60
HARLOW
ellan eyes me skeptically, his body coiled in tension as he looks at theK scene before him. “Why is the house empty?”
“I gave the staff the night off to enjoy the festival, but don’t worry.
They’ve laid out all the courses.” I pat the seat beside me again. “Sit.”
He rounds the table slowly, clearly aware that something is wrong but still not sure what.
“We were just discussing how our father had plans to marry me off to Rafe before he found a way to get rid of him,” I say, sipping my wine.
Kellan looks warily from me to our parents.
I shove the spoon into his hand and remove the cover from his bowl.
Steam wafts up from the beautiful, delicate bowl, but Kellan just stares at it.
“Now, where was I?” I ask my father. “Oh, that’s right. I was going to ask you why you allowed Rafe to make me kill my sister.”
“That was months ago,” my father slurs.
I bark a loud laugh. “So, naturally, I should be fine with it by now?”
“He wasn’t supposed to make you jump—either of you,” my father says.
“He was just supposed to scare you straight, so you would stop interfering in their relationship.”
I throw my soup across the table. It crashes into his chest and spills down his front. “I was checking on my sister, who was regularly being beaten bloody.”
My father looks to Kellan. “Do something.”
My brother remains seated, stirring his spoon around the bowl as he watches me. “I think we should hear her out.”
“I thought about it a lot,” I say. “Aidy and I were out there on that balcony for a long time. You didn’t interfere even though you know enough about this city to have every child with holy fire killed and to give women to the Breeders. Even though there is nothing in Lunameade that happens without your saying so—you allowed a man to throw both of your daughters off of a balcony in your own house after he made them nearly beat each other
to death.”
“It was a warning,” my mother mumbles.
I throw my half-empty glass of wine at her, and it slams into her chest.
The glass cracks and red wine seeps into her silver gown. “It was a fucking execution, and you did nothing. Not during. Not after. You think you’re powerful, but you let your greatest rival march into your home and kill one of your daughters, maim the other, and go unpunished.”
“What would you have us do? You know how popular he is.” Spittle flies out of my father’s mouth when he speaks. His aura is vibrant blue, but he still can’t summon his magic without me letting him.
I shake my head. “Ah, so that’s the problem. You only know how to punch down. Just answer me this—did you make Gaven stand down?”
As soon as I ask, I realize I’m afraid of the answer, or maybe I already know what it is and I’m afraid of the confirmation.
“Gaven is a practical man who always understood how easily he could be replaced. He cared enough to stay.” My father takes a labored breath. “Of course, I doubt he would have let it go on if he’d realized how far Rafe would take it. It wasn’t sanctioned for either of you.” His speech garbles. I have to move this along soon on the off-chance I used too much Stellarium Blossom.
I lean on my elbow and turn to face Kellan head-on. “Kel, I’m going to need your help with something. I thought it would be nice to test whether our parents really didn’t know that what they were doing is wrong. I thought we could give them a taste of their own medicine, but I’ll need your help.”
His gaze darts from my parents to me.
“I want you to make them whip each other and use their magic on each other,” I say. “Let’s see how they like being compelled to hurt someone else.
I would say someone they love, but they both only love themselves, so this is the best I can do.”
I walk to the cabinet on the side wall and retrieve the switch I tucked
there before our meal.
My mother stares at me in horror.
“Kellan, this is madness. Throw her in the Cove right now,” my father snaps.
I click my tongue. “Oh, Father, you look nervous. Are you afraid that you’ve made him your son? That he will do as you’ve done and stand by and do nothing while his family is hurt?” I turn to Kellan. “What do you think, Kel? Are you his son, or are you my brother?”
He casts one last look at our parents and snatches the switch from my hand. I brace myself because I want to believe in him, but my faith is at an all-time low.
But he rounds the table, and it’s not until my father rises from his chair that I realize Kellan already had his hooks in them.
Kellan stands behind them as my father pulls his shirt off and bends over the table as my mother unbuttons the back of her dress.
Kellan hands our mother the switch. She holds it awkwardly at first.
“Whip him,” I say.
