The Irreversible Reckoning

  ***

  The next morning, as the sun broke over the horizon and began to fill Adam’s room with the warm light of dawn, as the bell on the ship’s clock tower tolled once, two guards came to take me to Tyre. Adam kissed me, whispered that if I needed him, I was to call out to him, and then, I was ushered away. I was desperately in need of coffee, or perhaps I was in need of more sleep; despite having my husband’s warm, strong body pressed to mine all night, I had had restless dreams of walking out into the ocean, tumbling down the ocean shelf into the black water, and feeling the sharks—huge, hollow-eyed, with razor-sharp teeth—and the other creatures of the sea descending upon me. Was it a premonition? I could not be sure, though it sure felt like one. Whether it was or was not was irrelevant; I could still feel my eyes squeezing shut, not wanting to watch as those shadowy creatures approached and attacked, not wanting to feel my lungs screaming for breath as I sunk further and further into the crushing sea. And all the while, words floated in the water before me, words that made my fear bleed out of me into the water, which only brought those hungry, dark creatures closer. I read the words, but they did not stick in my memory. I had awoken, trying to remember through the fear in my heart what the words had said, and I could only remember the first part:

  The one you have loved the longest…

  But I did not know what would happen to that person, and I did not want to speculate as to who it was I had loved the longest, though I assumed, in terms of prophecies from beyond the known realm, they would be referring to the two men in my life, so if it was the man I had loved the longest…

  James.

  Panic threatened to seize me, but I would not allow it. Not when I needed my wits about me as I met with Tyre. Turn it off, Brynna, Maura’s voice said, Focus.

  For once, some sound advice from her.

  I was so distracted by my hazy, half-awake yet already totally frenzied thoughts that when the door of Tyre’s quarters opened, my mind took several seconds to process the disturbing sight before me.

  Apparently, the door opening had not shocked him immediately, because as the two guards and I stood in the doorway, he kept thrusting himself into the woman for a few more seconds. The chains keeping her hands bound above her head rattled as he pushed, and her head was lolling forward and to the side, her eyes closed, eyebrows downturned, tears streaming down her cheeks, very soft, almost inaudible high-pitched squeals escaping her.

  “By the one God!” He exclaimed, his voice a mix of scandalized shock and violent rage. “Get out!”

  The two guards started to pull me backwards, but I shook them off, and walked out of the office before they had even turned around.

  It’s not your problem, Brynna, I thought, wondering if my mother’s voice or Maura’s voice would chime in with agreement or scoff at my coldness. Maura had been so eager to speak a few moments earlier, and now, she was absent again.

  Your only problem is to survive, My mind continued, and to make sure that Penny, James, Adam, Janna, Illa, Rael, and Tony survive.

  Another voice—perhaps it was Rachel’s, one of my Rachel’s, distant-past or recent-past—asked:

  What about Grace?

  And Grace. My mind conceded, so readily that it shocked me.

  Tyre threw open the door, his fingers furiously buttoning his perfectly pressed white shirt.

  “I said the second chime, you imbeciles!” He spat at the guards, “Brynna, I do apologize. Please, come in.”

  My legs carried me inside, and for a moment, I wondered if it was even my brain directing them to move. I felt out of my own control, and yet my mind was calm and hazy, in the same way that I made others’ minds calm and hazy when they were under my control. Perhaps I was just tired. Perhaps I was in shock from what I had seen with Tyre. Perhaps my mind was distracted still in trying to convince myself that this faceless woman was not my problem. The last part was very easy, because I had gotten used to prioritizing the lives of all those around me. If the life did not belong to one of the people I loved, then I did not care. I could not care. The second I tried altruism, there in that harsh and dangerous setting, I would be killed, and then I would be unable to protect them, or they would be killed before me, and I would fall through space forever in my grief. No one was my problem but the ones I loved. They were mine to protect, and everyone else had to care for themselves. End of story. You could say it was selfish if it were only my life that I was protecting, but it was not. I protected myself and my family above all others, and what would you have done?

  I was in the room, alone with the woman while Tyre stood just outside, fussing at the guard’s for their idiotic inability to tell time. Her eyes were wide, stuck on me so firmly that her gaze burned into my skin, into my soul. To show that I did not care, that I would not be her savior, I tried staring back into that prickling gaze, but when her face contorted, and she began to cry into the thick cloth Tyre had tied in her mouth, I looked away slowly, like it was not her tears that had forced me to divert my gaze but boredom. I could still see her in the corner of my eye, her eyes stuck on me still, even as she cried uncontrollably. At first, the sounds coming from her were merely soft sobs, but then, as I saw in my peripheral vision, her jaw was moving up and down, as she tried to talk to me.

  Don’t listen. Shut her out. She just wants your help.

  But it was one word she was saying. One word. Over and over.

  “Brynna.”

  Now, it had been twenty-odd years since Paul had tempted me with my mother’s life, so the chances of her still being alive after being imprisoned for so long were slim to none, as they say. But hearing my name on this bound woman’s bound lips gave me pause. What if it was her? What if Tyre bringing me to his office was all for this, so I could sit before the mother I had not seen in a quarter of a century, and tragically but not surprisingly, be unable to recognize her? Perhaps he wanted to see how permanent my deletion of her had been, if the sight of her would restore her to my memory or if it would not. If that was what he wanted to know, he would get his answer, and it was resolute: If this woman was my mother, I did not recognize her. Her hair was dark brown, as my mother’s had been, and her eyes were blue, and if I had to speculate (and I am terrible at determining if a child looks like a parent, and heaven forbid anyone ask me to determine if it is the mother or the father like which the child looks more), I would say that her blue eyes were similar in shape to mine. But so what? Blue, almond-shaped eyes and dark brown hair? Oh, and the age. She was about my mother’s age. But how many forty-something year old women had blue, almond-shaped eyes and brown hair? She was not trying to speak anymore, but she was still looking at me and crying. My mother’s angry voice, from many, many years earlier, told me that I was a sociopath. I was incapable of feeling human emotions, so seeing human emotions made me sick. She had told me all of that after I had not been moved by one of her passionate, tear-filled declarations of love for Lucien, and after yet another one of her reminders of how terribly she missed him. I had told her, coldly, as always, that the reason why I felt nothing was because a) she was drunk, b) her declaration of love for Lucien was coupled with the proclamation that I should have died instead, which was quite rude to say, and c) I was preoccupied by how ugly her face looked when she cried. She had swung on me, one of those slow, almost lazy drunken swings, and missed me by a foot. Her hand, finding no stopping point, had fallen across her at her side, spinning her, and she had lost her balance before crumpling to the floor. I remembered being besieged by the urge to kick her as hard as I could, to hurt her, not because of the things she had said about me, but because she was so pathetic. I would say that like a pathetic dog, she deserved to be kicked by me, but I would not kick a dog. I would kick her, though, so what does that say? That I am a sociopath? That she was right? Maybe. Or maybe I just hated her. Except I didn’t. I don’t.

