59
HARLOW
y parents are relaxed when they enter the dining room. My father has aM whiskey in his hand and my mother sips her wine. I almost prefer this unassuming version of them. It’s good to know their guards are down.
If I had the gift of distance, I would think they make a handsome couple.
My mother with her raven hair twisted away from her face and fastened into a chignon at the nape of her neck, balanced out by my father’s swiftly graying hair that’s combed into neat waves. Her pale silver dress glimmering in the candlelight, playing off the shimmering charcoal of the vest my father wears under his jacket.
Up close, I can clearly see the ugliness. The hungry look in their eyes and the cruelty in their smiles.
“Did you hear what Mary Varyss said about Rafe? That he’s a traitor to the living? And that group of unblessed protesting outside the North Hold gates—it’s already spreading like wildfire,” my mother says as she takes her seat and notices that Henry isn’t beside me. “Where is that husband of yours?
I don’t know how he did it, but he must have said the perfect thing last night, and now the rumors about Rafe are everywhere.”
Just hearing his name makes my blood boil, but Rafe is a problem for tomorrow. Today I have more pressing things to deal with.
“Henry had something to attend to this evening, but I invited Kellan,” I say. “I know he’s so busy with the festival, but I’m hopeful he can make the time. Family is so important, don’t you think?”
My mother frowns, clearly noting my sarcasm, while my father rings the bell beside him to signal the servants.
A moment later, the dining room door swings open and the servants bring in the soup, placing a bowl in front of each of us and a cover over a fourth plate at the seat beside me.
I watch them hustle away, whispering excitedly to each other, but my parents don’t notice. They never pay attention to the unblessed servants because they think it’s beneath them to acknowledge the help. If they did, they might wonder why the servants were so excited. They might ask and discover that with Able out for the evening, and just the three of us here for dinner, I offered to bring out the rest of the staged dinner courses so the servants could enjoy the festival for once.
They were all too happy to have a night off.
I take a few spoonfuls of the soup and lean back in my chair to watch my parents eat. This hearty beef stew is my father’s favorite, and he shovels it into his mouth like he hasn’t eaten all day.
It’s so ordinary—the three of us here having dinner, the room lit by the fireplace and the shimmering glow of the glass chandelier overhead. I have sat at this table so many times before, but tonight it feels different.
“What do you have for us?” he asks, stirring his soup. “And where is
Gaven?”
“Gaven is dead.”
Both of my parents freeze.
“How?” my father asks.
“A blade to the chest. Some political opponent of the Havenwoods.”
My father’s dark purple eyes light with interest. “Stefan Laurence?”
I should not be shocked by anything at this point, but somehow I am. “So you already knew what was happening at the fort?”
“Yes,” he says. “We’ve known for a few years that they were back up and running and the Laurence family shares our vision.”
“And yet you still took the risk of sending me there when you had someone powerful in place? You let me marry a man who hates our family, fuck him in front of all their high houses, and subject myself to the very real danger beyond our city walls for what, exactly?”
My father sighs and looks at the ceiling as if I’m a petulant teenager.
“Harlow, at your age I shouldn’t need to tell you that we all have made sacrifices for this family.”
“Have we? Which sacrifices have you made?” In order to have something to lose, he would need to care about something, but the only thing he cares about is his power. That’s why he’s lied and killed to keep it.
“I sacrifice daily with my strength and magic. You think it’s easy to channel enough power to light miles of the wall every night?” he snaps.
My anger rises and I don’t bother to hide it in my pulsing aura. The golden light presses wide, and it feels good not to smother it.
After my revelation in the garden this afternoon, everything inside that had been bound for the past six months came unclenched. I was flooded with memories of the time after Aidia died. What had been a blank spot in my brain, a gray blur of days with nothing specific for months, is now filled in with horrifying color.
