Chapter Twenty-Nine • Cooked • Lillith #4
I nod. “She summoned him, asked for an out, which he refused on the grounds of needing her to get free from a bargain of his own which he refused to give her any details about. So she went above him. She went to the holder of Aemon’s bargain and made a bargain of her own.”
“And she can’t disclose the bargain. That’s part of the deal, isn’t it? Not even in writing.”
“Yeah, appears so,” I say. I suddenly feel so exhausted, despite spending almost an entire week in bed.
I cup my mouth in my hand and lean onto my elbow, looking down at the journal.
“I just... I’ve been wrestling for a bit with the idea that maybe my childhood with Nan wasn’t as pleasant as I thought it was. Maybe it was kind of fucked up.”
Damien takes my free hand in his and squeezes it. “It’s hard to sus that out in a vacuum, baby.”
“Nan cared about me,” I tell him.
“Of course she cared about you,” he says, squeezing my hand. “But take it from someone who got passed between foster homes for more than half his life. Just because someone cares, doesn’t mean the way they care isn’t fucked up sometimes.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
He heaves out a sigh.
“If you... don’t want to talk about it—”
“I do. I want to talk about it with you. Unfortunately, even after years of therapy, it’s not always easy.”
I wait patiently as he looks down at our joined hands. After a little while, he speaks.
“People have lenses through which they look at life. It’s why one person’s evil deed is another person’s retribution.
It’s why people feel entitled to things they haven’t earned.
It’s why people still hit their kids when the science says it doesn’t actually do anything but make your kids fear you and hide things from you,” he says.
“It’s why old people get weird about stupid shit like pronouns and—I don’t know, someone daring to speak some language other than English in front of them.
Because their lives have only given them so many colors and shapes to look through as they take in the world. ”
“Right,” I say.
“Your Nan—she had a lens, too. The only lens she knew to have. And she gave it to your mom. Gave it to you. I don’t know much about your grandmother.
But I’ve met a lot of older folks, and there’s this sort of ‘put up and shut up’ mentality with them.
Maybe it’s from going through wartime or something.
But this bootstraps thing is super common with them. ”
Guilt drifts in again, not for the first time. But Damien squeezes my hand when he sees me going elsewhere.
“It’s not an excuse, Lillith. Someone’s old wounds don’t justify their hurting you,” he says.
“That’s honestly what I spent half of therapy figuring out.
I... I’ve always been the kind of kid that assumed people thought like me.
Like, I’m kind of fucked up, but I like to think that I have a kind disposition. ”
“You do.”
“Right. Thank you, baby,” he says, squeezing my hand again.
“Well, I was raised or parented or whatever by dozens of people before I wound up at my Ma’s place,” he says.
“And as a young kid, it was confusing as fuck. What was just fine to say at one house was grounds for being beaten at another house.”
“Foster parents are allowed to beat their children?”
He barks a laugh. “Hell no,” he says. “But who’s going to stop them? Who’s going to tell them when it might result in being placed in a shitty group home? Or worse, another beating?”
“Damien...” I say, my heart cracking.
“I’m okay,” he tells me, smiling. “I am. And my trauma really isn’t the point of this whole thing.
My point is... Every family I tried to wriggle into told me they cared about me.
Not always in so many words. But there was always something there that kept them feeding me, clothing me, and making sure I got to school.
For some, they cared about the monthly stipend they got from the state.
Some saw me as an accessory for their biological family—always near but never fully integrated.
Many in my teen years saw me as a challenge to overcome—a hunk of ore to melt down and refine. Someone to save.
“The only one who didn’t do this was my Ma.
And even she wasn’t perfect. Even she had to prioritize money over being my real mom.
It doesn’t really matter in the long run, you know?
I’m the beneficiary of her will and her life insurance.
We talk a lot. We spend holidays together.
We have all the trappings of a mother-son relationship. ”
But that isn’t enough. I know it before he can even say it. Know it in the way that I’m grateful for Nan and miss her, but will always feel the keen absence of a mother. Will always wonder if life would be less lonely if she were here. Now.
“But... you know...” he says, quietly. “I think that will always hurt a little. That even the woman who did the best job raising me. Even she prioritized practicality over sentimentality. I know it’s just a stupid label. I know it doesn’t actually mean much at the end of the day—”
“It does, though,” I say. “It means... everything.”