  Tyre came in then, and immediately, I asked, “Who is your friend, Tyre?”

  “Oh, please do not worry yourse
lf over her.” He walked past her to get behind his desk, which she was bound beside. As he passed her, he kissed her forehead, and gently squeezed her, right on her hip, like a reassurance. “She ran from me, and now she is paying her price, but it will be over soon, my sweetheart.” He told her, and I pointedly looked away when he kissed her again.

  “Does she really have to be in here with us?”

  “She has been there for forty-one hours. Seven more hours, and I can release her arms. Until then, she stays.”

  “You will keep her hanging like that for forty-eight hours?” I asked, and I looked down at her bare feet to see that she was holding herself on her tiptoes, trying to keep her feet on the floor at least a little bit in order to take some of her weight off of her arms.

  “Yes. No food, no water, and hung up by her arms. She will not run again.”

  “Oh, and she is slave to your impulses, as well.”

  “I did not wish for you to see that, Brynna.” He told me with actual, genuine regret in his voice. Actual, genuine regret, I might add, that had nothing to do with her but everything to do with me. It was not the act of raping this woman he regretted, it was me having to see it. It seemed to make him sad that I would be exposed to such a thing, and obviously, I knew that that sadness was the result of him knowing about my past.

  “I never wished for you to be exposed to such a terrible thing again, because I know how it must dredge up traumatic memories.”

  See? All of that regret for my sake, all because of my past.

  “Well, I did see it, and if you would like to talk about dredging up traumatic memories of what happened to me when I was a child, look no further than the night you ordered Adam to rape me in my cell back home.”

  “We have discussed that many times in our visits.” He replied calmly, “It is our way. I am sorry that you do not find it acceptable.”

  “You are damn right I do not find it acceptable.”

  “Please, not so early with the vulgarity, Brynna. A young woman as intelligent and beautiful as you does not need to ugly herself with foul words.”

  “But I fucking like foul words, Tyre.”

  At first, I thought he was going to shout, because he had cringed both inwardly and outwardly at my expletive. But then, after a moment, he covered his face and laughed.

  “You are so very ornery. You always have been, and though you will take this as a sign of encouragement, I will tell you that it has always entertained me.”

  “Well, good.” I replied, “I am glad that you are entertained. You entertain me, too, when you are not ordering men to rape me, or when you are not brutally torturing the love of my life and me until his mind breaks and he is lost to me forever, or when you are not shooting me in the belly.”

  “I have apologized for that at least one hundred times now, Brynna.”

  “Which still does not change the fact that my daughter is dead, and my husband and I have spent all these years grieving for her.”

  “I have done much wrong to you, Brynna. I admit that. I care for you very much, and I have harmed you, because I am so used to harming those I deem a danger to our ways. Sometimes, your stubbornness and your crassness and your proclivities for women and old men make me so angry, and I lash out. I do have such a terrible temper.”

  Beside me, I could have sworn I heard the woman make a noise that sounded like a soft laugh. Tyre did not seem to notice, but I had, and if she had laughed, I decided I liked her, because that took serious guts, as they say, to laugh so openly at his gross understatement, and at how obvious of a statement it was. Everyone knew that Tyre had a temper. He was famous for it. For him to remind me of it was pointless; I had been on the receiving end of the brutal violence it drove him to commit, and so had the woman who was beside me, which is why she had laughed for that half a second.

  “At least you can know that I will never allow this to happen to you. What is happening to my dear friend, Laura, here.” He reached up, grasped a handful of her hair, and yanked her backwards a good foot and a half until she was level with him.

  He had heard her, and behold, there was that temper of which he had spoken, at which she had chuckled.

  “Do you have something you would like to add, my dear?” He asked her, as she struggled to pull herself away from him, as the tears rushed from her eyes backwards and dripped onto the floor. “Do you?”

  She shook her head, and he pushed her roughly back up so she was standing, and she cried harder than she had when she had first looked at me, her head hung down, her body shaking so badly that the chain keeping her hands above her head rattled.

  “No matter what you do, Brynna Elohimson, I will never deem you worthy of this punishment.”

  “You deemed me worthy of losing my child. You deemed me worthy of a bullet through the middle. I cannot decide if that punishment is better or worse, but it is certainly brutal and violent.”

  “Yes.” He replied, with a slightly puzzled expression on his face, like he did not understand how I could not possibly see the sense in that punishment. “As I have said in every one of our visits, every time you have brought this up, you placed more value on the life of your husband than you placed on the life of the child the One God had bestowed upon you quite miraculously.”

  Adam and I had discussed it so many times over the years that Tyre’s words had no power to make me doubt myself. I knew that I had not put Adam’s life before Grace’s, but instead, I had merely asked that his life be spared. I had shown my love for him, and that was not wrong. It had nothing to do with giving preference to him or to Grace. It had everything to do with the fact that I loved him so much, and I could not fathom my life without him. In short, I had done nothing to warrant Tyre’s assault. It had taken years to fully convince me, but Adam had not given in until I was convinced. He would not allow me to shoulder any personal responsibility for the almost-death of our daughter. He simply would not allow it.

  “I think you are just bitter that your plan to punish me by making me Adam’s wife failed.” I told Tyre, “I think you are bitter that we reconciled all those years ago, and that I still love him just as much today as I did then. God or Gods, I love him more than I did then. You punished me by taking James away, and giving him to Janna, but he is happy with Janna, and…”

  “And that drives you mad. I know it does.”

  “Can you see that in my heart?” I asked, and it was dangerous to challenge him to look into my heart. If I was not careful, and he peeked inside, he would see how strong my love for James still was, and he would know it could not possibly be so strong without James stoking the fire with love of his own. He would see my love for Janna, my passion for her, how my heart recognized her reliance on me. He would know for the first time how deeply and resolutely my love for her ran. If I was not careful, he would see all my little secrets. But I did not feel the prying of his heart’s invisible fingers inside of my own.

  “No. I cannot.” He said, “It must drive you mad, though.”

  “Wishful thinking on your part. I am of the mindset after all this time that if I can’t have him, and I cannot, then I am sad, surely, but I am glad that he is happy with another woman.”

  “And you are happy with his woman, as well. Which is rather sick, Brynna, I must tell you. I was very disappointed when I heard of your tryst with her.”

  “Were you?” I asked with a rather derisive snort, “Most men are made positively mad with lust just at the thought of her slender legs entwined around my head, but you find it disappointing and sick.”

