Page 113 of Cursed Shadows 2

24

the night father caught us

††† TEN YEARS EARLIER †††

Snapped wicker cuts into the meat of my palm.

My grip on the basket is so tight that beads of blood trail between my fingers, over my whitened knuckles, then drip onto the baubles and treasures.

Keeping my head low, I match father’s brisk pace up the stairs with a hurried and clumsy stumble of my own.

Eyes wet, I can hardly make out the tension in father’s back, the rage that stiffens the shoulders of his worn tunic, but I see clearly enough to note his hands balled into fists.

They haven’t unclenched since he stole me away from Daxeel under the willow tree, and not one word spoken since. A long, uneasy walk home, even with Knife baring silent snarls at me every other step.

I pay the little rodent no mind.

I don’t have so much as the fleeting urge to kick him down the stairs—and that’s a common urge around Knife.

But I have no fight in me now.

Defeat and fear are what plague me, in the sag of my shoulders, the quiver of my bottom lip, the hitches of my watery breaths, and the heavy thuds of my feet dragging up the steps.

Father veers left and takes the gloomy corridor. His boots thud on the runner rug, firm and determined the whole way to my bedchamber.

I’m silent as I follow him inside.

I know better than to run and hide the basket of baubles from him, or to even sit myself on a chair for his cominglecture—the pure ice of his rage frosts over me, prickles my flesh into tiny bumps, and my feet act on instinct. One, two, three, they slide across the floor until my back connects with the wall.

Through the glaze of tears, I watch father stop an arm’s reach away from me. His fists clench that bit more as his shoulders expand, and he draws in a long, deep breath, as though to steady himself, soothe the rage.

Then he speaks, and his voice is anything but ice, it’s a low and dangerous sound that has me cringing; “Is that how he did it?”

I blink my watery eyes up at him, a blankness on my face.

Father turns on me. Each step he takes closer to me is punched with careful purpose. Then he reaches for the handle of the wicker basket.

Every instinct in me alights with panic. All at once, I ache to run away with the basket, snarl and hit out at father, weep at his feet to leave me with my baubles.

But I steel myself with everything I have to stay rigid on the spot.

His grip tightens. Mine doesn’t loosen.

His gaze doesn’t leave mine.

“Did he throw some pretty treasures at you,” father’s words are distant and precise, so unlike the leashed rage in his stormy eyes, “and that’s all it took for you to lay on your back—” I flinch as he growls the rest of his words down at me “—and spread your legs?”

A hard yank, and he’s torn the basket from my grip. The viciousness of his snarl is a warning, and it’s what stops me from crying out as the wicker tears the flesh of my palm or that he steals my treasures.

I bow my head and curve my shoulders into my chest as if to make myself smaller. Torn hand fisted at my side, blood now spills through my clenched fingers freely. Other hand locked around the straps of my sandals, I watch my anxieties in my bare feet that fidget on the floorboards. My toes curl on wooden slabs so obviously cloth washed, not scrubbed and polished like they should be. I should see my reflectionlooking back at me, see the twist of my face as quiet sobs shudder through me.

But only when I look up from beneath wet lashes at father do I see him turn—and pitch the basket at the wall.

A cry yelps free from me.

Baubles and phials and ink pots, they all shatter to pieces in a burst of confetti. A silent cry warps my face as it all falls like glitter to the floor.

Father rounds on me again. “How long?”

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