“Tall, grey, and ugly,” Aurora muttered under her breath. “Too many stairs, too.”

  Standing beside her, Melmarc turned up a puzzled look. He looked at the stairs, then the building, then her.

  “It’s ten steps, mom,” he said, like a child who suspected there was a hidden meaning to what he had just heard.

  “Big people shouldn’t have to climb too many stairs.”

  Melmarc cocked a brow. “I’m not fat, mom.”

  Aurora looked at him and smiled. Whenever he cocked his brow like that, he looked so much like his father. Thinking about her husband dampened her mood slightly. But Dorthna had promised her that David would be alright, and she had been inclined to believe him.

  Dorthna was a lot of things, but a liar was not one of them.

  “Why should I lie?” he had asked once upon a time, puzzled. “What are you going to do if I tell you the truth? Beat me?”

  He had a point. Considering he had been training her and her husband since they’d returned from the portal Heaven’s Gate and they still hadn’t been able to win a fight against him, there was no surprise that he couldn’t be bothered to lie to them.

  But more importantly, thinking of Dorthna made her focus on something else. The Oath of Life. When she’d told him that Melchizedek had shown up, he had laughed.

  Despite how flippant he was about Melchizedek in the few times he’d spoken about him before that meeting, he had always spoken of the priest as if he was someone powerful, someone to be careful around even if he had certain constraints.

  “You’ll be fine,” he had said, when she’d told him about the man with the famous monicker of ‘priest forever.’ “You know what, when you and the kid come back, I’ll tell you something interesting about your Oath of Life. It’ll make you laugh.”

  Aurora pushed the thought aside and patted Melmarc on the shoulder affectionately. “No one called you fat, dear. Your father just has a love hate relationship with stairs.”

  Melmarc looked down at the stairs, then back up at the building. In the end, he shook his head.

  “I don’t get it,” he said. “Is it a Madness thing?”

  Aurora chuckled. She couldn’t help it.

  “No, dear.” Her eyes grew distant as she remembered a time so long ago. “I met your dad in school. He was skinny and tall.” She smiled. “But he loved taking the stairs, never an elevator.”

  “That’s the love part,” Melmarc said. “What’s the hate part?”

  Aurora shrugged as if her next words didn’t matter. “He couldn’t go up a flight of stairs without tripping at least once in two attempts. He loved them but they hated him.”

  “Dad was skinny?”

  Aurora nodded. From everything she had said, that was what he’d zeroed in on—that his father was once skinny, not that he tripped on stairs a lot and still went out of his way to use the stairs. He was just like his brother, and their father before he’d become an Oath.

  Her brows furrowed. Maybe it’s just a guy thing?

  “How come he’s so… big now?” Melmarc asked.

  She looked at him. “One word,” she said. “Marriage.”

  “Oh.”

  It was all Melmarc said before returning his attention to the stairs in front of them. He had a strange look in his eyes now, something distant. It was as if he was half-present and half-lost in his mind.

  “Is there anything else you need to do?” she asked him, keeping the bustling crowd of people moving around them within her sphere of attention. “Somewhere else to go apart from the precinct? Let me know before we go in.”

  Melmarc blinked as if her words had brought him back. “Maybe,” he said after a moment. “Since we’re here to get our clothes, I’ll have to go to where I was staying.”

  “The government hotel?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “I didn’t like the place, so Mr. Hitchcock got me a new place with some people.”

  Aurora wasn’t sure how she felt about that. “Anywhere else?”

  “Uh…” Melmarc paused in thought before finally shaking his head. “If we can find Mr. Hitchcock, I’d like to find David Swan. He’ll probably know where he is.”

  Aurora’s hands tightened into fists. Just the thought of David Swan bearing the same first name as the love of her life made her want to punch a building, or his face.

  “Maybe,” she said. It was all she could do not to punch a passerby. “Come on. Let’s go in.”

  With that, she started walking up the stairs. It was still morning. The sun was high in the sky now, letting anyone know that it was closer to afternoon. People walked up the stairs, trooping in and out of the precinct. Most of them were talking, having something to say. Some ranged from the precinct’s customer service to how possible it was for their cases to be solved.

