47. AS FOR ME AND MY HOUSE… #2
From several paces behind him, Maeve watched with wide eyes, her breath coming in quick, sharp bursts.
She looked to Elona, then to Nell. Then I saw something visibly shift in her.
“They were going to kill us,” Maeve hissed.
“They were glad to.” She kicked off her shoes and bolted forward, skirts hiked in her fists.
The first woman she reached tried to shield her face, but Maeve didn’t stop. Her fists landed fast and hard, fueled by weeks, years, of swallowed shame. The woman went down screaming, and Maeve stood over her, panting, shaking, and defiant.
Elona followed without a word. She struck silently with an elbow, a knee, then a brutal slap that sent a man stumbling into a wall.
He tried to find his voice to speak, but Elona shoved him hard, headfirst into the corner of the next building on the street.
A sharp crack split the air, followed by the slow, dark stream of blood tracing down his face before his body crumpled to the ground.
Nell stood frozen for a breath, holding herself aloof from the chaos, but then she saw Emil again.
His face was streaked with soot, blood drying at the corner of his mouth where he’d been struck.
He’d always been her strength, but night, he was breaking.
She clenched her fists, turned slowly, and found the woman who had once spit on her dress outside the church.
That woman stood at the edge of the fray, eyes wide.
“You called me filth.” Nell whispered, glaring directly at her face.
Then she lunged. The two of them hit the ground, Nell landing on top. Her fists flew, untrained, furious, and wild. The woman’s screams turned to gurgles before someone tried to pull Nell off of her, but Nell snarled and swung, catching the would-be rescuer hard in the temple with her elbow.
Violet stood beside me, her face, chest, and arms covered in soot, and her left sleeve had been burned from the embers of the fire.
But her eyes were eerily calm. I’d seen her like this only once before, full of quiet, building fury.
She caught a glimpse of movement down the alley, a man trying to slink off unnoticed, hoping the fire and noise would cover his retreat.
But Violet knew him. So did I. He used to leave coins wrapped in torn hymnal pages on our nightstand after we gave him what he wanted, like he could pay for his sins and still sleep beside his wife at night.
Violet moved without a word. She darted down the alley and caught up to him before he’d taken three steps.
He turned, startled, stammering something that might’ve been her name, but it was too late.
She slammed him into the wall hard enough to shake soot from the bricks.
The torch dropped from his hand and fizzled in the dirt.
She got close to his ear, close enough to whisper, and whatever she said, it drained the color from his face. Then she drove her knee into his ribs.
He collapsed with a grunt and didn’t get back up. Violet didn’t look back. She just wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and walked back toward me. That was when I moved, no longer paralyzed by shock, the adrenaline coursing through my body pushing me into the melee.
My brothel, my home, lay in ruins behind me. Burned by the very people who had filled it, fed off it, leaned on it like a crutch and then cursed it when the sun came up.
And they thought they could light it on fire and walk away clean? Not tonight.
It was at that moment when I noticed her, across the square. A woman in a dark shawl, torch still clutched in both hands, though the flame had long gone out. She wasn’t taking part in the fighting. She stood on the edge of it all, hands tight, face pale. But her mouth, her mouth was smiling.
Mrs. Henderson. That bitch. I walked straight toward her, ignoring the sudden look of fear on her face.
She took a step back, but I didn’t slow; my heels ground into the gravel, my hands curling slowly at my sides.
“You don’t belong here,” I hissed, echoing the words she’d so often thrown at me.
My voice was steady, almost calm as I closed the distance between us.
And then I hit her, hard. My open hand cracked across her face, the sound sharp as a whip.
Her head snapped to the side, a spray of spit—or blood—flecking the air.
She staggered, lost her footing, and went down hard. Her knees buckled first, then her whole body folded, awkward and graceless. She hit the ground with a dull thud, her shawl twisting around her like a dropped bedsheet. Her hands flew up, covering the red bloom already spreading across her cheek.
I stood over her without saying another word.
She looked up at me with horror when she realized what I was holding in my hand.
I took the dead torch that lay beside her, reached into the burning gas lamp behind me, and lit the torch again.
The flame came to life with a low whuff, and I lowered it right to the hem of her dress.
She froze. Her breath snagged in her throat, a thin, trembling sound.
I held the flame there, close enough for her to feel the heat kiss her skin, to make her flinch.
Sweat gathered at her temple. Her eyes welled, wide and glistening, and her lips quivered as though she might beg, but no words came.
“You wanted to see a whore burn?” I said, my voice almost gentle, though my heart was pounding hard enough to shake my ribs. “Here’s your chance.” The flame hovered, catching the edge of her dress. A thin curl of smoke rose, the scent of singed fabric winding between us.
God, every part of me wanted to. Every piece of me screamed to do it. To let the flame leap up her self-righteous robes and burn her ass to a crisp.
But I didn’t. I eased the torch back and leaned in until our breaths tangled, until her pupils floated like dark coins. “You destroy what you fear,” I whispered, each word a low blade. “I face it. That’s the difference between you and me.”
I dropped the torch beside her, the flame still hungry, licking at the dirt, and turned away. I’d let her sit in the heat. Let her decide whether she wants to feel the flame, or finally face what she’s done.
There was no more civility. No restraint. Just smoke, fire, and blood in the dust. More of the crowd had begun to flee. A few tried to shout for the sheriff, others simply ran, skirts bunched, boots clattering against cobblestone. But it didn’t matter anymore, the damage was done.
Emil stood over a groaning man, chest heaving, eyes hollow.
Maeve leaned on a fence post, blood dripping from her knuckles.
Nell’s hands were trembling. Elona was quiet, but her dress was torn, her jaw set like stone.
They hadn’t just lost their home; they’d lost something much deeper.
And for one long moment, the town saw them, not as whores, or sinners, or women to be scorned, but as something far more dangerous: humans, pushed into a corner and forced to fight.
Violet, Elona, and Maeve stood beside me, and I watched them as a mother watches her daughters live in a world where they will never be loved as they should be.
Hoping that world might learn to fear them instead.
The mob was gone now, scattered like pathetic trash.
Cowards, all of them. Thinking that fire would break us, that shame would silence us.
Instead, they’d given us the strength to resist them.
I looked at my girls with blood on their lips, eyes full of rage, and I knew, as sure as I’d ever known anything, that though they had taken the building we inhabited, they hadn’t broken us.
We were still standing, still breathing, and still full of fight.
They’d lit the match, but we’d survived the fire.
And now, they’d have to live knowing we were still here, holding each other up, unburned where it mattered most.
I looked toward the sky and caught sight of the window in the room where Father Frederick had been left behind. His body, bound and helpless, would never escape the flames. And so, he burned, consumed by the very fire he had kindled; a man undone by his own secrets.
I stood there and watched as he burned in his house of sin.