She bounded left, right, and then disappeared in a shower of fireworks. Reed blinked in surprise, momentarily nonplussed.

"Abby," he said. "You're cheating."

A bubbling giggle sounded behind him and he turned, cocking his head at the small mortal girl stood in front of him.

"I am not," she protested half-heartedly, amusement evident in her thick Welsh accent. Her cheeks were round and flushed with exertion and laughter and her blonde bangs lay plastered against her forehead. She hiccupped between giggles. It was the first time he had seen her smile since her brother had returned home and the first time he had heard that laugh since London.

"No powers. Remember?"

She did. Abby never forgot the vital rules of combat, because despite having witch-power at her disposable, Abigail Hart was still mortal at heart and had been for seventeen years. She was strong but untrained, which meant that Abby's idea of fight was the equivalent of throwing herself around the room like a large elephant, hoping she landed a blow at some point.

Not useful, so Reed had made the unfortunate mistake of offering to help.

"What happens when you panic?" he questioned the witch, arms folded over his chest.

The comment hit home and Abby's contagious smile faltered. She knew he was right. Still new to her powers she often forgot she had them in those rare moments of panic. It had happened before.

"You're immensely annoying when you're right, Mr. Redfern," she said, scowling at him. She moved to the benches at the front of the gym and grabbed her water bottle. She drank deeply, eyes closed.

He grinned, brushing damp blood-red hair from his eyes. "Don't worry. I won't make a habit of it."

She snorted and threw her water bottle at him. "Like you could."

---

The lessons had started months ago and they would never stop. If he had to drill them into her, if he had to push her until she broke, she would learn.

She fought him every step of the way, but not in the way he wanted her to fight.

Despite Reed's inability to understand Abby, there was no question that the girl wasn't all that complex. Her moral stance was as simple as black and white and that was her problem. Abby didn't understand violence and death. Two years spent lost in her own mind, shackled to the darkness of her madness by a man who knew only that, and still she was as innocent as she had been when he had first seen her. A sweet, naive little girl, now a nineteen-year-old woman, with a stubborn streak he both adored and loathed. Her stubborness made her vulnerable; her reluctance to learn the deadly art of fighting, of killing, had reduced her to an awkward bundle of limbs and Reed was finding it difficult trying to teach a student that didn't want to learn.

He remembered how eager to learn he had been. Fleeing his home -- his mother -- at the age of fifteen had been the best and worst decision he had ever made. So young, but Reed had felt too old for his skin. Anger had driven him, then, frustration and a hatred of a mother that refused to tell him the truth about a father he had never known. Ann-Marie had coddled him for too long and he had lashed out in the only way he could.

The lessons he had learnt travelling the world were his most valuable -- life skills, social skills, fighting skills. He had learnt from the best and savoured each nugget of knowledge as if it was his last.

Abby appreciated little of the lessons he taught her. Oh, she was grateful. Always grateful. Grateful to his mother for letting her stay at the Manor, grateful to him for saving her, for rescuing her, for--

But he hadn't. He had done none of those things. He hadn't saved her because he hadn't known she needed saving. It had all been an accident, a blessed accident, and that was what made things worse.

I didn't know, he thought as he sat alone on the bench. I thought they were taking care of you.

Liar, something whispered to him. You knew no one could help her but your own kind.

But he hadn't wanted her in his world. From day one, when he had first seen her innocent face amidst the crowds of London, he had tried to keep her out of it, even when he himself was growing ever more fond of her. But then he had come along. The witch who had claimed to love her. The witch who had died at the hands of Night World assassins because he had broken law and fell in love with a mortal.

The witch who had used forbidden magic to pass on his own to the girl he had professed to love.

Do you see what you've done? Reed seethed. Do you see what you've turned her into? Something she never wanted to become. You dragged her into a world of killers and that's not who she is. That's not who she was supposed to be.

No. No, only human. And she is. Too human. She's not made for this kind of power.

But he would teach her, anyway. He would teach her control and patience among lessons of death and destruction and survival. She would lose that innocence, there was no doubt in his mind, but he would rather her lose that than her life.

Loss was a lesson he had never been that eager to learn.

---

"I never lied to you, Reed," his mother said.

