Page 243 of The Poison Daughter
I stare at the rust stains on the circular stone. “When we were young, my father beat us. Aidia because she wouldn’t use her magic for him. She is a glamourist with a blessing from Stellaria. She is—wasvery talented. Whenever people started complaining about the blood tax, my father would have her transform some men from the poorest neighborhoods in Lunameade into Drained. They wouldn’t actually be Drained, but they would look like them. My father had some arrangement with these men where he would pay their families a large chunk of money. Then he’d have them run through town, and our guards would fight them off, proving to the people how capable my father was of protecting them. But Aidia—” My voice breaks. “She checked up on a couple of the men’s families afterward and found out that our father never delivered on his promise. And then she refused to help him with his game. So my father started beating her. But that just made her more stubborn. So he did the only other thing he could. He beat me, or rather—” The airrushes out of my lungs and it takes three tries to get myself to say it. “Or rather, he would make her beat me.”
When I finally meet Henry’s eyes, he looks violent, but he says nothing, just nodding for me to continue.
Now that I’ve started talking, I can’t seem to stop. “He made me beat her, also. He’d snap his fingers and threaten to burn her with holy fire, and I was pretty sure he was bluffing but never certain. He’d make me whip her until I gave in and tried harder to master my magic. He wasn’t happy that I could only use my lips. He wanted me to be able to poison by touch. I fought hard to keep that secret. I told Aidia because she suffered for it, but I never told anyone else in the family. They didn’t deserve to know.”
Henry squeezes my hand. “And your scar?”
“The stars are a brand that Aidia gave me to cover the marks from her beatings. She has—hadthe same one.” I run my fingers over my back, feeling the familiar topography through my dress and cloak. “We had this thing we used to say to check in to know if it was too much. One of us would say ‘my heart,’ and the other would respond ‘my bones,’ and then we’d say ‘our blood’ together. Carrenwells are never allowed to be weak. It was just a way to say—” I break into another wrenching sob. “To say that we were okay because we weren’t alone. It was a way to tell her I could take it.”
My chest hurts, my muscles wrung out from sobbing. My head aches viciously, but I press on. “We all knew that her husband was a problem. Rafe Mattingly wanted to marryme, but at the time, my father thought he could use me to get to Marc Beckley. Marc was running for mayor and was wildly popular with the unblessed of Lunameade, and he’d taken a fancy to me.”
Henry smiles sadly. “Popular girl.”
I sigh bitterly. “No, I was a bitch. I made the mistake of embarrassing Marc at a wine tasting my family was hosting. I was just trying to be charming to everyone else, but I caught his eye for making him look stupid. Marc decided then that he wanted to humble me.”
Henry’s jaw ticks. “And Rafe?”
“Rafe wanted someone who would be fun to break. My father knew us well—two sides of the same coin. Aidia, who protested loudly, and me, who picked my silent moments to wage war. Aidia knew how to sizeup an opponent, and she knew I would survive Marc, so she volunteered for Rafe. Because that’s who she was—the one person who always protected me.”
I rise to my feet and start to pace, remembering the way I’d pleaded with her not to do it. She was so determined, so light and airy andcertainthat she would break him first. I think she did in her own way. She showed him the only way he could beat her was to take her off the board entirely. So he did.
“Sometimes I wonder if he was so brutal with her because he didn’t get what he wanted,” I say, pausing in front of Henry. “He couldn’t touch me, but he could touch her. It was like our childhood in reverse, and I was weak, Henry. I was so much weaker than Aidia ever was. I don’t know how she weathered it. Every time I saw her bruised. Every time I saw a hint of her spirit breaking…I wanted to kill him.”
“Understandable.”
“But the timing was never right and that day I came to my room and found her in my closet worse than I’d ever seen her, and I said ‘my heart,’ and she was silent. So I did the only sane thing. I packed a bunch of my clothes for her, and I was going to hide her in the city. That had always been the plan, so I just moved it up.”
I press a damp palm to my chest. “But Rafe walked in before we could get out and I wasn’t ready. When he had come to retrieve her before, he’s always waited downstairs. I was so shocked I didn’t have a chance to block him. His magic—Henry, he has such a strong blessing from Polm?—”
I watch the understanding and horror dawn on his face.
“I’m a hard person to hook with manipulation. I spent a lot of time making sure of it. But I was so afraid for her, and he knew it. He made Aidia beat me with a fire poker, and then—” I can’t say it.
I’ve spent six months forgetting it happened because I couldn’t face it. I couldn’t live with knowing. The wound is raw, the infection too deep to remove cleanly. Speaking it out loud will shred me. It might be madness alone buried beneath my skin, but the only way to know for sure is to tell him the truth.
Henry is patient and quiet, but I feel the weight of his attention. I force myself to meet his gaze.
“When he didn’t get the reaction he wanted from me—when Iwouldn’t fight back—he stopped compelling her alone and he started compelling both of us. He made us—” My chest clenches and I feel like I’m dying.
Henry reaches out and squeezes my hand and it’s just enough to steady me.
I point to the balcony. “He made us stand on that railing for so long—told us that neither of us could get down until we pushed the other. My ribs were broken. I was bleeding and trembling so badly from fighting the compulsion that I was certain I would fall. It was just a moment of broken focus, but it was enough.”
The garden is airless. Remembering takes everything from me. “He made me push her. He made me kill the person I loved most in the world.”
The words are acid. They can’t be true and yet I know they are. Down through my heart. Up through my bones. Around and around in the whirling, rushing spin of my blood.
I have been down somewhere in the deepest, darkest part of myself. I lived half a life without her because I knew my life could never be whole again. I made myself all blades, protecting this secret place inside my own head like a warrior holding the line. I cannot break and yet I am already broken, or else I always have been, and Aidia’s death just ripped the blindfold from my eyes.
Now I can see it—taste the salted blood on my tongue as I stand on the railing and try so hard to get her to love me less. The memory is so startlingly bright and perfect that I can’t believe I was ever able to hide it from myself. I want the ignorance back. I want to forget the look in her eyes in that moment—the love so fierce it could level a city.
“She looked at me and told me to do it and I pushed her,” I whisper. “She fell so fast.”
I feel hollow. I can’t escape the look in her eyes, the deep love and relief of knowing her suffering was over.It’s okay, Low. It’s okay. It’s not you. I don’t blame you. She tried so hard to reassure me, but I will never forget her shocked expression when I could no longer fight his compulsion. My mind is so broken, I don’t even remember the physical act of pushing her. I only remember the look on her face when she knew she was falling. All the grief and sorrow of the memory flood back at once.
“Then he made me stand on the railing, looking over the edge,staring at her body. I thought—” My voice cracks, and a soul-deep sob shudders out of me.
Henry clasps his hands around my arms to steady me. The solid press of him is grounding.