  A woman carrying a baby wondered out loud if her case was best solved by a lawyer instead of the police. She had a purpling eye that she had done nothing to cover with make up and looked like she needed the police for her problem.

  Aurora ignored them all as they got to the top of the stairs and stopped at the entrance to the precinct. Glass double doors stood in front of them.

  “Are we giving the car back to its owner?” Melmarc asked as the door slid open for them.

  Aurora shrugged. Stealing cars wasn’t really that big of a deal. “Do you want us to?”

  “It’s only right,” Melmarc said. “God knows I won’t be happy if I woke up and my car was just gone.”

  She gave him a look, wondering if it was the reaction of her responsible son, Melmarc, or a reaction from one of the Oath concepts Dorthna had told her he would continue to have as time passes.

  Does it matter? She thought, getting an answer immediately. It doesn’t matter.

  Walking into the building, Aurora nodded. “We’ll return the car before we leave, dear.”

  Personally, she would’ve just had someone do it. The person would return the car to where she had taken it from and that would be the end of it.

  The fluorescent lights above hummed faintly from their place in the ceiling. Aurora could hear them loudly if she tried. She stepped in, Melmarc walking beside her as if he’d never really been here before. His sneakers squeaked slightly against the linoleum floor as he followed her and he took a very short moment to glance down at it. Looking up, he gave her a sheepish look as if apologizing for the sound.

  The waiting room was half-full. There was an older couple murmuring in one corner, seated quietly on a row of chairs in one corner of the waiting area. Behind them, a man was flipping through a magazine near the wall. He had a frown of impatience on his face, as if he was only reading the magazine to make time fly.

  Uniformed officers moved in and out of the building, coming out of a second set of double doors that led further into the precinct and going in through the same set. Aurora noted how only very few civilians entered those doors. Most of the civilians in the room occupied the chairs with the old couple and the man with the magazine while some simply stood, waiting around.

  Aurora turned her attention to the reception desk and found a uniformed officer behind it. The lady looked motherly, she had the corpulence you found on women who had put on considerable weight during their pregnancy and hadn’t quite shed it all in the years that followed. She had dark skin, large lips and wide eyes.

  Her uniform fit a bit too tight.

  “That’s new,” Melmarc muttered.

  Aurora began moving towards the reception desk. “What’s that?” she asked Melmarc as they walked.

  “Last time I saw her she hadn’t cut her hair.”

  The lady behind the desk was on low cut. It gave her head a very round shape. She was just finishing up with a tall man with blue eyes and a gentle smile.

  “… So we’ll be seeing you again tomorrow, Mr. Sill,” the woman was saying. “I hope you have a very lovely day.”

  The man, Mr. Sill, nodded amiably. “Thank you, Ms. Elicotte.”

  “Thalisa,” the uniformed officer corrected with a smile. “You can call me Thalisa.”

  The man nodded, tipping an imaginary hat. “Then I will see you next time, Thalisa.”

  With that, he turned away and made his way for the exit, tipping his hat to Aurora as he departed. Aurora had never liked guys like that. For all the good and kind some of them tended to be, her childhood experience with them hadn’t been very favorable. Growing up, those around her with quick smiles and certain levels of gentlemanliness that girls swooned over, always had an agenda.

  They were always up to something dastardly.

  Aurora knew this man was most likely just nice and kind, but she’d simply developed a disliking for his kind. A therapist had called it trauma. Aurora called it learning how to stay alive.

  That you grew up around bad people doesn’t make everyone bad.

  It was something she often told herself when she’d finally gotten out of her home town, out of her cesspool of everything wrong, and into the normal world.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  “Good evening, ma’am. How can I…”

  Aurora’s eyes settled on the woman who had called herself Thalisa as her words died out and found her staring up at Melmarc.

  In her experience, both her sons and their father solicited a similar level of reactions from strangers when they met. It was often awe or fear, brought upon by their size. For David, it was mostly fear. He had something of an empty expression at times, coupled with his height and size, he was a daunting thing to experience. Her sons mostly fell in the category of awe that people so young could be so tall.

  “I heard you were dead,” the woman, Thalisa, said.