The first memory was unmitigated agony. I couldn’t even feel the extent of my emotional pain because my body was so broken afterward. It took days and hours of work by healers to recover, but I did. I saw hazy visions of Kellan sitting in the chair beside my bed, of my mother speaking with the healers in the doorway. It wasn’t until my father came to see me that I roused myself for war.
For weeks, I made myself into a force of nature, raged against the world, my parents, the Divine. I wanted to be a great, thundering tempest, but when the fog lifted from my eyes, I saw I was just a passing shower. I have no bluster. I only have grief and this sickness in my mind that won’t let me release it.
It occurred to me as I continued to destroy my father’s study with a fire poker—as I poisoned the guards who came to check on the destruction, as I tried to piece my world back together without my sister in it—that the only way to heal is to cut out the infection.
“That was not the deal we made,” I say, stirring my spoon in my bowl.
“You said you would keep me informed. I said I would do this last thing and then I was done. That I would ask for something and you wouldn’t argue, that I would be given whatever it was.”
My father barks out a cold laugh. “You’re my daughter. You cannot possibly think I wouldn’t have a purpose for you.”
It always comes back to how I can be used.
When I was younger, I saw the way they looked at me when I did something they wanted, and I made the mistake of confusing need with love.
If I could not have love, at least I could have their respect.
But trusting me to be their weapon and complimenting me for killing for them was not the same as love. No matter how I tried to shrink my wanting down to a size their scant affection could fill, they had nothing to offer.
I clung to Aidia because she was the last thread of love that stitched me to humanity. Without her, I could so easily be just like them, not caring about the collateral damage of my actions, happily using genuine affection to manipulate people.
Instead, I have taken their lessons to heart, and I used them to right the wrongs I could in our community.
I’ve learned from the best. My parents can be as dark and dreaded as they want. I will find a way to be more monstrous.
Now I understand that I can love my parents and still wish they had the ability to be better. Now I will love myself more by not giving them the chance to meet that potential.
My father wipes the corner of his mouth with his napkin. “Before the opportunity to marry you off to the Havenwood heir presented itself, we were
in talks with Rafe.”
My mouth falls open.
“Well, he had to be dealt with,” my father says matter-of-factly. “But now that we have that so well in hand, I think we can consider other options.”
I turn my gaze on my mother. “Why do you continue to let him abuse us?
What is worth spending your children like this?” I break down into bitter laughter. “I used to wonder how you lived with yourself while you listened to him beat us when we were so young.”
She frowns, and her usually flawless face shows its age for once. Six months must be the range on Aidia’s glamours.
My mother regards me with total confusion. “What are you talking about?
What beatings?”
“The whippings, the torture to make us master our magic,” I say. “Will you pretend like you didn’t know what was going on in your own house?
You watched him take us down to the Cove. You were our mother. You were supposed to protect us.”
These words are born of fury—a hurt so deep that I’ve never had the will to cast it out of my body.
I think of all the times I lay one cheek on the cold bathroom floor, the lacerations on my back burning with every subtle movement as I waited for my mother’s familiar gait coming down the hallway. I think of the way it
always shocked me how it became easier not to cry the longer I waited. I thought it would be the opposite, but her neglect didn’t make me weak. It galvanized my will. It forced me to think.
It was only ever Aidia with her body weighed down by guilt who would find me, blow out an angry sigh, and go to work, her deft fingers mending what our father ruined with skill that a child should never have needed to master. I can hear her voice in my ear still. Poultice first for the infection.
Then we will take you to the well in the morning.
My mother rolls her eyes. “You have always been so sensitive.”
“Sensitive?” My lips burn with poison and my aura is so wide, it scrapes the ceiling and the walls of the room. Thirty years of anger bubble up at once.
I thought that I had worked some things out this afternoon, but it seems there is much more to tend to.
“Certainly your father was the disciplinarian,” my mother says in a soft, placating tone. “But that’s the job of every father—to ensure his children learn respect. Besides, he was trying to ensure you could wield your magic at will. How else would you have learned to protect yourself when you were so stubborn and willful?”
