Page 79 of Kill the Beast
“So, you left us in a workhouse—a place no better than the debtors’ prison you fled the country to avoid,” Lyssa snapped, curling her hands into fists. She’d had no idea why everything went to shit so quickly after her mother died, but the truth wasn’t any easier to bear. Her father had always been a fighter—had taughtherto be a fighter—and yet when things were hardest, he just… stopped trying, and let it all fall apart. That felt more like a betrayal than even his leaving her had. “As if her death didn’t break us, too. As if we didn’t need you more than ever.” She clenched her teeth, refusing to cry in front of him. “Did the sea air cure your heartache, Father? I hear it’s good for that sort of thing.”
The look he gave her was so full of pain it made her chest ache. “It wasn’t like that, Lyssa,” he said. “I just… needed to leave you somewhere safe while I got back on my feet. Your mother’s family wouldn’t take you—they disowned her when she married me instead of the upper-class suitor they’d picked out for her, and wanted nothing to do with us. I had no one else to turn to. Eventually, I found a ship that would take me on without asking too many questions. The wage was decent, too, enough to chip away at what I owed, and I—”
“Why didn’t you take us with you?” she blurted. How different would their lives have been if he had? Eddie always told her not to think about things like that, that it would only make the reality of their lives harder to stomach, but it was impossible not to.
“A ship is no place for a child,” her father said.
“And a workhouse is?” Lyssa spat. “Do you know what they did to us there? They separated us—me and Eddie. They starved us, beat us, worked us half to death.” The streets were easier than that fucking place, because at least they were together. At least they could scrape together enough coin for hot food, most days. “There are plenty of children on ships. Maybe if you had taken us with you, Eddie would still be alive.”
She had intended it to hurt him, and it did—her father let out a sob, covering his mouth with one hand while he attempted to master his emotions. But she wasn’t finished with him. She had learned long ago to get in a few kicks while someone was down, to make it harder for them to get back up and throw the next punch.
The workhouse had taught her that.
“You didn’t do what was best for us. You did what was easiest foryou.And you’re shocked that I didn’t want anything to do with you, after you came back? You’re shocked that I stabbed you? You deserved far worse than a gash in the leg.”
“Lyssa,” Alderic warned.
“What?” she snapped at him. “Isn’t this what you wanted? For me to talk to him? Well, Iamtalking. I’m doing thingsyour way,instead of kicking him in the stitches and snatching thephotograph from him like I should have the moment he walked in here.” She turned back to her father, ready to throw the next verbal blow, but he spoke first.
“I know Eddie is dead because of me,” he said. “Because of my choices. I did what I thought was best, and I was wrong.” He took a deep, shaky breath, as if to steady himself. “The workhouse told me they would take care of you. That you would be safe. They said they took in plenty of children when their parents could no longer afford to feed them. I believed them, because I wanted to believe them. Because I had no other options. I didn’t know what they were really like. If I had, I never would have left you there. We would have found some other way. You have no idea how much that choice haunts me.” He dragged his bloodshot eyes upward to meet hers. “Lyssa, I’m sorry. From the depths of my soul, I am sorry. I’m not asking you to forgive me. All I want—”
“Good,” she said. “Because I don’t think I can ever forgive you.” It didn’t matter that he was sorry. It didn’t matter that he felt he’d had no choice. All that mattered was that when his children had needed him most, he had stopped fighting for them.
“I understand.” He pushed back his chair and stood, fumbling with his crutches.
“Edmund,” Alderic said, his voice pleading, while Lyssa tensed her muscles, ready to restrain her father if she had to.
But she didn’t need to steal the photograph from him; he withdrew it from the inner pocket of his coat and kissed it once before setting it gently on the table.
She looked at him in shock.
“You’re… you’re giving it to me?” she breathed. “Just like that?”