  Aurora cocked a brow at her. It wasn’t necessarily at the woman’s words, but at the expression on her face. It was as if she couldn’t be bothered, like walking into the kitchen and finding out that there was still ketchup even though you had heard that there wasn’t any.

  “Excuse me,” Aurora said.

  Thalisa turned her head to her. A small frown touched her lips and she sighed. “Are the two of you together?”

  Sass? Aurora thought, surprised.

  Melmarc looked suddenly apprehensive, then intrigued. Aurora knew that expression. When David had become the Oath of Madness, before he’d learned control of the level he currently possessed, his expressions tended to act up from time to time.

  Something had just come to Melmarc’s mind. His hand moved and Aurora grabbed it by the wrist. Melmarc looked at her with an odd expression.

  “I don’t know what it is,” she said in a cautioning tone, “but no.”

  When her husband made a move in a casual setting, the result could easily be as good as it could be bad. Aurora wasn’t sure what Melmarc was about to do, but the answer was no.

  With a sigh, Melmarc dropped his hand.

  A wrinkle appeared on her forehead as she took in Melmarc’s expression. She had seen it before, not very often, but often enough.

  You don’t like her, she mouthed to Melmarc, and Melmarc nodded.

  Aurora paused. Oh..

  Now she didn’t like Thalisa.

  “I’m here for access to the superintendent’s office.”

  Thalisa took a very short moment to look up from the computer she was typing on. Her eyes moved from Aurora to Melmarc, then back.

  “You may have a seat,” she said. “I’ll let the superintendent know, and he’ll be with you shortly.”

  Then she returned her attention to her monitor’s screen.

  Yep, Aurora thought. Definitely hate her.

  Melmarc’s dislike for the woman was probably just rubbing of on her, but Melmarc had always been a good judge of character. It took a lot for him not to like a person, and Aurora was inclined to trust his judgement.

  “Let’s go sit down, dear,” she told Melmarc, turning away.

  Melmarc, however, did not follow her. Instead, he placed his hand on top of her monitor screen and leaned forward. His action forced Thalisa to look up from her screen. She gave him a puzzled look.

  “You are not going to inform the superintendent,” Melmarc said matter-of-factly when their eyes met. “You are going to sit us down and make us wait forever.” His eyes moved to the landline on her table. “You will pick your phone up and call in, or I will walk into the building and start making a mess.”

  “Violence will not be tolerated in a police precinct,” Thalisa said, rattling out the words with a nonchalant expression, as if she was reading them from a handbook. “Any attempt at violence will have you arrested, should you resist arrest or cause harm to body or property, lethal force will be used.”

  Melmarc cocked an amused brow.

  He must really dislike her, Aurora thought. Melmarc was usually more patient.

  Aurora pulled out her phone and dialed a number. While Melmarc spoke, she waited for the line to ring.

  “That door leads to a group of officers,” Melmarc said simply. “None of them are Gifted. If you heard I was dead, then you know I survived going into a portal. Between now and when they put me in jail, what do you think would’ve happened to you?”

  Aurora’s eyes widened in surprise. Did Melmarc just threaten someone?

  That was Ark behavior right there, not Mel behavior. Melmarc was the peaceful one, the mediator.

  “Hello,” a voice came in from the other end of the phone. “Mrs. Lockwood?”

  The sound of fragile glass cracking drew Aurora’s attention. Looking down at his hand, she found that Melmarc had broken the monitor screen by simply tightening his hold on it. Thalisa’s eyes went wide with fear and she staggered away from the computer, almost falling over her chair.

  “Superintendent,” Aurora said simply. “We’re at the waiting room. Bring someone to get us before it gets very horrible for people present.”

  “You… you…” Thalisa stumbled over her own words. “You can’t do that here.”

  Her hand trembled as she reached for her belt.

  “Now!” Aurora said into the phone harshly then terminated the call.

  She rounded on Thalisa as the woman fumbled for her weapon. “Draw that gun and I’ll kill you where you stand,” she hissed, meaning every single word of it. “You will die, and no one will mourn. They will not be allowed to.”

  Thalisa must’ve seen something in her expression because she froze, hand trembling at her waist but making no further moves.

  Just then, someone burst in from the doors that led deeper into the building. A man who looked to be in his forties burst into the waiting area with a wide, political smile on his face. Interestingly enough, the smile almost reached his eyes.