My father lifts a conciliating hand. “Harlow is right. There was a time or two when it got out of hand. I’m sorry for that. But can we get back to the task at hand and put an end to this drama?”
My mother’s eyes widen in shock for a moment before she immediately settles back into her usual upright posture and faint smile.
She takes a few more spoonfuls of soup.
“Mom—” My voice is so quiet, but she flinches as if I’m shouting. I have not called her that in years—not since the first time I screamed it and she didn’t come for me.
Her silence now is an echo of a thousand other silences—agonized quiet where I waited for her to speak up, to stop him, and she did nothing but turn away. Later, it would be as if it never happened, as if my back weren’t blistered, as if she’d never heard me screaming, as if she had no idea what had changed in our dynamic.
She balked at the rift between us—I was difficult and moody. I was sensitive. Acknowledging my pain meant owning her failure to prevent it— and that was something she’d never do. If she did, she’d be forced to go back through her other eight children and see the same mistake repeated—she’d have to look at their madness and feel culpable.
“Well,” she says, smoothing her hand down her dress, like she can shake off her guilt. “I thought you were just being dramatic. You and Aidia were always like that. I wish I had known that you needed me to step between you
and your father.”
Her words leave me breathless.
I was seven years old, and I knew. That’s what mothers do. That’s what my clients who frantically hire me to kill their abusive husbands are doing.
That’s what we understand to be the primal biological instinct of a mother— to stand between their child and danger.
I press on, fueled purely by my anger. “How could you know when you were too busy making yourself scarce when we were dragged down to the Cove?”
She looks straight through me, to the glass windows behind my head.
“Answer me this, Mother. If it were anyone else in the world hurting us, would there have been a question of if you should intervene and protect your children from a monster?”
Finally, she meets my eye, and I see it plainly. She is not strong enough to face what I have. Even when confronted with the truth, I cannot force her to see it because as long as she doesn’t, she’ll stay comfortable.
I resent that my very survival required that I understand my parents, but they have never once tried to understand me. This gives them a convenient way to be dismissive of everything I feel as an overreaction. It places all of the burden of managing our relationship on me. It means that they get to roll their eyes and act like I’m dramatic and ungrateful.
My hyper-awareness to keep myself and Aidia safe developed an under- awareness in them. If they could trace it back, they would find these same themes in our relationship. But if they did that, it would mean facing down the unimaginable pain they’ve caused using their children’s labor to secure their own comfort.
Everything I have done and everything I am is in spite of them, and yet, they will take the credit.
I can’t believe how my mother’s mind has written over reality with a narrative that makes her blameless. An ache swells in my chest. Her abandonment in the only moments I needed her always hurt, but this is different. She is trying to put ownership back on me, but even at such a young age, I knew the difference between simple discipline and abuse. There was no way to mitigate my father’s violence. No matter how Aidia and I tried
for perfection, we could not behave our way around his moods, could not tiptoe past his rage or appeal to his madness. We were the only place for him to exorcise his demons.
Deep down, a kind part of me knows that my father likely endured similar violence at my grandfather’s hands, and while that explains why he thinks violence is a solution, it does not excuse him from understanding the cost.
I do not want to be another Carrenwell passing pain down the family tree.
I don’t want my nieces and nephews to inherit this horror.
One way or another, this madness must end with me.
My anger is too big, the hurt too severe, and there’s nothing that can scrape me out from beneath the weight of them.
“You’re getting worked up over nothing,” my father says. “I told you.
Rafe’s time is up as a powerful figure of this community. You’ll be much more valuable married to Stefan Laurence when he takes over Mountain
Haven.”
I laugh. “That isn’t going to happen.”
My father narrows his eyes at me. “This isn’t really up to you. If the Laurences approve, it will be done, and it will give those savages some continuity.”
“That man is vile, but I don’t mean it’s not going to happen because I’m already married,” I say. “And Henry isn’t going to die—at least not for a very long time.”
