Page 171 of Bane of the Wild Hunt

The words were on the tip of my tongue, but it did not feel like I could speak them aloud without succumbing to the terrible anguish of them.

“We used to sit up on the city wall and stare across the lake at the lights of Ergastiri,” I continued, knowing she’d understand I wasn’t ready to talk about what happened to my brother. “He was old enough to go to the school and escape if he wanted but…he wouldn’t leave me alone. And I was too terrified tomakehim go. He said we would go together, even if it meant that he was too old for them to train anymore. He would sweep the floors if he had to so he could watch over me becoming a warrior. We spent most of our nights like that just… talking about what life would be like when we got out of the Rookery.”

I hesitated to take a deep, calming breath.

“Theon was…good. Right down to his bones,” I told her as angry tears began to burn in my eyes. “He was the only good thing that ever came out of that fucking place, and he deserved so much better.”

“Orion…” she breathed in protest and almost reached for my hand before hesitating a moment in uncertainty. Then she seemed to decide to press through her doubt and continued to reach for me. She was careful to avoid my mangled knuckles as she pushed her fingers under my fist that was clenched tightly on my thigh, gently prying my fingers apart until she could thread hers up through them. And I let her. I was unable to look away from the sight of her small hand gripping mine so tightly.

“My brother frequently had to go collect our mother’s unconscious body from work, but I guess… he got old enough that her colleagues actually took notice of him. They put it in her head that he could be earning a lot of money if he would come to work with her. I remember her chasing him through the house yelling at him about it. I remember… her looking at me and then asking him if he was really willing to let me starve.”

Amira made a sharp hiss of disgust, but she did not voice the questions I was sure she must have about my mother’s work.

“So… that was the end of our nights on the city wall. Obviously, I was far too young to understand then, but I put it all together years later. All I knew at the time was how angry I was that he was going out at night and would not let me come with him. He would hide me under his bed to sleep just in case my fathercame home before him. And he would come back in the morning smelling of wine and smoke with this… dead look in his eyes.”

A look that I would become very familiar with in my own eyes whenever I looked into a mirror years later.

Amira brushed her thumb over mine, drawing me out of the memory, but I could not look down at her.

“Your mother was a…”

“Whore. You can say it, Amira,” I snorted in forced amusement when she was unable to even utter the word.

“For the record, I don’t think there is anything wrong with the profession if it is… consensual and safe.”

“I have rarely ever found it to be either of those things, but perhaps,” I muttered.

I could feel her staring up at me, and I was sure that she suspected the truth, but she did not push me for it.

“My father… would always take any money that any of us managed to make or steal and gamble with it in the hopes that he could… get lucky some night. Theon did manage to keep enough of it away from him to feed us, since my mother tended to spend her money on herself. But we knew to stay the fuck out of the house whenever my father would come home. He would always go out and lose everything, and then come back to beat the piss out of any of us that he could get his hands on.”

“Orion…Fuck,” she muttered and shook her head as she squeezed my hand again.

“Theon took most of the beatings. I only got a couple. Mostly just a quick slap or a shove when my brother was not quick enough to get between us. But I saw him raw and bleeding more times than I could count,” I admitted.

We were getting closer to that night, and she seemed to know it because she was silent as she waited for me to get up the nerve.

“Theon figured out that he really could make a lot of money at the brothel, since he was not dependent on drugs or winelike our mother was. He gave enough to my father to keep him placated, but he started to hide a bunch of it too. I didn’t know until he had enough to start renting our own apartment. He got us out of that house, and we had a few of the most incredible weeks of my life out on our own. There was plenty of food. He even brought candy home sometimes. We each had a bed, and there was no yelling or fighting or… strangers staying the night.”

“He really took care of you,” she breathed, but I could already hear the emotion in her voice because she knew what was coming next… It was inevitable.

“My father came looking for us. He was angry that Theon had kept so much money from him, and he didn’t like that the only person bringing home food was gone. He tried to follow my brother home from work, but Theon always managed to lose him. I think he might have even tried paying him to just leave us alone. But… one night my father managed to figure out where we were living.”

I could still remember the sheer terror that seized me when we heard my father screaming and pounding on our apartment door. I remembered looking at Theon who did not hesitate to carry me to the table between our tiny cots. The only piece of furniture in the apartment with enough space under it for me to hide.

Do not move, do you hear me? Not a muscle!

The last words he ever spoke to me…

“He was only sixteen. Strong but nowhere near strong enough to fend off a full-grown man,” I whispered.

“You saw it?” she guessed.

“I saw it. And there is not a day that goes by that I do not wish I had just…donesomething.Anything.”

Amira breathed in through her nostrils and brushed her thumb over mine again. “He would have killed you too.”

“Maybe.”And maybe that would have been okay.

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