  “Mrs. Lockwood,” he said, arms held out wide, as if he intended to hug her. “It is so nice to finally have—”

  He didn’t complete his words. Instead, he paused, stopping in his tracks. His eyes moved from her to Thalisa, then to Melmarc, who Aurora just realized hadn’t moved an inch, then back to Thalisa.

  “My sincerest apologies,” he said quickly. “Is there a problem?”

  Aurora noticed the eyes on them. Everyone in the waiting area stared at them. They knew something was wrong but not what exactly it was. They didn’t seem to know the extent of it.

  Aurora looked at Melmarc. “Is there a problem?” she asked him pointedly.

  Melmarc hadn’t taken his eyes off Thalisa. “Is there a problem?” he asked the woman.

  Thalisa looked from Aurora to her son, then to the superintendent. She looked as if she had something to say. Suddenly, she composed herself, stood at attention.

  “Sir,” she said defiantly. “These two just threatened to kill me in a police station.”

  The superintendent’s jaw dropped.

  Aurora stood quietly as gasps filled the waiting area. Her eyes darted around, cataloguing everyone present. She watched four people begin to hold up their phones and turned her back to them.

  “Mel,” she said quietly, “whatever you do, do not turn around. Keep you back to the others.”

  Melmarc said nothing. He simply nodded.

  Aurora kept her eyes on Thalisa. The officer was watching her and Melmarc. She had a cocky grin on her face until she looked at the superintendent. The grin slipped, replaced with confusion.

  “Thalisa Elicotte,” the superintendent said in a harsh tone. “You will go to the second conference hall and wait there until I come and have a word with you.” His face had morphed into a scowl. His anger was palpable. “Is that understood?”

  Thalisa’s jaw dropped. “But, sir—”

  “Not another word out of you,” the superintendent snapped. “Conference hall two. Now!”

  Thalisa flinched at his tone, but said nothing. It was a brief moment before she turned and stormed off in the direction of the door that led deeper into the building.

  “Tell officer Maneti to come relieve you,” the superintendent added as she left. Then he turned to Aurora. “I am so sorry you had to witness that.” Raising his voice, he added, “Such accusations should not be levied on honest civilians such as yourself.”

  His voice was normal enough that he wasn’t shouting, but loud enough that those videoing would capture it in their recording.

  Political and smart, Aurora noted.

  “If that is all?” The superintendent gestured towards the door leading inside.

  “Can someone get the phones of everyone present and delete the videos?” Aurora asked calmly. “I would rather not find myself all over the internet.”

  The man nodded hurriedly. “Right away.” Turning his head from side to side, he drew the attention of two officers with a gesture. “Get everyone to delete the videos they just recorded.”

  Both officers were puzzled but didn’t argue. In a matter of moments, they walked off in the direction of the civilians while two officers who had not been called, moved to block the exit.

  Again, the superintendent smiled and gestured once more into the building.

  Aurora paused. A part of her wanted to supervise the deleting of the videos. Normally, she would not go this far. The Oaths had contingencies in place that helped them rid the internet of videos of them when necessary. But waiting on that contingent to take place would give the current video time to spread around the internet.

  Personally, she had no issues with her presence—even if not her face—showing up on the internet. What she would not allow was Melmarc’s turning up on the internet because of what had happened here.

  Controlling her commanding nature, she turned at the superintendent’s behest and made her way to the door. Melmarc followed. He kept his face half-turned away from the onlookers and Aurora was happy for that.

  When they were deeper into the building and away from camera phones, Aurora decided to address what had happened. The superintendent was saying something about how the precinct was actually a nicer and better place than what they had experienced but Aurora wasn’t listening.

  The truth of what had happened was that they had been the aggravators here. Their actions had led to the escalation. Even if the officer had taken it a little too far.

  “Mel,” she said in a low voice.

  Melmarc looked at her. “Yes, mom.”

  “What happened there?”

  “When I resumed here, she told me the same thing,” he said. “She asked me to sit and wait that my mentor would be with me shortly. I sat and waited for more than thirty minutes.”

  “It could’ve been a mistake,” Aurora pointed out, playing devil’s advocate as the superintendent led them through a door.