“It sounds like you need it more than I do now,” he said, his eyes full of sorrow. “For the record, all those letters I sent you… all I wanted was to understand why my son died. Those stone tablets at the memorial park are a piss-poor way to piece together what happened, and nobody who was there that night survived to tell me the tale, except for you. But you don’t owe me your storyany more than you owe me your forgiveness.” He hesitated. “I love you, Lyssa. Go on hating me if it makes you feel better. The Lady knows I deserve it. But you’re my daughter, and a gash in my leg isn’t going to change that, as pissed as I am at you about it. I only hope that you do kill the thing that murdered Eddie, because I’m clearly not the only one who needs closure.”
As he turned to go, Lyssa blurted out, “I wanted to go to the circus.”
Her father stiffened. Looked at her over his shoulder. “What?”
“It was only in Warham for a week, and it had been a hard month. A few kids in our gang had already gone, and the joy on their faces when they came back… I wanted that for us, after what we’d been through. Eddie… he was always so hard to knock down, but I could see that spark in him fading. Could see the hollowness in his eyes. I thought… I thought having some fun might bring him back to life.”
Lyssa’s father returned to his chair.
“I’ll wait out in the hall,” Alderic murmured, but Lyssa shook her head.
“Stay,” she told him. “I… I want you to stay.” She looked between them—the man she hated and the man she trusted—and knew that it was time to crack open the cage that had been rusting around her heart for the last thirteen years. She closed her eyes. Took a breath. Rubbed the scar on her palm to ease her nerves. “I begged Eddie to use what little spare money we had on the tickets. He didn’t want to—said he’d rather have a little more food in our bellies—but I wouldn’t let it go. Finally, I wore him down, like I always did.”
Buxton Fields had been transformed by the circus folk, the walking paths that meandered through the public park flanked by glittering tents filled with every kind of entertainment Lyssa could imagine—fire-eaters and lion-tamers, women whose spines seemed to be made of rubber as they twisted and torqued into unnatural positions. There were strongmen and tattooed ladies, a child with a third eye in the middle of his forehead, even amermaid hissing at passersby from its water tank. There were food stalls, too: popcorn and candied apples wrapped in waxed paper, lollipops as big as Lyssa’s head. One vendor’s eyes went soft at the sight of her and Eddie, two grubby kids with gaunt faces who stared at the snacks with as much wonder as they stared at the fire-eaters, and she gave Lyssa an enormous bucket of popcorn for free, pressing a conspiratorial finger to her lips as she drizzled extra butter on top. Lyssa had stuffed a handful into her pocket to give to Brandy later, as an apology for having to leave him outside the gates.
She and Eddie wandered around for hours, watching the shows and stuffing their faces with popcorn. It was everything she had hoped it would be—it felt like they could be kids again, like everything hadn’t gone to shit.
And then Lyssa saw the hand-painted signs, “Kill the Unkillable Beast! Untold riches could be yours!” and other such things, with arrows pointing toward the Hagswood beyond Buxton Fields.
“Let’s try it!” Lyssa had said. Eddie didn’t want to, but after some pestering, he relented. He always did, because it was easier than fighting with her and losing anyway.
They followed the signs into the forest, where a sizable crowd had gathered, mostly comprised of street urchins and a couple of old beggars. People who desperately needed a fortune as badly as Lyssa and Eddie did. Her heart sank; part of her had hoped they would be the first, and could kill whatever needed killing before anyone else got there to take the chance away from them.
A man in a striped vest and trousers waved them forward. He had a top hat in one hand and a spear in the other, the metal tip of the weapon sharpened to a wicked point. “Come in, come in, plenty of room!” he bellowed. “Now, I’m sure you are all wondering what this is about!” He settled the top hat on his head and slapped the side of the gigantic cloth-covered cube behind him, twice as tall as he was. Whatever was inside of it roared. Everyone in the crowd flinched and gasped, but the man in the stripes seemed unperturbed. “This, my friends, is a golden opportunity!All I need is for a single man, woman, or child to succeed at slaying what is within this cage. I’ll even make it easy on you. Use this spear, jam it through the bars into the monster’s heart, and if it falls down dead you get more gold than you ever thought possible.”