She hesitates a moment, but then Kellan must nudge her because she brings the switch down so sharply and suddenly that I think she must have only been pretending that she didn’t know how to use it.
“Harder,” I say.
My mother brings the switch down with a deafening crack. I thought it would take more convincing, but perhaps she has her own score to settle with
him.
“Again.”
I make her do it over and over, harder and harder, until she’s wheezing with the effort of breathing through the competing poisons.
“Your turn,” I say with a grin.
Kellan makes her bend over the table so the top of her dress gaps.
My father stands with great effort. His agony is clear on his face, in his sweat-soaked hairline, and in the blood spatter all over his chair’s upholstery and the table.
Kellan places the switch in his hand. A second later, it cracks against my mother’s back. When she cries out, I feel nothing but relief.
“Harder,” I say. And the cycle starts again.
I’m divided, both viscerally aware of what’s happening as I make them torture each other and oddly disconnected. I can’t fully replicate what I’ve
suffered because they don’t love each other the way I loved Aidia. But it’s enough to know that they will understand some part of my pain, even if they have both been too powerful for too long to ever understand true fear and dread.
“That’s enough, Low.” Kellan’s voice cuts through the detached fog of my mind.
I’ve lost track of time. Of how many times I’ve had them beat each other before I moved on to making them burn and electrify each other with their magic. The room smells like blood and burnt hair and flesh, and my parents are crumpled into their chairs, gasping for air.
“It could never be enough,” I snap. But I know what he means. They are dying, and I need to be the one to deliver the killing blow.
I round the table and lean down to be at my father’s level. “Hi, Dad.”
“I will end you for this, you ungrateful little bitch,” he growls.
I look directly into his violet eyes. “All these years and you still haven’t learned. You’ve never stopped trying to break me. But I do not break. I am the breaker.”
I hold up my hand and summon poison to my fingers. Asher’s Anthem— a poison root that grows in damp, shady areas. It kills quickly, but painfully.
My father watches with shocked realization as I cup his face in my dark purple, poison-laced hands and pour all of my rotten hatred into him.
His eyes grow wider and wider as he feels it hit his system.
I make him meet my gaze as he chokes. “I hope Asher never receives your soul. I hope you cannot cross the veil. I hope you’re forever lost and lonely and have an eternity to live with the pain you have caused so that you could feel important. I’ll make sure you are not a villain in this story. I will make sure you are nothing at all so that you are forgotten.”
When his body spasms, I release him and let him crumble to the floor before approaching my mother. I bend down so that I’m at her level and cup her face in my hands. I swear to the Divine she’s aging before my eyes.
She mumbles for mercy, but she’s so vain that if she could see how she looks right now, she would want to die.
“I’ve not met every mother in Lunameade, but I still am certain you are the worst of them. After today, I will never think of you again, and my life and this city will be better without you in it. I hope that Asher does deliver you beyond the veil so that you have to acknowledge all your deeds and the harm you’ve done and stop being ignorant.”
“What will the Divine think of this?” she rasps as her body begins to spasm.
I give her a pitying look. “Oh, Mother. The Divine have always settled scores. To err is human. To avenge is Divine.”
I toss her to the side harder than I need to. When her body hits the floor, a muffled, pathetic yelp rips up her throat, and then she goes still.
I stare at my parents’ empty bodies. The tunnel key around my father’s neck glints in the candlelight.
“I was so close.” My voice sounds so small—so young. I’m talking to myself more than Kellan. “I was going to get her out. We always talked about escaping to somewhere beyond the mountain. It didn’t even matter where, as long as we had each other. I thought I still had time—that I could earn the key by betraying Henry, grab Aidia, and take the tunnel to freedom.”
I turn my attention back to my brother. “What good is the key without her?”
He doesn’t say anything, so I start toward the dining room door.
“Low,” Kellan says. “I will take care of the bodies. But what are you going to do about Able?”
I turn to face him. “Can we defend the walls with well water?”
He nods. “We could also temporarily seal off four of the gates to focus
resources if necessary.”
“Did Able know what Rafe did?”