  “It is a sickness, Brynna.” He said it almost desperately, like he just wished that I would see, “But I will not hover over you. Not while you are here. If you were out there, living freely in one of my cities or villages, I would never allow it. But here, unfortunately, it is my brother’s rules. And it is about my brother that I wished to speak to you today.”

  Uh-oh. If he knew that I had sex with his brother in order to keep said brother pacified, i
n order to keep him from hurting my family, he would kill him. Actually, he would not kill him, not even for my sake. But he would confront him, and then, the second that Tyre returned to land, and we were back out on the open sea, my family would pay the price for me snitching to Tyre. I could not possibly tell anyone. I could not see my family hurt.

  God, it made me sick to think in those terms. For just one moment, I was a little girl, sitting in front of Michael, tears streaming from my wide eyes as I stared straight ahead, uncomprehending, so very confused, so scared, so disgusted, in so much pain, as he told me that I would leave him no choice if I told Mom or Dad. He had made me promise. I could barely talk afterwards, and he had made me promise.

  “Brynna.” Tyre’s voice was saying, far off in the distance, in some other place, in some other time, in some other world, possibly in some other universe, some other dimension. The woman was crying, the chains were rattling more loudly than her cries, and Tyre was shouting at her to stop, and I was doubled over, my eyes squeezed shut, trying to go back, trying to fight it, but the disassociations still knocked me flat in those days. I fell away from the present and into the past and could scarcely find my way out until whatever unstable brain chemicals in my mind stabilized themselves.

  “Brynna.” Tyre was in front of me, grasping my hand, and I returned, fearing that I would look out the window of his office and see that the sun had set, or even that a few hours had passed. But the sun was where I had left it, so only moments had gone by.

  The woman was agitated, crying, fighting, looking at me.

  “Is that my mother, Tyre?” I asked weakly, and I made sure to look into his face and his mind to see if he was lying.

  “No, Brynna.” He answered immediately, “She is looking at me. She thinks I am distracted, and if she fights, she will break free and be able to run again. Just pay her no mind.”

  The woman’s knees collapsed, putting more strain on her shoulders.

  “I do apologize, Brynna. I fear that seeing her has caused this lapse in you. I am going to go request a sedative for her. She is out of control.” He stood, left the room, and closed the door behind him. The fact that she did not immediately try to talk to me again, that she remained still, with her head hung, her eyes closed, her sobs softer, told me that he was correct in what he had said. If she were my mother, now would be her chance to try to get my attention. But then, if she had been trying to escape, now was the time to struggle. I decided that she was more than likely disoriented, and that was why she made no sense at all.

  I will not talk to her. I will not talk to her. I will not look at her, and I will not help her.

  Over and over again, like a repeating hook in song lyrics, I thought those words to myself.

  Her feet were still struggling to stand upright, to keep her toes on the floor. Her shoulders shifted, trying to move, trying to stop the pain, when suddenly, she jerked terribly and screamed so shrilly that I jumped and almost made to cover my ears. She began crying so hard that I feared she would vomit. She kicked her foot up, twisting it, crying harder, and I realized what was happening: she was having a muscle spasm.

  I will not talk to you. I will not talk to you. I will not look at you, and I will not help you.

  Holding her foot out made it worse, and she desperately tried to place it on the ground, but she could not flatten her foot, so the spasm got even worse.

  “Shit.” I murmured, “Shit, shit, shit, shit. Fuck my human tendencies that refuse to make like a tree in Autumn and die!”

  I stood up, walked over, and lifted her leg. It was so light that the force I used to lift it sent her upper body falling backwards somewhat, which caused the chains to pull on her arms further. She cried a little harder, and I rested her foot against my stomach, tensing my muscles so there was a hard surface she could push it against, and after a minute, I pushed her foot back and then pulled it forward. Her sobs calmed, going from intense and loud to merely short, choppy breaths, and because I was already being positively saintly, I pulled the cloth from her mouth, and grabbed the water pitcher off of the table.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” She whispered, not looking at me. I had the feeling she had been saying that the whole time she had been held captive by Tyre. “I’m so sorry. Please forgive me. Please. Please.”

  “Your muscles are cramping because you’re dehydrated. Well, that, and because you’re being suspended like this.” I grabbed the glass off of the desk and poured her some water, which I then held to her lips. Like she was dying of thirst (which, I suppose, she was), she drank down every last drop, and after she was done, she gave an audible sigh of relief.

  “Thank you,” She whispered, looking at me now, “Thank you so much. Thank you.”

  “Please don’t make direct eye contact with me.” I said, not altogether unkindly. I could not stand it, looking into this strange woman’s eyes while she cried, while she was in such a vulnerable state.

  “I’m sorry.” She looked away, “I’m so sorry. Thank you.”

  “It is alright, and you are welcome.”

  I went to put the gag back, even though I did not want to be the one to do it, but Tyre would be returning soon.

  “Please don’t.” She cried, looking at me and then looking away again, “Please leave it out. Just for a few minutes. Please. I won’t talk if you don’t want me to. I promise.”

  I nodded, poured her another glass of water, and held it to her lips again.

  “Slowly.” I told her, “You’re going to make yourself sick.”

  She did slow her sipping, and again, she sighed after she had drank half the glass.

  “What’s your name? Laura?” I asked her.

  She smiled slightly, and I wondered if perhaps it had been awhile since she had had a conversation with someone who was not Tyre or someone of his ilk.

  “Are you sure you want to know that?” She asked quietly, “It might be easier for you if you didn’t know.”

  “Are you a celebrity from Earth? Are you a former saint or something? Why would it bother me to know your name?”

  “Because it makes this more personal. You won’t remember me as ‘the woman.’ You’ll remember me by my name.”

  “Honestly, lady, I appreciate you believing so much in my humanity that you think I will lose a wink of sleep over your situation. I hate to disappoint you, but all I care about are a handful of people and myself. So, sorry.”

  “It’s alright.” She whispered, but her voice was trembling, “You’re so kind, Brynna.”

  “How do you know my name?”

  “Everyone knows your name.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they are afraid of you.”

  “They’re afraid of me, presumably because I have a husband, a boyfriend, and a girlfriend, even though we have all been imprisoned for the past twenty-five years? I can’t imagine the amount of urine and feces that was in their pants while I was out and about all those years ago.” I said through a laugh, “I am sorry. That was crude.”

  She smiled.

  “You’re clever.” She whispered weakly, “And you’re so kind.”

  “I’m not.” I told her, “I just had a momentary lapse in my self-interest. My humanity broke through quite randomly. I suppose it is because you remind me of someone. Your name is Laura? How do you spell it?”

