do not kill again, you may always find sanctuary with me.”
    “I will never forget it, Grandma.”
    When she hugged him at the door, Aurox closed his eyes and breathed in the scent of lavender and the touch of a mother’s love. That scent and that touch stayed with him as he drove slowly back to Tulsa.
    The February day was bright and, as the man on the radio said,
warm enough to start wakin’ up the ticks.
Aurox parked Neferet’s car in one of the empty spaces at the rear of Utica Square, and then he let instinct guide his steps as he walked from the busy shopping center along the backstreet called South Yorktown Avenue. Aurox smelled smoke before he reached the great stone wall that encircled the House of Night.
    This fire was Neferet’s work. It reeks of her Darkness,
Aurox thought. He didn’t allow himself to consider what that fire might have destroyed. He focused only on following his instinct, which was telling him he had to return to the House of Night to find himself and his redemption. Aurox’s heart was beating hard as he slipped within the shadow of the wall and made his way silently and swiftly around the east boundary of the school until he came to an old oak that had been split so violently that part of it rested against the school’s wall.
    It was asimple thing, really, to scale the rough wall, grasp the winter nude branches of the shattered tree, and then drop to the ground on the other side. Aurox crouched in the shadow of the tree. As he’d hoped, the brightness of the sun had emptied the school grounds, keeping fledglings and vampyres within the stone buildings, behind darkly curtained windows. He moved around the split base of the tree, studying the House of Night.
    It was the stables that had burned. He could see that easily. It didn’t seem that the fire had spread, though it had left an exterior wall to the stables collapsed. That damaged opening had already been draped by a thick black tarp. Aurox pressed closer to the tree. Picking his way over the splintered fragments of its broken base, and its tangled mess of limbs, Aurox wondered why no one had thought to clear the wreckage of the tree from the otherwise meticulously cared for grounds. But he didn’t have time to wonder for long. A huge raven suddenly