Kit
The moment the door closed and blocked Violette from sight, I slumped against it. For the first time in thirteen years, I’d had cause to pull on the mask my father crafted for me over the course of my childhood. I’d put it away the day I escaped in the hopes of never needing to hide behind it again and had forgotten how exhausting it was to wear. Though, the appearance of stoicism did nothing to deaden the uncomfortably familiar fear and anxiety simmering beneath the surface.
Standing there drawing measured breaths felt too much like the last time I had my back against this same door, a boy of fourteen so awash in terror that my knees shook. My father towered over me, his face bright red with fury as he barred an arm on either side of my shoulders so I had no hope of escape.
“You’re lucky it was me who caught you, boy, or I’d have let them have your bones.” His voice was cold enough to make me shiver. “What were you thinking?”
Over the years, I had watched him slowly descend into insanity. I hardly remembered the soft, understatedwarmth and kindness with which he treated me before he steeped himself in the darkness of the Bone Men.
I was desperate to get away from him and the vile task he’d set me as punishment for some supposed slight, which was what prompted my failed escape attempt that night, but I knew better than to say that out loud. There was no answer he would find acceptable, so I kept quiet.
He ground his teeth as he seized the front of my shirt and jerked me away from the door. “I’m well aware you aren’t strong enough to do this. You have too much of your mother in you.” He pulled on the wadded fabric until I was lifted onto my tiptoes. I held onto his wrist, biting my lip so hard that I tasted blood as he seethed. “But theleastyou can do is fake it well enough to not shame me with your failure.”
Turning, he flung me in the direction of my bedroom door. I stumbled but remained upright, standing with my back to him to hide the tears that flooded my eyes.
The low roar of his voice seemed to shake the foundation of the house. “Better you die undertaking your Oaths than I let you leave here a coward and put a stain on our family name.”
At least I’d honored one of his wishes.
When my next attempt to run away succeeded three years later, I shed his surname like a snakeskin and adopted my mother’s maiden name in its stead. Evidently, he’d written me out of his own history much the same way. Part of me appreciated that he’d let me go, but there was some small piece of me that wished he’d cared enough to mourn me.
I shook my head as if that would reset my thoughts and pushed myself upright.
Penny loitered in the middle of the room, looking lost. He plucked the stub of an old candle off the coffee tableand turned it over in his hands before setting it back down, careful to line it up with the dust ring it left behind. He turned a full circle, taking in the bare walls and sparse furniture that looked exactly as it had the day I left thirteen years before. His eyes skimmed over everything but me.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“For what?” he asked.
I huffed a nervous laugh. “Where do I start?”
He rubbed a hand over the raw skin on his face. He looked as tired as I felt, with dirt in his hair and a deep purple bruise forming over his cheekbone. I hadn’t prepared him for an ambush, though I should have expected one, and that was the least of my most recent slights.
Rather than answer my question or accept my apology, Penny started another conversation entirely.
“Lucky you found someone who remembers you,” he said. “Remembers you pretty well, it seems.”
“You mean Vi?” I asked, earning only a nod in return. “We grew up together.” I rolled my shoulders in a dismissive shrug. “We were in the same initiate group before I left. And apparently shamed my father so badly that he tried to erase me from history.”
“You wanted it that way, didn’t you?” Penny asked.“To forget them? To be forgotten?”
Yes and no. I wished desperately to forget everything about my time among the Bone Men, to purge my memory of the sights and smells of death. But to be forgotten? I never wanted that. That meant I’d never been important enough to my father to be worth remembering. That whatever fragments of fond memory I had of him only mattered to me.
When I didn’t answer, Penny moved to the fireplaceand used the toe of his boot to adjust the charred logs in the hearth.
“I don’t think you could do anything to make Violette forget you,” he mused. “She seems to recall you quite fondly… Kitten.”
The mention of the pet name made me grimace. “I couldn’t stand her when we were kids. She still makes my skin crawl.”
A smile flashed across Penny’s face. “You could’ve fooled me.”
“That’s the point.” I sank down onto the uncomfortable couch. “I had years to perfect pretending to be who my father wanted me to be. Cold, domineering, and arrogant; better than the common rabble that scurried around doing his bidding. But I hated every minute of it.”
Tipping my head back, I let my eyes slide closed against the headache forming between my temples. “It’s exhausting, and I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to keep it up.” A bitter chuckle rumbled out of me. “I’m out of practice.”
It was quiet for another moment before Penny cleared his throat. “Why Mosel?”
I cracked an eye open to see him standing expectantly next to the coffee table. “I didn’t want to be associated with my father, so I took my mother’s name.”