He smiles sadly at me. “I’m getting distracted. I’m supposed to be making you feel better,” he says.
“We can make each other feel better,” I say, cupping the side of his face.
“Point being,” he says, grabbing my hand and pressing a gentle kiss to my knuckles. “When you spend so much of your life with so few people, you only get one picture of ‘normal’. One version of ‘acceptable’. Why would you see it any other way?
“And to question that picture of normal after the people who imposed it on you are gone… It’s fucking hard to unpack it. It’s hard not to feel guilty as fuck.”
My throat tightens in that way it does when someone sees you better than you see yourself. Because that’s exactly it. “It’s so hard,” I choke out.
“I know,” he says, kissing my knuckle again.
“But just because you feel guilty doesn’t mean that you are, Little Bird.
Just because someone told you your feelings were signs of weakness doesn’t mean that’s the truth.
And seeing that doesn’t make you a bad daughter, or granddaughter, or friend.
Choosing your path for you doesn’t make you ungrateful or selfish or anything else.
I mean, the language that I got from my therapist is honestly right up your alley. ”
“What is it?”
He chuckles. “She called it ‘breaking generational curses,’” he says, a little twinkle of humor in his eye. “Funny, right?”
“Hilarious,” I say in a gentle, sad way. “Might be the only actual curse I have on my stupid bloodline. One of our own making.”
“That’s a good thing though,” he says. “Because if it’s our problem we’re dealing with, then that means we also have the power to fix it, right?”
“Yeah,” I say. But then Damien’s brow furrows.
He looks off at nothing for a long moment. So long that I look in the same direction, wondering if he’s seen something.
“Wait,” he says. “Wait, this is actually a really good thing. Right?” Damien says.
“My crippling inability to not feel compounding guilt for having emotions? Yeah, it’s a blast,” I say.
“No, no, no. Listen,” he says. “Sorry. I’m going off on a tangent here. We can absolutely go back to sad boy hours in a second. But, like—the thing with demon guy. It’s not a curse.”
I blink. “Uh... okay. Yeah, I guess,” I say. “It’s technically a bargain. Still not breakable, but—”
“Shh-sh-sh-sh-shh,” he says, pressing a finger to my mouth. “Hear me out. This demon guy. He needs you, right? Because you’re the last of your line. So, this whole thing with the curse. The concern that he could do something to hurt you, and, by the transitive property, everyone around you—”
“Did you just say ‘the transitive property?’” I sputter.
“I can be smart,” he says, “once in a while.”
I chuckle and then go silent as I follow his train of thought.
The curse has always been a bit of a misnomer, like he said.
It’s not a true curse. Not in the way that curses usually operate independently of their casters.
The Nightingale Pearl protected us from Aemon, as far as I understand it, not from some automatic spell triggered by certain actions, like leaving the wards.
Now that we have the context of my mother’s journal, I can see that’s the reason he told me to drop the wards to let him in.
The logic doesn’t fully make sense to me.
But I assume it’s because the only way he can force me to marry him is, theoretically, is by getting in my face about it and trying to intimidate me.
So... that means...
It takes a few moments for the dominoes to tumble. For the picture to take form.
Damien’s right.
I’m not cursed. And Aemon fucking needs me.
He’s not going to do shit to me. Not when I’m the ticket out of his own bargain.
Of course he wanted me back in my house.
He would know exactly where I am at all times.
If I let down the wards, he could put new ones in, locking me in and everyone else out.
Holy shit.
“Damien, you are a fucking genius,” I say, meeting his eyes. “Holy fucking shit.”
My boyfriend’s face lights up with mirth. “It’s because I said, ‘transitive property’, isn’t it?”
I take my mother’s journal out of his hand, flinging it somewhere behind me as I climb on top of him. His hands rest easily on my hips as his brows lift in interest. “Oh?” he says. “Round two?”
I crush my lips to his for a deep, long kiss. When I part, my lips cling to his for just a few milliseconds as I brush my nose against his.
“Damien,” I say.
“Yeah, baby?” he asks, his eyes hooded and dark with freshly whetted desire.
“Get me the fuck out of this house.”