“You could have come to me!” he roars, whirling around, his winds snapping outward from the motion. “You could have trusted me enough to inform me of these things. You think I don’t understand the lengths someone will go to in order to return home? I was willing to die in this stupid tournament so that the council would reverse my sentence.”
“Icould have trustedyou?” I gape at him. “The god who stole me from my h-home and used me to enact his revenge? Who forced me into a bargain in order toearnmy freedom?” I glare at this giant ofa god in bewilderment. He has completely lost his mind. “My only option was to keep my head d-down and focus on helping you win the tournament, because you never would have let me go otherwise. You wanted me as a tool,” I whisper, pained, “but you didn’t wantme.”
“That’s not true, bird.” A quiet admission. “I was going to ask you if you wanted me to stay with you at the estate. I was going to suggest that we could build a home together, if you chose. If you wanted that.”
My heart. “Idowant that—”
“Then why would you do this?” Eurus crowds my space. I drink him in, wishing I were not so weak. “Why go to such lengths to hurt me?”
The world melds into hot streaks of color. Lady Clarisse, Prince Balior, and the soldiers are so much closer now. “You need to leave. They will capture you—”
“I don’t give a damn about that,” he snarls. “Tell me why you chose that witch, who has never showed you an ounce of kindness, over me. She’s nothing to you—”
“No,” I grind out. “She’s my mother.”
29
THEEASTWIND STARES ATme with eyes like voids. Beyond, storm clouds heap the distant cliffs. “Another lie, is it?”
“It’s not a lie.” If I could, I would claw my heart from my chest. I would hold it over open flame, watch muscle and tendon recoil, then wither into collapse. What is done cannot be made undone. The price must be paid. “Lady Clarisse really is my mother.”
“Yourmother,” Eurus emphasizes. “The same woman who tried to drown you as a child?”
A wad of saliva clogs my throat. I choke it down with a whispered, “Yes.”
He shakes his head. “This can’t be real. You call hermy lady.”
“Because that is wh-wh-wh—” I swallow, grit my teeth. “That is what she wanted me to call her.”
Following Nan’s passing, Lady Clarisse inherited the estate after having returned to Marles following many years away. I was her daughter, our shared blood a burden, but I could be put to use, diminished to a set of hands that could slice and stir, press and pour. The first time I called Lady Clarissemotherafter her return, she threatened to cut out my tongue.
Let me be clear, she’d said.I am no more your mother than you are my daughter. You cannot imagine what I would give to trade your life for my husband’s, but unfortunately, I’m stuck with you. Whatever childishoptimism you harbor in thinking we will ever be family, discard it now. From this moment on, you will refer to me as Lady Clarisse.
“Gods.” Eurus regards me in outward horror. “And now youworkfor her? Why, Min? She’s horrible. Shetorturespeople. She tortured you!” The intensity of his gaze, its furious simmer, pierces me. I am no better than an insect with its wings pinned. I could not fly away even if I wanted to.
“Because she—” I stop, try again. “B-because—”
“Why?” he demands, insistent now. “Why, after everything that she’s done to you, her every effort to belittle you, would you want to help her?”
“I don’t know!” I scream. “I just… I want her to love me.” There was never a time I did not crave that. Drowning or not, abuse or not, she was the only maternal figure in my life, following Nan’s passing. And maybe a part of me always saw Lady Clarisse as the wounded daughter Nan described her as. Someone who did not fit into this realm, who never felt quite at home. When she met my father, according to Nan, she was changed—for a time. Then he was taken from her, and she was left alone to care for her infant child—all that remained of the man she loved. “She was going to s-sell the estate,” I go on. “It is my only tie to my grandmother. If I did this one thing for Lady Clarisse, she promised to sell it to me.”
He gazes down at me in disgust. “And you believed her?”
Yes. And then, no. But by then, it was too late. “I wanted to prove I w-was worthy,” I say, voice softening. Even to my own ears, it sounds pathetic. “If I gave her what she wanted—”
“She is no mother to you, Min. She doesn’t love you. She loves only what you can do for her.” He shakes his head, jaw clenched, and turns away.
The sight spurs me forward. “Eurus, please. I’m sorry, it’s just—”
“There is nojust,” he barks with a crazed laugh. “Don’t you see? You were the first person I trusted in centuries. And now you’ve proven to me what I already know. People will use you, abuse you, discard you. It is a cycle without end.”
My eyes sting. There is truth to his words, for I once believed the same. I have now betrayed the only person who has ever truly cared for me, aside from Nan. “If I can explain,” I press, the words garbled, torn to pieces by emotion.
“What is there to explain?” he murmurs. “You have shown your true colors. As far as I’m concerned, there is nothing left to say.”
“Please don’t do this,” I weep. “I love you.”
He recoils, hand lifted to thwart a blow as his expression collapses into one of repulsed disbelief. “Youloveme? Did I hear that correctly?” He belts out a crow-like laugh, a vicious caw. “Unbelievable. Is there nothing you will not lie about?”