  She was quiet, and I wondered if she wanted me to continue, if she had not heard me ask Tyre if she was my mother. And how pathetic was that? Is she my mother? “Are you my mother?” Just like that silly children’s book. I would not have known Lara Olivier if I tripped over her. How sad was that? How sad was it that since Paul had told me she was alive, and even after I had been told that she was not, I still found myself asking that question? Are you my mother? Are you my mother? No, of course not, because my mother was dead, and I would not talk about her.

  I knew that Tyre was playing one of his tricks, or perhaps he was doing an experiment. Either way, he was accounting for the
finest details, including making sure that this woman’s first name, age, and general look were the same as my mother’s.

  “Your mother.” She said, “Your mom. You don’t know her at all. You wouldn’t recognize her?” She asked, and her voice was ready to break, “That is so sad. I’m so sorry. Brynna, I’m…”

  Tyre returned then.

  “Brynna.” He said, sounding disappointed to the point of exasperation. “Now she will have another hour.”

  “No.” The woman cried, “Please, Tyre! Please, no more…”

  “Put it back.” Tyre told me angrily, “Bind her mouth again, Brynna.”

  “Brynna, look at me. Brynna, I’m…” She started to say, and if I were her, I would have taken those moments to lie and say that I was my mother, because now she knew for sure that I would not have known in certainty if she was or was not. I pushed the cloth back into her mouth, before she could begin that lie, and without looking into her eyes. She cried harder, still trying to talk, still trying to lie.

  “Did you get the sedative or not?” I asked Tyre, and without answering, he administered some dark liquid into her arm with a long, hypodermic needle. Her eyes were fixed on me, widened and steadfast, and if she were my mother, I thought that she would be trying to memorize my face in those final moments of consciousness because she knew I would be gone by the time she awoke. But since this woman was not my mother, I knew that she was staring at me either to make me feel guilty for allowing Tyre to drug her, because she was angry that I was allowing Tyre to drug her, or because she wanted my help even though I was allowing Tyre was drugging her. The effects of the drug were immediate; within seconds, her head had fallen forward, and she was asleep.

  “I will not ask you again not to interfere in this business, Brynna. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes.” I replied robotically. I was trying to act like the woman’s plight did not bother me, and my mind kept telling me that I did not care, while my heart protested. Isn’t that always the way? The mind screams logic while the heart cries feeling? I had never called myself an emotional person before, and I would not start then, not while I was seated before my most dangerous enemy.

  “Thank you. Sit down, please.”

  I did.

  “Now, about my brother. I suspect that there is something going on here, and I would like for you to tell me what it is. Your lapse earlier proves to me that there is something troubling you, something to do with your past. Am I correct in that assumption?”

  “No.” I answered, still so robotically. Why could I not muster convincing emotion in my voice? Why was I so rattled?

  Because you know he can end it, and you want it ended. For twenty years, you have pacified his brother, and it makes you sick. Tyre can end it right here, right now. Maura’s voice told me, more gently than I was used to hearing her voice speak.

  Not without consequences. Possibly deadly consequences. For Penny, for Adam, for Janna. It is my job to protect them. Everything I have done has been to protect them.

  Of course it has, sweetheart, She reasoned, But you must think of you, too.

  This mental dialogue took mere seconds, but I remained unconvinced after it had concluded. I looked into Tyre’s eyes and lied, said that his brother had never touched me, or even so much as looked at me, that the only man touching me was my husband. Tyre looked back at me, his eyes full of doubt while simultaneously, contrastingly, full of knowing. He knew that I was lying, and he would keep asking until I admitted it. But I could not tell him how his brother had required me to have sex with him whenever he desired the company of a woman, because I knew of the Lord of War’s rage. I knew how he lusted for revenge after the most insignificant slight, and I knew, that in his own way, he cared very much for me, and that my betrayal would hurt worse than any other’s. It sounds narcissistic to say, but I knew by the way he tried to dote on me, by the way he allowed me to literally get away with murder, by the way he turned a blind eye to me sneaking into Penny’s room every night so I could read her a story and tuck her into bed, that I was special to him. For some reason, I was special to a lot of men, which I never would have predicted could ever happen when I was younger. To James, I was a lion tamer, the first woman whose opinions he valued and whose feelings he cared to protect, the only woman he had wanted to be with for the rest of his days with no others on the side to keep him warm; I was the one who cracked the whip and demanded obedience, and yet somehow also made him feel like a man when he gave me what I wanted. To Adam, I was a superior creature, a rare butterfly or some mythological beast of lore, imbued with a beautiful and terrible power he could not fathom, and this superior creature had deigned to love him, the most powerful man in all the free world. To Tyre, I was a wilted flower, and his kindness, pity, and preferential treatment were the water, sun, and soil that would help me bloom again. To the Lord of War, I was a dark queen, one to be feared, one by which he wanted to be dominated, and to dominate, whom he wanted to please, and yet at the same time, I and my darkness were circus attractions at which he could gawk and about which he felt curious, in awe, and terrified, and yet he could not look away. If I crossed him, though, he would kill me. Whether he was in awe of me or not, he would kill me.

  Like everything else about me, I was unsure of the designations the men in my life had placed upon me. I was all of them, or I was none of them. I was everything, and I was nothing. I was me. I am me.

  But I digress, because we were talking about the Warden, and how crossing him would surely be the death of me and everyone I loved. As proof of the Warden’s rage, I offer this example:

  One night, I was called, somewhat unexpectedly, into his quarters. This was about a week or so after the night he had laid himself before me, telling me he worshipped me. I had felt his anger, indignation, and resentment grow as the week progressed, and I knew that soon, I would be feeling the full effects of them all. The second I entered his room, I could feel that anger, indignation, and resentment, and I knew, deep in the pit of my stomach, where the fear was nestled like a gnawing virus, that he was about to hurt me in a way he had never hurt me before.

  “Come here.” He had said, and his voice was steady but his hands were shaking. I had known by then not to keep him waiting, and honestly, I just wanted to get it over with, whatever it was, so I forced my legs to walk forward. Each step was labored, or at least they felt labored, like I had a ball and chain attached to each ankle. Once I reached him, he smiled, very slightly, and ran one of his trembling fingers down my cheek, from right beside my eye down to my lips, tracing a line that matched the scar on his face. It was then that I realized what he was about to do.

  That night was the first time I saw his famed blade. It was like a trident, with a long, thick center blade, and two smaller, sharper blades on either side of the center. The two side blades could be snapped off and reattached with ease, as though they were magnetized to the center blade. This allowed him to fight with the center blade but throw the other two blades at charging insurgents. That night, it was one of those sharp blades he used.

