Chapter 31
Morning comes whether I want it to or not.
I slept. That's the strange part. Eight hours, maybe more, deep and dreamless and heavy. No blood on the carpet. No begging. No sound of bone giving way under my hands. Just... nothing. Blank, peaceful nothing, and I woke up feeling rested for the first time in years.
I should probably be concerned about that.
I'm sitting in the hall outside Seris's borrowed room, back against the stone, watching my hands in the light from the corridor sconces.
The marks haven't faded. If anything they're clearer now, fine threads woven across my knuckles and down toward my wrists.
Permanent. Visible. Cosmic tattoos proving I belong to a mad god, because apparently my life wasn't complicated enough already.
I killed my father last night. Beat his skull in with my bare hands while a god held him down for me. And I slept like a baby.
There's probably something deeply wrong with me. Some crucial piece of humanity that got bent or broken or just never installed correctly.
Normal people have nightmares after things like that.
Normal people feel guilt, horror, something.
I feel... lighter.
Lovely.
Footsteps in the corridor.
"She's asking for you."
Caius.
"Is she eating?"
"Some. Not enough. I made a note." He adjusts his stance—I can hear it, the shift of weight, the settling into what he probably considers optimal standing posture. "I've been keeping notes. Duration of sleep, food intake, number of times she startled at sounds. It helps to have data."
"That's... thorough."
"Organization prevents chaos." He says it like it's obvious. Like everyone tracks trauma recovery on a spreadsheet. "She slept a few hours. Woke twice. Nightmares both times, but the second was shorter. That's improvement. Statistically."
I finally look up at him. He's standing exactly the way I expected—shoulders back, chin lifted, one hand resting near his gladius. Ready for a portrait or a battle, whichever comes first.
"Thank you. For watching her."
"It wasn't difficult. She's quiet. Good posture, considering." He pauses. "Better than yours. You're hunching."
The door opens without resistance. Seris is sitting on the edge of the bed, dressed in borrowed clothes that don't quite fit—Discord's fashion sense running toward practical blacks and grays that wash out her coloring.
She looks small in them. Younger than twenty.
Younger than she has any right to look after everything that's happened.
"Io." Her voice cracks on the second syllable. She clears her throat and tries again. "I need to talk to you."
"I figured." I close the door behind me, cross to the chair across from her, and sit even though my body wants to fold onto the floor instead. "You've got that look."
"What look?"
"The one that means you've decided something and you're bracing for me to fight you on it."
Her jaw tightens. There—that set to her mouth I've seen maybe three times in twenty years. Seris has always been better at hiding her spine than I am. Probably smarter, honestly. Visible spine just makes you a target.
"I'm going back," she says.
My stomach drops. I knew before she said it—knew from the way she was sitting, knew from the set of her shoulders—but hearing the words still hits wrong.
"Back where."
"Home." She doesn't flinch from the word. "House Solyne."
"The house where our father—" I stop myself. Breathe. Try again. "The house that's currently a crime scene. That house."
"The house that's still standing. The house that still has staff, obligations, alliances that need managing. The house that will collapse completely if no one takes responsibility for it." She meets my eyes, and there's no waver in her gaze. "Someone has to, Io."
"No. Actually, no one has to. That's the entire point of what we did. You don't have to do anything now except stay alive and—"
"And what?" Her voice rises before she flattens it back down.
"Hide in Discord forever? Live as a guest in your god's compound while the family name rots?
You got out, Io. I understand that. But getting out meant leaving everything behind, and now there's nothing left to go back to.
Except there is. The House is still there.
The name is still there. And I can either let it die or I can—"
"Walk back into the murder house and pretend everything's fine? Sure. Great plan. Very sane."
"Take what he built and make it mine."
I'm staring at her.
My little sister, who learned to survive by bending, who perfected her smile and her posture and her careful, careful words—and she's sitting in front of me saying she wants to go back to the place where our father hurt her and claim it as her own.
Insane.
Completely fucking insane.
Also brave in a way that makes my throat tight, which just pisses me off more.
"You're serious."
"I've been thinking about it all night."