  Melmarc shook his head. “She never informed my mentor of my arrival.”

  “She could’ve forgotten.” Aurora didn’t believe it. But she was a mother, a parent, she owed it to herself to ensure that her children thought before they acted. They needed to be certain beyond reasonable doubt.

  “It was intentional,” Melmarc said. “She has a reputation in the precinct for discriminating against the Gifted. Everyone in the Gifted department knows it.”

  “That’s true.” The superintendent echoed in realization. “Master Lockwood, you worked with us for some time. Why didn’t you use the Gifted entrance?”

  Melmarc shrugged. Aurora’s brain paused.

  Had he allowed them to enter through this place because he had wanted to run into the woman? If that was the case, she could say with certainty that that was quite diabolical of him.

  “Is she that much of a menace?” she asked the superintendent.

  The man stiffened. “I assure you, ma’am, the officers at this precinct are always well behaved and composed. We do not tolerate discrimination of any kind.”

  “Everyone thinks she got her position through some kind of connection to the higher ups,” Melmarc told her. “They believe it’s the reason she discriminates against the Gifted every time and still gets to keep her job.”

  That’s diabolical, Aurora thought. Her thoughts weren’t directed at what Melmarc had just told her but at how casually he had told her in the presence of her superior. He was casually calling him a liar while he was talking.

  Aurora wasn’t going to ask the man guiding them if it was true, though.

  They came to a stop in front of a door and the superintendent stopped talking. Aurora looked from him to the door.

  “Is the commissioner inside here?” she asked.

  The man nodded.

  “Good.” She turned to Melmarc. “Do you want to be present for this or would you rather do something else? Maybe go see the people you worked with, say hi, things like that.”

  Melmarc paused to think about it. After a while, he turned to the superintendent. “My apologies, but is Mr. Hitchcock here?”

  The man’s face twitched. “Unfortunately not,” he said apologetically.

  Aurora almost laughed. If she knew it was a lie, Melmarc knew it was a lie. She looked at him and he shook his head as an indication of the lie.

  “My apologies, sir, but I seem to have forgotten your name,” she said to the superintendent kindly.

  “Oh, where are my manners,” the man said. “It’s because I didn’t give it. My name is Eckberth. Eckberth Janusi.”

  “Thank you. Now, superintendent Eckberth Janusi.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Lockwood.”

  “I do not appreciate my son being lied to in front of me. Mr. Hitchcock is currently in this building, and I would appeal to you to be kind enough as to have someone take him to Mr. Hitchcock. Thank you.”

  It was dismissive of her. But Aurora was in no mood for kindness. While she was here to have civilized words, she intended to be uncivilized about it while dishing out punishments as punishments were due.

  Detective Alfa would get the punishment she deserved, then Naymond, then David Swan.

  Maybe Thalisa, too.

  She paused, thought about it.

  Definitely Thalisa, too.

  With a resigned sigh, Eckberth answered her. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll have an officer take him right to Mr. Hitchcock. Shall we go in, now?”

  “Gladly.” She looked at Melmarc. “Do you want to wait with us inside while we talk?”

  Melmarc didn’t seem very interested in what was happening. “Do I have to?” he asked.

  Aurora shook her head. She could be as cruel as she wanted if Melmarc wasn’t present. If he was present, she would want to show some level of restraint, set a good example for him. According to Dorthna, he was about to become the most powerful being on the planet. The last thing she wanted to do was show him a side of her abusing her powers. If he saw that, he might feel justified to abuse his power when he finally rose to it.

  “Alright, hun.” She smiled at him. “I’ll see you when we’re done. Get a kiss.”

  She tilted her head upwards and Melmarc hesitated with an embarrassed smile before bending so that she could give him a kiss on the cheek without reaching up on her toes.

  “See you,” she said with a wave when she was done and walked towards the door.

  Eckberth opened it like the perfect gentleman, and she walked in.

  “Commissioner,” she greeted as Eckberth walked in behind her.

  But the three of them were not the only ones present in the room. There was one more person. Turning to them, she addressed the person as well.

  “And you must be Detective Alfa,” she said, softly, as the door slowly closed behind her. “I’ve heard much about you.”