Page 47 of Thorns from the Fall

The next box proves more promising as I pull my bedroom lamp out of it. The lampshade is dented, and I wonder who the fuck Sasha paid to pack up the townhouse because they did a shitty job. Beneath the light fixture, there are various odds and ends from my nightstand and dresser, including a picture frameI don’t immediately recognize. When I flip it over, I realize it’s a 2-in-1 frame, and it has flipped shut. On one side there’s a picture of me and Dad, and on the other is one of my biological mother, glaring at the camera with her pregnant belly in the summer heat. The frame had fallen behind my dresser ages ago, and I’d never bothered to pick it up.

I’m young in the picture with my dad, probably in middle school judging by the braces, and I was newly informed at that point about what I was and what I‘d been made for. Newly aware of the fact that he wasn’t my biological father. For whatever reason, it never bothered me. Angela wasn’t my biological mother either. All that mattered was what Cynthia had died for. I’d started training to take down the coven with abandon, ready to exact revenge upon the people who had attacked us a few times by then. Sometimes I wonder exactly when my dad started thinking about how that life might not be for me. That maybe I should hide and try to be normal and that maybe the weight of taking down an entire coven was too heavy for me to bear.

Even when this picture was taken, I was probably already showing symptoms of depression.

And yet, Dad didn’t stop training me. He didn’t share with me that he’d spilled innocent blood. He told me I would be the one to end this—not just for my family, but for the ones Bjorn hadn’t discovered yet. It wasn’t until I was approaching adulthood, and it was becoming more clear that my mental health wasn’t exactly in the best form to become an assassin, that he seemed to really second guess himself.

Abandoning my training, going to college, distracting myself with Josh, trying to beat the fucking monster in my mind just so I could be what I thought Dad expected only seemed to make the depression worse.

At first, I couldn’t believe what Roman said. How could my dad kill a woman, innocent or not, in front of her kids? Hewas lying, that’s all there was to it. But as I spent time alone in my thoughts, I parsed through things Remy had said about the mother he didn’t remember and the hunter who murdered her. I thought about the details that matched Roman’s story. I remembered a hushed conversation my dad had with Angela when I was small about killing for the cause. I never questioned how Dad and Cynthia got the sperm sample to conceive me, assuming it was a quick break-in that didn’t harm any innocents.

Knowing my dad chopped off a woman’s head in front of her two small children puts a black mark on my memory of him.

But worse, I look at my mother’s stomach and feel sick. I don’t have a single goddamn maternal instinct, but I don’t know how she could even think to conceive a baby from her enemy with the expectation that the child would become a warrior. It’s bad enough to bring kids into this shit world, but this? It’s even more fucking selfish.

Dad might have eventually viewed me as his child, as something to protect and love and wish happiness upon, but it doesn’t change that I was meant to be a tool to be used before I was born.

My parents were always moving and running, hiding from the coven after what they did, so the likelihood of a baby shower was slim to none.

Did they paint the walls pink in anticipation?

Or was my crib lined with hatred and history and expectation?

With my dad’s murder, I should have been released from it all, but it only pushed me farther. Into a self-fulfilling prophecy or toward a death wish, I’m not fucking sure anymore.

But in the back of my mind, I know which one it is—subconsciously or not.

I never wanted to steal the coven. I wanted revenge, and I wanted to die.

I didn’t want to find out my dad was even more imperfect than I already thought. I didn’t want to find things in common with Roman, and I certainly didn’t want to fucking fall in love with him.

Roman’s brutal honesty and corrosive tenderness had kept me tethered when I allowed myself to think about my past, but I wonder if it was a disservice. Though the yawning chasm of eternal silence had tempted me, rich brown eyes and a simple request for me to stay had been enough to draw me back from the edge. And I’ve hated myself for it ever since.

Hated him for it.

And then I realize it’s Roman’s fault that Hale got his throat sliced and had to be turned. It’s Roman’s fault that Hale lost his magic. Because if he hadn't taken my sister, Hale wouldn’t have been distracted. He nearly got the two people I love the most killed, even though I had his brother. If he was willing to go to those lengths when he was risking Remy’s safety, what lengths will he go to now that he has him back?

Roman is only involved because of me. It all comes back to me, doesn’t it?

Without me in the picture, Roman won’t have the same motivations.

With a shriek and strength I’m still getting used to, I throw the picture frame against the wall. The corner embeds into the drywall, and glass falls to the ground.

My college therapist had clocked me pretty early on when it came to my depression. It manifests in a few ways—risky behavior, bed rotting, lack of hygiene—but there is one specific manifestation that she always said was the most dangerous.

And it’s anger.

“Anger leads to action,” I say, staring at the broken shards of glass littering the already messy floor. “Anger leads to action,” Irepeat as I clench my fists, fingernails digging into my flesh. I got my vengeance already, so what’s left?

“Anger leads to action.”

I’m picking my way across the bedroom floor to Bjorn’s nightstand.

“Anger leads to action.”

I’m opening the nightstand and pulling out my gun.

“Anger leads to action.”

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