She was a beautiful woman with elfin features and his blood-red hair, and she was sat opposite him now, weariness etched across her features. She may not have looked her age, but Ann-Marie looked old. Her face was shadowed and her eyes were heavy.

"What do you mean?" he said, concerned. Reed may have disliked her sometimes, but he worried about her, too. Her life was more dangerous than most. As one of Daybreak's leading figure heads her life was constantly at risk. He didn't like it and he didn't particularly agree with her cause, but he respected her dedication nonetheless. Besides, he had his own issues with the laws that governed the Night World.

Ann-Marie sighed heavily. "When you were a kid--" She paused and looked across at him in discomfort. She was obviously reluctant to discuss this with him. "--you were convinced that I was lying to you about your father when I said he was dead."

Reed nodded absently, remembering all too well the fights that had followed those discussions. He had been adamant she was lying to him, trying to hold him back from finding out who his father was, and he had hated her for years for keeping it from him. He still hated her, if only a little. Three years apart had barely dulled the slither of anger he harboured towards her. But now was not the time to dredge up old grudges. His mother had something to say.

"He is dead," she said finally, and her words were so sincere, so remorseful, that he had no choice to believe her. He knew right then that she wasn't lying, that she had been telling him the truth from the beginning.

"I loved him," she added in a small, weak voice that he didn't recognise. This was his mother; his strong, unflappable mother who made everything better and kept everyone safe. But when he turned to look at her there were tears shining in her dark green eyes and her face was soft with heartbreak.

Reed dropped his gaze. He couldn't bare to look at her.

"I loved him more than anything." She swallowed and whispered so softly that he bearly heard her, "Even my soulmate."

"Soulmate?" he echoed in disbelief, raising his head to look at her. "You had a soulmate?"

"Have."

He didn't know what to say. He had heard the rumours, of course, the stories that flittered around the halls of Redfern Manor. He didn't know where they had come from, these tales about his mother, but people whispered about a time before his birth when she had had not one soulmate, but two. They had both vied for her affections and both had died in the process. One of them had been his father.

Reed had never been interested in the stories that proclaimed his father dead but now he found himself wondering if they had been more than just tales.

"Was--was my father your soulmate?" Reed found himself asking, struggling to believe that after all this time his mother had been telling him the truth and his father was truly dead.

"No," she said. "Not by Night World definition. But he was by mine."

"What happened to him?"

Ann-Marie's eyes darkened and she sagged visibly. The tears glistening in her eyes spilled over, carving a path down her cheeks. She wiped at them and shook her head. "He was so angry," she said, sniffling. "He couldn't accept that I'd never love him. He thought that because we were soulmates that I was obligated to be with him. But I loved your father too much. He was a good man. Nothing like his brother."

"Brother?"

His mother smiled weakly. "Yes. They were brothers, your father and him. But nothing alike. Your father was a part of Daybreak long before I was. His brother thought him weak. All he thought about was power. That's all he wanted. He was a killer. He still is."

She shook her head, long red tresses glinting a burnished gold in the light. "I couldn't have loved him even if I had never met your father. He was too power-hungry, too ruthless. I'm over two-hundred-years-old, Reed, and I've seen a lot in my life. I've met people like him before and I've pitied them. But if I'd chosen him... if I'd chosen to share my soul with him, then I would have become one of them. I couldn't have done that."

"So you chose my father instead," he stated and Ann-Marie nodded her head, smiling.

"We left and came here, to Westchester. My father was still living in the Manor, running it as a Night World orphanage. He offered us refuge, but he still found us." The smile faded from her face and she raised her head to stare at him solemnly. "He killed your father, Reed," she said softly, "and now he's here."

He blinked. His father's murderer -- his uncle -- here, in Westchester? Why? Why would he come back here?

"Who is he?" he asked tightly, fists clenched around the arms of the chair. His heart was pounding furiously and his muscles were coiled, ready to fight. Irrational, he knew -- he had been taught better -- but reason had no say in the matter. His father was dead and his killer was roaming free around his city.

"I'm not letting you go out--"

"Who. Is. He?"

She dropped her gaze and took a deep breath. Then she lifted her head and looked at him with the sharp green eyes of a woman he recognised. Reed was not the only one on the war path. Ann-Marie Redfern was ready to fight.

"His name's Blacksmith," she said. "Nathaniel Blacksmith."