  Out in his office, he twisted his hand into my hair and dragged me into his private living quarters, where my flailing legs kicked over end tables and dining room chairs, and where my thrashing arms pulled down pictures and vases and other expensive things, and where my nails scratched deep lines into his walls. Did he know about James and me? Was he angry that we had lied to him for so long? Did he suspect that I had told someone about how he had been requiring me to have sex with him? If he thought I had told Janna, would he hurt her because she knew? If he thought I had told Adam, would he make good on his promise to slash Adam’s throat while he slept? Or was it something else that I had done? He was prone to fits of jealousy, even though he swore our “tryst” was only a business transaction. Sometimes, after I left Adam’s room for the month, he would keep me in his for hours, all the while asking for and receiving my “consent” to do what he pleased. Especially when he heard his younger guar
ds talking about the sounds they had heard from Adam’s room while we had been making love, especially when he heard how Adam was able to please me so easily, how every time I was in his room, we made love for hours and hours, how Adam did not have to force my consent… That is when he became rabid in his “need” for me. As I fought him while he was dragging me into his room, I realized that I had been in Adam’s room the night before, on the last night of our monthly visit. Jealousy. It had to be jealousy. Please, God or Gods, just let it be jealousy, I had thought…

  I had known, though, that jealousy was certainly part of it, but the larger part of his reasoning was that he had humbled himself before me a week earlier after the fight, and, though I had done so kindly, I had rejected him, and thus, I had offended his pride. But there was something else in his mind, too, besides the memory of that. There was an even more recent occurrence, one that had occurred earlier that day, that was driving him to hurt me right then.

  Once he had thrown me down onto his bed, I saw it: He had gone to see Adam. They had sat, with Adam on the bed, and the Warden on the daybed, and the Warden had been grinning his gloating smile, and Adam had demanded to know why, and the Warden had said, “Because your Brynna and I are becoming very close, and I just thought that you should know.” He introduced so much discord and distrust so easily into mine and Adam’s relationship that even there in that moment, when my fear spiked sickeningly as the Warden slammed me onto his bed, I dreaded when I would have to explain it, when I would have to tell him everything… Except that, as it turned out, was why the Warden had brought me there. It was so I could assuage his mistake, and help ease the consequences of his lapse in judgment.

  But before he could speak any of that, he had to do what he had thrown me down to do. Holding my arms over my head with one hand easily, despite how hard I was struggling, he ran the tip of the blade from my forehead down to my lip, not hard enough to scar but hard enough to draw an alarming amount of blood. It ran into my eye, it rushed into my ear, it saturated the sheets behind my head, but I did not scream, nor did I cry, nor did I curse him. I spat the blood at him that rushed into my mouth, sent it splattering onto his face, and when he backhanded me with the hand that held the knife, on the side where he had just cut me, I had to bite my lip to keep from crying out. I would not show weakness to him. Not then. Not when he had just mutilated me, not when he was about to growl out that he wanted me to say “Yes,” so he could force himself on me. I would not show him weakness.

  “Say it.” He ordered through clenched teeth, and just like I always did when he demanded that I say, “yes,” I said, “No.”

  “I am not in the mood for you to tease me tonight. Now say it, or I will cut you again, this time starting right here,” He slipped the blade inside of my mouth and held it hard to the corner, “And believe you me, I will cut you deeply enough to leave a scar.” He leaned down and whispered in my ear, “Exactly as you cut me seven nights ago, you ungrateful slit.”

  I murmured my consent and looked away, telling myself that I was so stupid, I should have just allowed him to do as he pleased the night I had “spurned” him. I closed my eyes, thinking of Adam and James, but not picturing them as the ones thrusting into me, because I knew that they would never hold my arms down so hard that I feared my wrists would shatter in their grip, nor would they allow their hip bones to pound into my thighs hard enough to leave bruises.

  “I should not have gone to him,” He had said, after it was over, “But I could not help myself. I wanted to gloat. I needed to, after how you spurned me one night and then fucked me like the world was ending the next night. I will bet that how you fucked me that night is how you fuck him, and I wanted him to know that you had fucked me the way you fuck him. But now he suspects something, and if you value his life, and your life, and the lives of everyone you hold dear, which your fucking of me proves that you do, I recommend you dispel his suspicions convincingly and quickly. And look, my love.” He ran his fingers into the blood streaming down my cheek, “Now we match. At least temporarily.” He laughed so hysterically that he sounded maniacal. “He wanted to say that if I continued to insinuate that I was bedding his wife, he would scar the other half of my face. He would shame me this way again. What do you think he will say when he sees you now? When he sees how I have shamed you the way he shamed me?”

  Well, my husband had just about torn his room down.

  The guards had delivered me into his room with a forceful push and some gloating laughter that grated my already severely frazzled nerves, and when Adam had rushed to me, seeing the blood on my hands, his fear spiked first but was followed almost immediately by his rage, because he knew what the Warden had done. The door was shut and locked but he jumped up, roaring like a wild beast and banging the door hard. He shouted every name in the book, as they say, at the Warden, demanded that the Warden face him in the Coliseum like a man, and when I had started to cry (silently, because the Warden was just outside the door), when the thick ball of tension in my chest finally released, when I realized just how sick and terrible and violating of a thing it was that he had done to me, Adam had rushed to me and dropped to his knees beside me. I was lying on the floor still, because suddenly, my entire body felt as though it had spontaneously liquefied, and in my new state as a less-than-human puddle of organic matter, I could not move. My hands were covering my face, and suddenly, I understood the Lord of War’s shame, which should in no way suggest that I believed he was justified in what he had done to me. I am just saying that my face was red, my cheeks literally felt like they were burning, and the hot tears streaming over them only made the shame and the sickness amplify more.

  “Let me see it,” Adam had whispered very gently, “Let me see, my love. Please, just let me see.”

  But I had been unable to uncover my face. I had only cried harder, my body had somehow been able to shake even more severely, and my face, somehow, managed to burn just a little bit hotter.

  Finally, he was able to gently pull my hands away. My head turned away from him, and my body throbbed in protest, in a need to move away before he could see it, before he could see the utter shame of it, the heavy symbolic resonance of it. It was not bleeding so badly by then, but still, I could feel it prickling and stinging there on my face, and it felt heavy to me, like I was wearing a prosthetic scar, horror movie makeup, on my cheek.

  “Look at me, my love.” Adam implored me gently and somewhat desperately, because my head was turned away from him, my eyes were fixed on the opposite wall, my hands were pulling to get out of his grasp, and my body was fidgeting terribly to move away. “Please look at me.”

  “I shouldn’t be crying for him…” I muttered furiously, when the rage finally welled up to cradle me, “It is giving him power. It is making me such a stereotype of a woman. I am supposed to be a warrior, and I am crying. Did he cry, when you scarred him? No.”

  “Stop that.” He whispered, and gently, he ran his finger along my jawbone and then gently turned my head so that my tearing blue eyes met his calm green ones.

