59. Harlow #2
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.”