My father balks and stuffs a piece of stew-soaked roll in his mouth.
“There are more methods than poison. Even a powerful brute of a man like that can die, Harlow.”
I meet my father’s gaze and smile. “Henry is Deathless.”
My mother frowns in confusion, but my father goes still. He knows what that means.
“Funny thing about the Deathless,” I continue. “When I went looking in our library earlier, I couldn’t find anything about them. Pages were missing from our mythology books. In fact, the entire mythology section of the library was strangely empty. And when I recalled my lessons and the stories through town, I only ever remember hearing Stellaria’s hunter referred to as the first Drained. Never once did I hear the word Deathless.” I take a sip of my wine and lick my lips. “It got me wondering why someone might want to bury the fact that the Drained didn’t start off corrupted—that they tried to steal too much power.”
He lifts his hands to point at me, but I note that the movement is sluggish.
“You unite a people with a common enemy and they stay united. You tell them that there’s more power to be gained and they will claim it.”
I cock my head to the side. “Instead of you getting it.” I click my tongue.
“I can only imagine how disappointed you are to hear that your plan won’t work out. You sacrificed Mountain Haven to the first Breeders for nothing.”
“I made a choice to save this city!” Spittle flies out of his mouth and lands on the table.
“Calm down. You’re being so dramatic,” I taunt. “You also let the Breeders into North Hold to steal those women. I’m guessing you thought the people would blame Rafe for his failure to secure them. You must have been so disappointed when that backfired.”
He slaps his hand on the table. “You can’t comprehend the hard choices that I’ve made. You think you’re so much better than us!”
I lean back in my chair and wave my hand in dismissal. “Divine deliver us. I don’t think I’m better than you. I’m just no longer afraid I can’t survive you.”
He tries to lift his glass, and it clatters to the table, spilling dregs of the amber liquid across the dark wood tabletop.
Both of my parents struggle helplessly in their seats, and I watch the recognition dawn in their eyes. My father reaches for the bell to ring the servants, but he’s slow and clumsy and he just knocks it onto the floor with a loud clang.
I fake a pout. “It’s no matter anyway. The staff have all left for the evening to enjoy the festival. Or did you not notice they didn’t return to refill your cups?”
“What the fuck did you do?” My father’s body is slow, but his words are only a little bit slurred.
“I was always curious if you two would see me as enough of a threat that you’d condition yourselves to poisons.” I lean forward on my elbow and push my bottom lip out farther. “I’m a little offended that you didn’t. But the good news is that I learned about Stellarium Blossoms while I was in Mountain Haven. I never knew they had a paralytic effect.”
They both begin to struggle harder.
“Want to know something fun I’ve never told you about my magic?” I ask. “I can help direct what the poisons do. Isn’t that interesting? I can direct it to prevent your magic, legs, and arms from working so that you can still
breathe, but you’ll remain a captive audience.” I take a long sip of my wine and watch them both struggle to summon their magic. “Oh, silly me. I also channeled some Polm’s Opus. It allows me to influence you. I just don’t want you to use your power—at least not right now.”
Some dark part of me enjoys watching them struggle in earnest.
“How can you be so disloyal?” my father barks.
“You dare to speak to me about loyalty?” My laughter crackles, brittle.
“The only person I have been disloyal to is myself. I have lied and fought and fucked for this family, and I still lost the only one of you who actually cared about me. I owe you nothing.”
I keep waiting to reach the bottom of my anger, but it only grows. I thought that this would be enough, but I still feel a cavernous emptiness in my chest. Making them suffer won’t bring Aidia back, and it won’t heal the parts of me still haunted by their violence, but I hoped at least in this moment that I would feel some sense of satisfaction.
The dining room door flies open and slams into the wall. Kellan rushes into the room.
“There’s my favorite brother.” I pat the seat next to me and smile.
“Perfect timing. I was worried your soup would get cold.”