  “It is just my face.” I told him, “It’s just my face, so I do not know why I am making such a fuss. I am behaving like a vapid little schoolgirl, acting like this superficial injury is worth my tears. People are out there fighting these battles losing arms and legs, not to mention their lives, and I am crying about a scar on my face.”

  “You are crying because he frightened you, and there is no shame in that, my love. You showed me while I was holding your hands what he did.”

  Fear set my heart racing, and he kissed me very gently, to calm me. I had been afraid that he had seen what the Warden had said about convincing him that there was nothing going on between us, but he had not, thank the One God or the Gods. Adam’s lips kissed me slowly up that cut on my cheek, healing it instantly, filling me with that warm feeling of peace that left me sighing very softly in relief, in response to which he chuckled. In response to his chuckle, I smiled and nuzzled my head against h
is before kissing him softly.

  “While he did it, you were so strong. Even as he dragged you to his bed, you did not show fear, you showed resistance. Even when you did not know his intentions, you did not beg. Even when you feared the worst…” He rested one hand on my face and looked into my eyes, “It was not the worst, was it, my love?” He asked so gently, I almost poured out mine and the Warden’s deep, dark secret. But instead, I mustered enough convincing emotion in my voice and kept my eyes from conveying too much fear when I said, “No, he has never done the worst to me,” and that part of my mind that was always reminding me that it was consensual told me that I was not lying to Adam’s face.

  After he had scarred my face, he had “done the worst,” though I had given my “consent,” as I always did. (This is all very hard for me to talk about, even now, which is why I am starting to speak in these riddles. Forgive me.) I told you that. I described it to you. But I did not tell you how afterwards, he had told me that Adam was not to touch me that night, because Adam would wonder who had been there first. He would feel the wetness inside of me and know that it was not mine, that it had been put there by someone else. That had made me feel like the Warden’s smell was on me, like he had marked me as his territory the way a dog pisses on a hydrant (I am getting angry now writing this, and I am not sorry to admit it), and that night, even though I had thought there was no way that I could be in the mood, I had wanted Adam, because when we were together in that way, I felt so beautifully, uncompromisingly safe, and warm, and loved, so as he held me on the floor, as I buried my face into his chest and shut out the world, I cried harder, and tried to keep my thoughts about wanting him to myself.

  I must admit, and I am so sorry to have to say this, but a part of me was angry at my husband. How did he not see it? Why did he not push? Was I truly that skilled at hiding it? He would tell me later that I was. He would tell me that he thought I would have told him if something like that were occurring. Still, I was angry then that he did not know, that he was not trying to coax it out of me, even though that is so unfair to him. I hid it so well, and I never would have admitted it if he asked. But I wanted someone to know. I wanted Adam to know, because I wanted someone to help me. For years, that anger burned very low inside of me, and it was not just Adam towards whom the anger burned. I was angry at James, because he did know what the Warden was doing to me, and he was furious about it, but at my desperate insistence, he never did anything to put a stop to it. There was no killing the Warden, I said. He barely slept, and he was always alert, and he had killed every man he ever fought for thousands of years. My formerly-Earthean boyfriend, despite being a Herculian, despite being so strong that he frightened even Tyre, simply was no match for him. And yet a part of me wanted him to try. An insidious little voice in my head told me that if he truly were as angry as he claimed to be, the risk would mean nothing to him; he would try to kill the Warden so the Warden could not hurt me anymore, and because the Warden had dared to lay his hands upon me against my will in the first place.

  It was so unfair of me to be angry at either of them. But I was. It was irrational, and it was the result of being angry at myself for allowing it to happen, and from being fucking furious with the Warden for requiring it of me, but I wanted them to know about it, because maybe they could help me stop it.

  After Adam had gotten me into the bath and into bed, he had held me until I fell asleep, and I had fallen rather deeply asleep. Once the fear had subsided, I was just left with the shame, and the shame was talked down by Adam, who would not allow me to shame myself or for the Warden to shame me. Once I was asleep, I watched as he approached the door, because he knew the Warden was still out there, listening. Quietly, but with rage so deep that his voice quaked with it, he spoke:

  “I want you to listen very closely to me, Gideon, son of Leviathan…” He said, “You knew my sister, Clara. You stood beside your brother as he disgraced and executed her simply for trying to return to me. You know of my love for her, because you know how I tore through your cities to find one who could bring her back to me. You know how brutally I fought in the Second War, how many lives I took in her name. I do not talk about her often, as I am not fit to speak her name after I allowed harm to befall her because of my pride and my rage and my sense of betrayal. But on my precious sister’s name, I swear to you, Gideon, son of Leviathan, I will kill you, and then, I will kill every person your black heart has ever deigned to love. I will ensure that they suffer worse than what I inflict upon you, so that in the Eternal Darkness, where you will surely spend eternity, you can hear their screams and pleas for mercy. You will hear them begging for your help. All of this, I will inflict upon you for what you have done today to my wife, because you harmed her as a way of harming me, when if you were truly a man, you would have faced me after my insults to you, and fought me. On the life and grave of Clara Elohimson, I swear to you, I will bring hell down upon you that would make the One God, Himself cower in fear.”

  Outside the room, the Warden had smiled, because despite Adam’s threat, he still thought of himself as the ultimate victor, because he had me on a leash, so to speak, and Adam did not know about it.

  But the Warden experienced something from that night that he had never experienced before: Regret, and a need to pay his penance.

  Two days later, he had called on me again, and when I entered the room, and the guards left, he stood, and I saw that his body was trembling as it had been the night he had cut me. But there was no palpable feeling of rage in the room, which I took as a good sign. Still, when he stormed towards me, I expected him to throw me down or to hit me, so I flinched terribly. But instead of hurting me, he dropped to his knees in front of me, and wrapped his arms around my middle.

  “Forgive me.” He whispered, so softly that I could barely hear him. “Please. Forgive me, Brynna. I have never asked forgiveness for any wrong that I have committed, and I have especially never asked in this way, but I will ask you. I will beg you. Please forgive me.”

  “What way?” I found myself saying, because I was in shock and could not think of anything else to say.

  “This humbling way, Brynna. Down here, on my knees, begging. It means more here than it did on your Orb.”

  “As do many things, I have been told…” I replied irritably.

  “To get down on our knees before one we have wronged shows that we know the severity of our wronging and we place our fate into the hands of the one we hurt. Why must I explain this to you now? Why must I, when I am shaming myself in this way, when I am begging for your forgiveness? I need it, Brynna. I need your forgiveness.”

  I could not forgive him, and I was so furious that he was asking me to. Why should a man as sadistic as he was be allowed to behave brutally and then beg forgiveness to absolve whatever small conscience he might have had of the guilt? He almost read those thoughts, because when he looked up at me, I saw actual tears in his eyes, though he did not allow them to fall.

