59. Harlow
HARLOW
M y parents are relaxed when they enter the dining room. My father has a 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?”