I wake earlier than I would have liked, considering I wasn’t entirely lying to my dad about how tired I was. I guess I still instinctively feel like sleeping in my dad’s bed is wrong. It’s six after midnight when I give up on falling asleep again and pad to the bathroom.

  Quietly, because I don’t want to wake my dad. He’s curled up on the sofa, hugging a cushion as tightly as one would hug a lover, and doesn’t stir as I walk through. I don’t linger. The sight is disconcerting. I guess even after everything, seeing him that vulnerable feels strange. The lingering guilt over the bed doesn’t help either.

  I wonder what time he’ll wake up. It’s only a ten-minute walk to the office, but I think he’d want to be awake before me to make breakfast for us both. I feel a little bad that I’ve inadvertently ruined that. He still doesn’t move as I return to the bedroom, though the rise and fall of his chest reassures me that there’s nothing wrong.

  I probably have a while to myself before he’s properly awake, then. And it doesn’t feel right using that time to make my own breakfast. I don’t trust myself to wash without waking him. I suppose I could just read A History of the Kings of Rasin, but –

  But there’s something else I need to read. The Malaina papers. If I’m going to try and persuade Simon and Tara that this plan is a good idea, it would be a lot easier if I already had a case picked out to present to them. And I haven’t touched them since obtaining them.

  I’ve been busy with travelling and working things out with my dad and worrying about everything else. But really, those are just excuses. I’m scared that I’ll look at these papers and find that all the deaths were justified and all the effort I’ve already put into this is nothing.

  I’m scared that I’ll look at these papers and find that the deaths weren’t justified. That the injustice, the murder, will cease to be an abstract evil to fight and become very real.

  It makes no difference to these people’s fates whether I know about it or not. I’m being irrational. Telling myself that does not make me any less irrational. But it does give me the willpower to retrieve the papers from their hiding place.

  Claire Potts. That’s the name of the first victim. Her killer submitted a fairly detailed report justifying it. Her Fall was due to abuse from her stepfather; there are also reports from the hospital staff who dealt with her case about the extent of her injuries from the incident. And a coroner’s report about the extent of his.

  It does not make for pleasant reading. It seems that under the influence of Malaina, she decided to give him a taste of his own medicine. I’m surprised to see there’s actually an extract from her own testimony included in the file.

  I wanted him to know how I felt. Wanted to make him hurt the way I did.

  I grimace.

  Her killer inserts here his own commentary; he was involved with her case from the beginning, so it seems. He doesn’t once use her name in the report, referring to her as the Malaina. I hate that.

  The verdict is not a good one, even here. He recognises that in light of this being an initial episode and her likely having been in danger at the time there is no justification for taking action against her for the murder, but the pattern of deliberate cruelty her actions demonstrate is concerning and he recommends she be monitored very closely and action be taken if anything further happens.

  It makes me angry, reading his words. Not even because he’s wrong – I’m not sure he is – but because he doesn’t seem to see Claire as a person. Doesn’t seem to have the slightest shred of empathy for someone who’d gone through awful things and finally snapped because of them.

  Claire was found a place in a school of magic – not the Academy, a smaller establishment patronised by the Duchess of Ridgeton. One of the places I rejected because of its requirement for its graduates to serve the Duchess. There were no further incidents; her teachers described her as quiet and withdrawn but committed to her studies.

  Then she went home for the holidays. Her mother had found another boyfriend, not much nicer than the previous one. Claire (allegedly, the reports go out of their way to state) overheard them arguing and the man hitting her mother. She succumbed to the influence of Malaina, went downstairs, and brutally killed him.

  Stars. I know Malaina, know how hard it can be to resist it. It’s well-established that Malaina episodes are more likely to occur in response to scenarios reminiscent of the initial episode. And how much more reminiscent can you get than that?

  Murder is wrong. That goes without saying.

  Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

  But murder under the influence of Malaina, murder to protect her mother, murder committed by a girl terrified that nothing had really changed and she was going to be hurt and abused all over again? And murder of someone willing to hit a vulnerable woman? I can’t quite condemn that.

  Her killer has no such qualms. He details the measures taken to contain the Malaina and prevent anyone else from being hurt, which were extremely thorough and not pleasant for anyone to experience. This despite the fact that she’d killed two abusers and there was not a shred of evidence that even under Malaina influence she had any desire to hurt anyone who wasn’t abusing her or her mother.

  I understand why as I read on. The dead man’s mother was a wealthy widow, devoted to her son. She was adamant that she’d raised a good man who would never hurt a woman. Clearly, therefore, this incident was entirely the fault of the wicked Malaina girl, and the story of abuse was one made up to protect her from the consequences of her evil.