  “I will hate myself for this moment, Brynna. I am disgracing myself even more severely than I disgraced you. I will hate myself, and I hope that that is enough of an absolution, that it is enough of a punishment.” His hands grasped mine, and he whispered, “I got you something. I found it. Mary gave it one of her handmaidens, and I demanded it back, because it is yours, and no one will have it but you.”

  And he had produced the bracelet my mother had gotten me for Christmas all those years earlier, the one I had carried in my back pocket for all of those years, the one I had lost when Shadow Village had been sacked.

  Though I certainly did not forgive him, the sight of that bracelet stole my breath, and I fell to my knees in front of him and grasped that small piece of jewelry in my shaking hands as though it were some tangible miracle, as though it were being handed to me by God, Himself or Herself. The Warden kissed my forehead tenderly, and because he never kissed me, I was especially shocked when he continued to press his lips there slowly, over and over again.

/>   “I am going to have them take you back to your cell. Back to Janna.” He had whispered, “I will not touch you again until you ask me to.”

  “I will never ask you to, Warden.” I said back.

  “You will.” He had replied, “I will see to it that you will. But let us not talk about that ugliness. I am apologizing to you, and it is a momentous thing. Let me take you back to Janna.”

  Long story short (too late, I know), he had gotten me to “ask” by keeping Penny from me, and I had not so much as asked as demanded that we fuck so I could see her.

  Are you confused by him? Yes. So am I. But we needn’t be, because he is actually quite simple to understand: He was a rapist and an all-around son of a bitch. End of story.

  Also, I am sure you are confused as to how the hell we got here. Tyre was asking me if the Warden was requiring my company in that way, and I was trying to deny it. From that remembrance, I had gone down a long path of remembrances, and now you know Gideon, son of Leviathan, Warden of the Lapsarian Maximum Security Prison Ship, the Lord of War, just a little better. You know his rage. That was how this started. I was denying what the Warden was doing to me because his rage would consume every person I had ever loved if I did not deny it. So again, I denied it.

  “He has never touched me, Tyre. Adam is the only man who touches me.”

  “Brynna,” Tyre said, almost in a whisper, as though he were speaking to a wounded animal, “How many times have I told you that I have people very close to you at all times? They have told me how he requires your company.”

  Tyre had told me many times over the years that he had spies all around me. In Don’s house, in Shadow Village, and there on the ship, he had placed eyes to watch me. Some nights, I stayed up late, suspecting every person around me except for James and Adam. Could Janna be working for him? I had never seen her before I had carried her husband into Shadow Village, I was sure; believe me, I would have remembered. No, I would think as I watched her beautiful, serene face as she slept, Her heart and mind tell no lies. To absolve myself for thinking those suspicious thoughts about her, I would always kiss her, or pull the blankets up further on her, or grasp her hand. I always felt terrible for thinking that she could be guilty of a crime so damning, and I always feared myself a little. In my heart, I felt a dangerous bubbling of the most unadulterated rage at the thought of there being a traitor in my midst. I knew the damage I would do to someone who betrayed me. I knew that I would take his or her life so brutally, it would make the beasts of Hell cringe. God, just look at the rage I had felt when James had betrayed me by being one of Adam’s pawns, or when he had betrayed me by sleeping with Janna. As obvious as it sounds, all betrayal comes down to is disloyalty, and as a person who was loyal until the end, I would not tolerate disloyalty in anyone I loved. You were with me or against me, and as my mind began to throw around suspicion as calmly as it could muster, I began to think of what I would do once I found these spies that were “so close” to me, as Tyre always liked to remind me.

  “All the guards know, and not one of them is close to me.” I told him, watching his eyes for signs that he knew there was one guard who was very close to me. “No one else knows but the guards who take me to and from his room.”

  “Are you sure that your beloved Janna does not talk to others, who then talk to others, who then talk to me?”

  “Oh, but I thought your spies were close to me.”

  “They are.” He said simply.

  “Well, Janna’s acquaintance’s acquaintances are not close to me.”

  “I was merely saying that to see how deeply you trust her, and I can see that it is not very much.”

  “Of course I trust her. I can read her mind, and from her mind, I can read her heart. She cannot lie to me, especially because her heart and mind are so open. You are just trying to make me distrust her.”

  “I am not doing anything of the sort, Brynna.” He replied with a soft laugh, “I am merely trying to aid you in your quest to find the people I have placed around you, but let us get away from that. It is not why I have come here. You have just admitted to me that what I have been told is correct. I will end it, Brynna.”

  Well, my stars… I had been duped by him into admitting it. That I had been duped made my anxiety level rise even more, and somehow, I managed to keep my voice steady when I replied.

  “He will kill everyone I love if you broach this subject to him. He told me so. He will have no choice, he says, and it will not just be the ones I love here. It will be Violet, who is out there somewhere, and Quinn and Alice, and Eli. I know of his reputation. I know how he got his name. He killed indiscriminately. He sacked more cities than men with armies twice the size of his. In his private quarters, he is soft-spoken and even kind, at least sometimes, but I know what he can do once the eyes go red. Tyre, I am asking you to just leave it alone.”

  “I told you I would never see that punishment inflicted upon you. I promised you that, and as a man of honor…”

  I snorted through my nose at that, because yes, a rapist and murderer who justifies his rape, murder, and torture by the words of some old creed was certainly honorable.

  “You may laugh, because you still do not see that what I do, I do for good. I do it to bring order, to keep innocents from being harmed by the holy crimes of others. But I am a man of honor, Brynna Elohimson, and when I make a promise, I keep it.”

  “He will kill my family, Tyre. He will make me pay for it! Your honor is all well and good until it gets the people I love killed. Then, what is it?”

  “I control him, Brynna. He will do nothing unless I say it is alright, and if I tell him that he is to leave you and your family alone, then he will do so. Allow me to end this for you. Please. I will not rest until I know that you are not being harmed this way.”

  “Your rest is so important to me.”

  He chuckled, rose from his seat, and kneeled in front of me. After a moment of silence, he tentatively took my hand and then looked up into my eyes.

  “Perhaps it is not. But I would like to settle this, regardless of how you feel, and I promise you, on the One God…”

  “Awww!” I said, dragging the word out in the taunting way that children do when another child does something wrong, and Tyre smiled and grasped my hand.

  “I promise you on Him that no harm will befall you or your family. I promise.”

  I was silent, because God or Gods, I wanted it to be over. I did not want to feel that weight descending onto my shoulders as I walked with the guards to the Warden’s room. I did not want to be the woman he kept on the side, the one he called upon to express his darkest desires and have them acted out. I just wanted to be with the men I had chosen, and not fear the repercussions of one day facing the Warden’s wrath.