Kellan sighs. “Yes. He knew because he was heir, and Electra knew because she erased the memories of the guards and servants. And obviously I knew because I know everything. But the rest of the family doesn’t know what actually happened. They think she jumped. You know how they all were—afraid of our parents and baffled by Aidia’s resistance.” He looks down at the bowl in front of him. “Was mine poisoned too?”
I cock my head. “Did you let it all happen that day, like you let us be beaten for years?”
He stands so fast, his chair crashes to the floor behind him. “Divine dammit, Low! I was only two years older than Aidy. What did you want me to do?”
“You have a blessing from Polm. I wanted you to manipulate him!” I shout.
“My position only stayed as it is—I only stayed alive, Harlow, because he thought I was loyal to him!” Kellan’s voice is shrill. “I had to be strategic and
pick my spots. It’s almost impossible for me to use my blessing on any of you without you seeing me do it. When exactly did you want me to risk manipulating him and becoming his next target?” He points at our mother’s bloody body. “Do you know what our mother said to me the day my blessing manifested?” he asks. “She saw my excitement and she said, ‘You better never disagree with your father or he will kill you.’ I have always had to be careful, and I have protected you in the moments I could—or did you think I really didn’t know you were the Poison Vixen?”
I lean my hands against the table, and the tension in my shoulders starts to unravel. “What gave me away?”
“I admit it took a bit. When everyone kept describing the suspect with different features, I thought it was a group of women. But then there was the timing of it. It all started when you finally began leaving your room again after Aidia died. And one night I ran into Gaven while he was out searching for you after hours.”
“Fucking Gaven blew my cover.” I shake my head, but I want to cry, both because I miss him and because I’m disappointed that he lived up to my expectations.
“I protected that secret because I swear to the Divine, if our parents had known, they would have drugged you every night like Able.” He looks down at his bowl. “Did you poison my soup, Low?”
I meet his lilac eyes. “Are you telling the truth? Were you the captain of the city watch, or were you my brother?”
“I was both, Low. You’re not the only one who loved her—who lost her.
You’ve been hoarding it for months. You were alone with your grief and you left me alone with mine, too. I know you can’t understand now when you’re this angry, but that day changed everything for me.”
Kellan looks wrecked. I’ve never seen him look so devastated. I turn away to ease the burn of tears in my eyes.
I can’t shoulder his grief when my own is already too heavy.
“Did you know they were going to let Rafe do that?” I ask.
“No. If I had known, I would have been there, and there hasn’t been a day in the last six months that I haven’t woken up wishing I had been. Libby had —” His voice breaks, and I turn to look at him.
His eyes are glassy with unshed tears. “Libby had a feeling something was off that whole morning, but you know how her magic is. Harvain’s whims, as she likes to say. She doesn’t always know what the foresight
feelings mean or what they pertain to. She couldn’t place it until right before it happened.”
He blows out a shuddering sigh and looks away. “Low, I ran. I got here as fast as I could, but I was too late. I found you in the bushes and I thought you were gone, too.”
It’s not his fault. I’ve always known deep down that he is as much a product of my father’s violence as Aidia and I are. There’s no way he escaped the things we bore. But my parents are dead, and this fury remains, and there is no one else to rage at.
I want to break things. I want somewhere else to channel my anger, but I know that he’s telling the truth. My sister-in-law has a blessing of foresight, but it’s a tricky kind of magic to understand. The lack of clarity makes me want to curse the Divine who blessed us both. How tragic to give you glimpses of the future but not allow you to save the people you love. How heartless to make you want affection but never allow you to kiss anyone without killing them.
It’s all just a cruel Divine joke. Maybe someday I’ll be able to laugh about it, but right now, true laughter seems a distant memory.
I stand and look into Kellan’s pleading eyes. This is the most emotion I’ve seen out of him since childhood, and I’m not ready to forgive him—or maybe I just don’t know how. Maybe I never will.
“Low—” His voice is a rasp. “Did you poison my soup?”
My hands shake, and I shudder out a ragged breath as I turn away from my brother. I walk to the dining room door and pause in the threshold.
I don’t look at him as I whisper, “I did what I thought would bring me peace.”