  I’m angry enough, reading that, that I have to throw the papers onto the bed and walk away.

  Then I remember I’m supposed to be looking at this objectively, as a lawyer trying to determine whether this is a case that can be won, whether Claire’s killer was justified in thinking she was a danger to others.

  How, I ask myself, do I know that Claire and her mother’s account is the truthful one? The story of her tragically overreacting to her mother’s new relationship and lashing out isn’t unbelievable, and nor is the idea that she and her mother could have concocted this story to protect her.

  But if I were Claire’s mother, I don’t think I’d want to protect my daughter after she killed the man I loved, and knowing that she could do the same to others. It doesn’t make sense.

  Or am I just trying to rationally justify the emotional decision I’ve already made?

  I take a deep breath and make myself cross the room and reopen the file.

  While legal proceedings were still in progress to determine Claire’s fate, she took it into her own hands and escaped. The file describes in detail the investigation into the breaches of protocol that allowed that to occur. I skim through that section, which isn’t immediately relevant. I wonder what was going through Claire’s mind as she escaped. What she did next.

  Ran from the city, apparently, and didn’t look back. But they sent a police patrol after her. And when they caught up with her, she was not inclined to come quietly. Two men died and another was crippled for life.

  Claire’s killer went with the next patrol himself. Authorised the use of lethal force. And, when she was found sleeping beneath a tree, used that lethal force himself.

  I shut the file with a trembling hand.

  Well. Now I know what I’m getting myself into. I should have known it would be like this.

  What happened to Claire was tragic. Awful. I can already think of so many ways a better system, better people, could have prevented it.

  But can I really say she wasn’t dangerous, in the end, after she’d killed four people? Can I really argue that she wouldn’t have become mala sia? Was her death really unjustified?

  No. This isn’t the case I need. “I’m sorry, Claire,” I whisper, and close the file.

  The door creaks open. I start and spin round, ready to defend myself if I have to.

  I don’t have to. It’s my dad. “I – sorry. You startled me.”

  “My fault, then. I wasn’t sure if you were awake.”

  “I am,” I say, unnecessarily. “What’s the time?”

  “Six and fifty. I was just going to start sorting out breakfast. What were you doing?”

  My first impulse is to lie, and my second is to hate myself for wanting to lie. This isn’t a secret from my father. I suppose I’ve just been keeping secrets for too long. “I was just looking through the papers. For… my project.”

  “Ah,” he says, understanding at once. “Not exactly pleasant reading, I take it?”

  “Not exactly,” I agree. “But that’s why I want to do something. To stop things like that from happening again.”

  It’s about more than just this project, I realise. It’s about changing the whole system. Turning the better world in which Claire didn’t die into a reality.

  My dad is giving me a strange look, one I can’t quite read. “I’m proud of you, Tallulah,” he says. “Breakfast will be ready in twenty minutes.”

  “Thank you. I’ll go and wash.”

  He’s made eggs and bacon. He remembers just the way I like my eggs. I appreciate all the little things he’s doing for me, I really do. It’s just that no amount of little things is enough to bring back what we’ve lost.

  We eat in silence for a little while before he says “It’s bothering you, isn’t it?”

  “What is?” I ask, hating the fact there’s enough possibilities I need to ask that question.

  “What you read.”

  “It’s – “ I bite back the word fine. Because it isn’t. Because if I do want to fix things between us, hiding behind a wall of it’s fine and I’m okay is not what I should be doing. “…yeah. A bit.”

  “Want to talk about it?”

  No. I imagine myself saying the word, imagine the look of hurt and disappointment in his eyes, and can’t bring myself to do it. I let the silence linger instead, trying to order my thoughts enough that I can work out what to say.

  “It scares me,” are the words I find.

  My dad says nothing, just filling his mouth with bacon and waiting for me to go on. I cut off a piece of egg and spear it with my fork. “Malaina,” I say. “All it takes is one bad day, one incident that makes something snap, and I – or someone I care about – could end up like Claire.”

  “Claire is the – person in the file you read?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re not going to end up like her.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Yes, I do. Because I know you, Tallulah. Malaina hasn’t changed you, not really. And I know you’re stronger than it is.”

  He really believes it. My dad has never been able to fake conviction well. I want to believe him too. But. I know how to avoid episodes. I have my coping mechanisms and my escapes. But I’m aware that there are situations which would just be… too much. And I’m aware that with how my luck has been recently, I have pretty good odds of finding myself in one of those someday.

  “Thanks,” I say. “That means a lot.” It really does. When I first Fell, I thought for a while he was afraid of me. That he thought becoming Malaina had already changed me. Knowing that he doesn’t think that really helps. “And thanks for breakfast,” I add. “These eggs are perfect.”