"All night. While recovering from watching me shoot our father in the face. That's when you decided to—"
"Yes." No hesitation. "I know what I saw.
I know what you did. And I know that the House is empty now, and someone is going to fill that vacuum whether we like it or not.
It could be creditors. It could be Coin, swooping in to claim assets.
It could be some distant cousin I've never met who'll sell everything and disappear with the money. " She pauses. "Or it could be me."
"It's not safe."
"Is anywhere?"
"Some places are less likely to get you killed."
"And some places are mine." Her chin lifts, and I recognize the stubbornness there because I've seen it in the mirror.
"I spent my entire life making myself small and quiet and useful so he wouldn't—so things would be easier.
And now he's gone. He's actually gone. And for the first time in my life, I have a choice.
I can stay small forever, keep hiding, keep being grateful for corners to disappear into. Or I can take up space."
I can't argue with that. I want to—I want to shake her and scream and lock her in this room until she comes to her fucking senses—but I can't argue with that because I know what it is. I know what it costs to keep making yourself disappear.
She's choosing to stop shrinking. And I hate that I understand it.
Shit.
"Discord can protect you here," I try anyway, grasping. "Koshin's already—"
"Koshin is protecting you. I'm a guest. A courtesy extended because of what you mean to him, not because of anything I am." She shakes her head, and there's no bitterness in it—just clarity. "I won't spend the rest of my life as someone's courtesy, Io. Not even yours."
"That's not—" I bite off the denial because it is.
It's exactly what she'd be here. Tolerated.
Housed. Provided for, sure, but always as an extension of my presence, my bond, my sudden inexplicable importance to a god who collects truths.
Always in my shadow, when she's spent her whole life in shadows already.
"Fine," I manage. "Okay. So you go back. You claim the House. Then what? You're twenty years old with no political experience, no alliances of your own, and our family name is currently synonymous with 'the one whose daughter murdered him.' How exactly does that work?"
"The one whose heir murdered him. For cause.
" Seris's mouth twists—bitter, almost amused, and it's so close to an expression I'd make that it catches me off guard.
"That's a story. That's something people will remember.
'Lord Solyne was so terrible his own daughter shot him in his bedroom.
' That gives me power, Io. Not much. Not a lot. But some."
"Or it gives people a reason to come for you. To make an example. To prove that daughters can't just—" I stop, force my voice back down from wherever it was climbing to. "You watched. You were there. You screamed when I pulled the trigger."
"I remember." Quiet. Steady.
"And now you want to go back to that house. Sleep in that house. Live in rooms where he—"
"Yes."
"Why? Why would you choose that?"
"Because I'm done letting him win." She says it simply, like it's obvious, like it's the only answer there could ever be.
"Even dead, even gone, if I spend the rest of my life hiding from what he did to us, he wins.
If I let his house crumble because I'm too afraid to walk back through those doors, he wins. I won't give him that. Not anymore."
Silence settles between us. My jaw aches from clenching it—I don't know for how long, but the muscles are cramped and sore.
She shouldn't have to do this. She shouldn't have to be brave about any of this.
She should get to fall apart, recover, heal—whatever people do when the monster finally dies.
Not immediately march back into the monster's den and take his crown.
But she's not asking permission.
That's the thing I keep circling back to.
She's not asking for my opinion or my blessing. She's telling me what she's going to do.
"I hate this," I say finally, because it's the only honest thing left.
She nods. Doesn't try to talk me out of hating it. Just accepts it and waits.
"I can kill him but I can't make you stay. That's—" My voice cracks, and I have to stop and start again. "That's bullshit, Seris. That's complete bullshit."
Her eyes go wet, but she blinks it back. "Yeah. It is."
"You're going to walk back into that house and I'm going to be here, and if something happens to you—"
"Then you'll know. I'll make sure you know.
I'll send word every week, every day if you want.
But Io—" She reaches across the space between us and takes my hand, her fingers tracing over my knuckles, over the marks, without comment or question.
Just holding on. "You can't protect me forever.
You killed him, and I'm grateful—I'm so grateful—but that doesn't mean you get to lock me up somewhere safe and pretend that's the same as living. "
"I wasn't going to lock you up."