Page 22 of A Crown of Tears and Treason
I’d learned to purse my lips and endure. What blisters were. What it felt like to go to bed hungry and count the outline of my ribs to think of something, anything, other than the roaches crawling all over the floor. Not to ask too many questions, and definitely not to expect an answer back, other than, “Why does it matter? You’re safe.”
I’d hated that suffocating safety.
But I’d learned from it. Survived it. My emaciated frame let me perch on the thinnest tree branches. I was quick on my feet,slipping and sliding after rabbits, and I could read the change of the weather in the way the leaves moved.
A terrible, lonely existence. Endless days without a word spoken to me because I hadn’t found enough berries or just because the wind had howled all night and my parents hadn’t gotten a good night’s rest.
The only company I had was Zorin, a white stallion with golden flecks running through his mane and tail. The god Xamor himself must have rode a steed like that into one of his legendary battles. Zorin was majestic and he knew it.
He appeared one day and had simply refused to leave–and to let anyone but me ride him, even though my mother had wanted him for herself at first.
I felt the magic thrum through him when I braided his tail, just like I’d seen grandpa Constantine do in his own sprawling stables.
Around him, I talked about all the things I never dared to reveal to my parents, about how I craved to have blue tendrils swirling around my hands.
I knew I had some sliver of power, grandpa Constantine had told me so. But it was useless if I didn’t know how to channel it.
The only mention of magic that was allowed were warnings about the warding spells.
Don’t go too far from the cabin, the wards will fail.
Don’t wander too close to the edge of the forest, the wards will know.
The wards sense if you think about running away.
Wards, wards, wards.
A cage, nothing more.
I cracked it open on my twenty-first birthday.
The last winter had been long and harsh, almost as bad as the one we’d endured when I’d been eighteen. I remembered that year, because I should have been back at Protectorateheadquarters, in front of our ancestral shrine, being officially inducted as a Clan member, swearing loyalty, and formally accepting the title of future leader.
I’d hoped, every single day of those long, miserable months, that grandpa Constantine would somehow find and save me. By that point, I should have known better than to hope.
I spent my twenty-first birthday killing a deer. Not my first, but the only time my switchblade had taken a life. The trap had malfunctioned, only mangling its leg, and we were all so hungry. He wouldn’t have survived for long with a wound like that, but feeling his last breaths as I struck its neck and kept my blade in there, unmoving, so he’d die faster and as painlessly as possible…
Even after washing my hands in the river until my fingers numbed, I still smelled its blood on my hands.
I dragged the deer back to the cabin with all my might, eyes stinging. He was still so warm and I was so cold and numb inside.
As I finally reached the cabin, sun setting behind me, my father came out. “Finally. What took you so long?”
The strained chord in me finally snapped. I let go of the deer and faced my father head on.
“Is this what you want for me?” I’d asked in a deadly whisper, not recognizing my own voice.
He’d rolled his eyes. My blood boiled and I yelled, for the first time since I was five. “I’m twenty-one years-old today–”
A flash of surprise lit up his dark gaze. He’d forgotten about my birthday. Maybe he’d forgotten I’d grown up altogether.
“–what’s going to happen to me?” I went on, voice breaking and me hating myself for it. I felt so powerless in front of my parents. “What will my future look like after you and Momdie?”
“Don’t say that,” he’d said, a warning in his tone.
“It’s a reality, isn’t it?” I’d splayed out my palms, as if trying to reach for something, anything. My left hand landed on the only book we had, the one that accessed the parts of the library my parents thoughtacceptable. Geography, fairytales, and history books that said nothing about the past fifty years flashed on its pages when I opened it. I waved it in his face. “Do you think I’m going to live here on my own, reading the same bullshit over and over and over again, just waiting to die too?”
“Manners!” my mother had yelled, coming out of the cabin.