  “And once we’re out at sea, far from you, then what?” I asked, “What’s to stop him?”

  “His fear that once he sees me again, that he will have to tell me how he hurt you.”

  “He is your brother. Don’t you think he will be a little offended that you are putting more value into what I want than into what he wants?”

  “I do not care.” He told me, “Brynna, may I be very frank with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “In the Confessionals, your father rambled on for an hour about things that mattered so very little, I could have fallen asleep from boredom or struck him for wasting my time. He had an affair; everyone knew that because even though no one could remember your mother thanks to your little mind trick, we knew that she was not Maura Taylor. He paid a man to kill two journalists and a handful of other people who were going to expose the things your mother and her friends had done. A terrible crime, certainly, but we had already publicly executed one of your mother’s closest colleagues, so the crimes they had committed were not my concern then. Oh, the other things he rambled on about… His nights with the many women he encountered, hitting your mother once when they had both had too much to drink, dropping Violet when she was
a baby accidentally…” Tyre laughed rather heartily, “I could not believe the trivialities leaving his mouth. The whole crowd had been expecting this bombshell of a confession—people do so love their gossip, even when feeding the gossip mill is not the intention of the Confessionals—and they were growing as bored as I was. So, when I had my guards lash him to within an inch of his life, and I said I would take his head if he did not start confessing the darkest of his crimes, then, my stars, did it all come out. First he spoke of Luc, how it was really his fault, and your mother’s fault… Really, it was your mother’s fault, he said, because she had left you at home alone after what had happened to you, but he loved her so much, and he had been so in love with her that he could not possibly have placed that blame on her shoulders. But he had blamed you completely, and from that blame, his rage grew, and he began to take that rage out on you physically, and over the years, it grew worse, and no matter how brutal he was, it did not lessen the rage in his heart. It did not displace the feeling in his heart that the blame was his and your mother’s, and that was all he wanted. All he wanted was to exorcise the feeling that he was to blame by blaming you, and he exorcised that guilt by hurting you. But there was something so much deeper than that, Brynna. Something so much more despicable. The first time he came banging on your door, he did not know that it was your apartment. He was so drunk after his row with your mother that he thought he had simply returned home, and with the copious amounts of alcohol he had consumed coursing through his veins, he was going to finally act on the rage he felt, because he knew she was to blame. But in one sad, ironic twist of fate, he ended up in front of your door, and his rage was directed once again to the person at whom it had always been directed. But the second time, and the third time, though he was certainly still drunk, he knew.”

  “Tyre.” I said, so softly that I was sure he had not heard, “Please. I don’t want to talk about this.”

  “I know it is very difficult for you to hear,” He said softly, and his other hand came up to hold mine, too. “I know it is, my sweet child. But you need to know how much I know. Your father knew that it was your apartment, and that it was you he was forcing down onto the bed. He had spent so long telling himself that you were dead to him, that you were no longer his child because you had taken his most precious child, that he believed it, and then, he felt no guilt when he exacted his revenge on you in that most despicable way, and when you became pregnant with his child…”

  “Please stop, Tyre.” I whispered forcefully, my eyes diverting from his to the floor.

  “…And you came to him and your mother to ask for help, to ask for money to have the child killed, he allowed your mother to believe that you had gotten it done to you by some random man. He allowed you to look like some harlot who had made a foolish mistake. And what did she say to you, Brynna?”

  I would not answer, though I remembered it well, even though I had tried to forget, because nothing she had ever said to me had ever been so cruel. Telling me she wished I was dead in Lucien’s place or that she wished I would die so she would not have to look at me and see the murderer of her most precious child were not enough. But what she had said to me that night, through her typical slurred speech and with the fury in her eyes that I was so used to seeing, was the worst of all.

  “What did she say to you that night, Brynna?”

  I did not answer, so he answered for me.

  “‘I thought God had sent Michael to make that impossible so you couldn’t kill another child, but I was wrong.’” He said, “Did I get that right? I am sure you remember the words verbatim. Your parents deserved every evil that came to them. I would normally say that it was the one God’s responsibility to sort them out, but I am glad that you abandoned your mother, and I am glad you killed your father. They did not deserve your mercy. I wish I could have asked your mother if she suspected that her husband was the father, but alas, I will just have to give her the benefit of the doubt and say that she didn’t know. But if she had, you know that she would not have cared. Do you know about what else I feel very glad? This is going to shock you very much, so prepare yourself: I am glad you had that woman, even though your tryst was a sin. I am glad she was there for you.”

  I remembered how after the baby was bleeding out of me, I had thought that maybe I had wanted the baby, but how before the baby had been bleeding out of me, I had wanted to have it taken care of. I wanted what I could not have. Rachel had said we would have one of our own one day, and I had wanted that more than anything. Suddenly, I had wanted that one day to come, when she and I, and Penny, and our baby were a real family.

  Who was Tyre to say my “tryst” with her had been a sin? I wanted to spit at him that he had no right to invalidate us and our very deep, very resounding bond in that way, but instead, I simply asked:

  “What does any of this have to do with you and me?”

  “It has to do with you and me because this is how I came to care about you. When I saw you the first time in the cave, I had not yet heard your story. When I saw you for the second time in Lumiere, I was consumed by the rage I felt at seeing you beside my oldest enemy, but over time, my love for you grew. I do not lust for you in the way that Adam and James do. I love you the way a father loves a daughter. We have known each other for many years…”

  “Yes, and you have done more harm to me than good. You shot me. You killed my daughter. You married me to a man who, at that time, hated me, and you ordered him to rape me.”

  “I was angry, and I have told you many times over the years that I am very sorry. I do not require your forgiveness, nor do I require your understanding, but I do require you to allow me to do what I must do to protect you. My brother knew not to put his hands on you. I ordered him to leave you be. Trust my word when I tell you that it will end, and there will be no repercussions for you, your daughter, or your husband, my sweet child. Trust me.”

  My whole being felt wrung out to the core after hearing all he had said about my father’s confession and after being reminded of the cruel words my mother had said all those years ago. I just wanted to leave the room, find a quiet place where I could be alone, and calm myself down. So I nodded, said I would allow him to tell his brother to leave me be, and tried to calm the sudden pounding of my heart. I tried to soothe my mind that was screaming about the consequences we would suffer, and I tried to stop myself from praying to God or the Gods or Whatever, because there was nothing up there; there was no one listening, so it was a waste of valuable thought-energy.

  When I stood, he embraced me more warmly than I expected him to be capable of.

  “One day, I hope you will join me. I hope you will shun Adam and allow me to find you a suitable husband. I hope that you will shun these sinful ways and come into the light with me. I know that you are capable of so much goodness, Brynna. You just choose to associate with those who are not capable of it.”

  “Tyre.” I said, “I want to leave this room now.”