Page 10 of House of the Beast

Chapter

I remained in a daze as I was washed and changed. The attendants were very careful with me, like I was a feral dog liable to bite if startled.

My father was waiting when I exited the bathroom. He held my note crumpled in his hand; I had been so confident when writing it, but now the sight of it made embarrassment curl inside me.

“You stupid girl,” he growled.

“I just wanted—”

“It doesn’t matter. What you want does not matter. There are those in this family who would kill for your privilege, and you have done nothing but your utmost to throw it away.”

There it was again. Over and over, I’d been told what an honor it was to be a part of House Avera, but so far it had only felt like a punishment.

“Is he all right?” I asked timidly. I did not need to specify who.

“No, he is not. You tore his jaw off.”

“I didn’t mean to—”

“And yet you did. Do you think we hold our titles for amusement? We are Kugara’s foremost clan of warriors. We are killers. You have humiliated me with your utter disrespect for this power, and on top of that, you have tried to steal from the family that provides for you!”

Shame rushed hotly through me. I was reminded of the neighbors’ whispers back in Merey and their insistence that I had been raised wrong.

Now my father seemed convinced of the same—and I couldn’t stand him thinking that my mother had been responsible for it, just as the others had.

I had to defend myself. “I just needed—”

“I am not interested in your foolish excuses. You made a promise, and you broke it.”

He was not going to give me a chance to explain, I realized. He couldn’t care less what I felt. I snapped. “If I’m such a disappointment, why don’t you just let me go home?!”

“Do not raise your voice at me!”

“You’re an awful father!” I screamed. Two guards had been stationed by my door.

They began to move closer, no doubt to restrain me.

Still, I carried on. “You treat me like dirt. You did this to me!” I flung out my stump.

“No one wants me here except you, and only so you can prove a point. Why are you keeping me here?!”

My father’s nostrils flared. “You are embarrassing yourself with this tantrum. An Avera belongs here.”

“I’m not an Avera! I want to go home!”

“There is nowhere for you to go!” he roared back at me. “No home for you to return to! So you had better be grateful for the charity provided to you. I am giving you a better life than you could’ve dreamed of, and I tire of your selfishness!”

His words did not make sense. I curled my hand into a fist, and my nails dug into my palm. “What do you mean there’s nowhere for me to go?”

My father stepped back. His face had gotten very red, but he was making a valiant effort to get his breathing under control. For a moment he looked almost regretful before his pride took over again. He drew himself up, regal and untouchable.

“Your mother has passed away,” he said. “I received the news earlier this evening.”

All my boiling blood froze in my veins. I felt as though he had struck me again and left me reeling.

“What... what do you mean?”

He spoke almost clinically, his eyes trained stubbornly on mine. “She is gone. Her condition was too severe. I summoned only the best, but the Sorrowless Disciples could do nothing for her.”

His words took an age to mean anything through my confusion.

Gone. Too severe . Every thought turned into mist, slipping through my fingers when I grasped for them.

Dimly I was aware of my hand shaking, of my nails digging too hard into my palm, but I could not feel anything beyond the sudden hollowness in my chest. I grasped for words desperately, struggling to choke out, “Sorrowless... what about the doctors? What about the school in the capital? Did you send for them?”

He lowered his chin. “I assure you, if the Disciples failed, your doctors would not have saved her.”

The doctors had not saved her. They had not saved her, because they had never been summoned. My father had not listened to me, and now my mother was dead.

I flew at him.

There was shouting. The guards scrambled over to restrain me as the attendants backed away in horror.

Sound echoed strangely, and someone called for me to be sedated.

I didn’t care. I wanted blood. For one moment, one single bright moment, my father had taken a step back from me like he was afraid, and I could think of nothing but pursuing the hunt.

He’d promised. He had promised. But my mother was dead, and I hadn’t even been able to say goodbye. He’d brought me here and she had died alone.

Something was jabbed into my neck. I tore it out, but my movements were already turning sluggish.

The room grew dark. There was a hysterical sob, and some frantic whispering. My father’s voice was issuing calm instructions.

Beyond the murky depths of my vision, I could have sworn something was watching me.

***

I RESOLVED TO GET RIGHT BACK UP AFTER MY INVOLUNTARY nap and be twice as angry to make up for it. In reality, I awoke feeling heavy and dazed, and did not have the energy to be angry anymore—only heartbroken.

My mother was gone. I would never see her again. I would never again feel her ruffling my hair, never again push her away when she pinched my cheeks. I’d left her alone, and now she was gone.

Attendants came in every morning, lunch, and evening to deliver meals, but I didn’t care.

I drank only water and left the food untouched save for one or two bites when I was hungry enough that it hurt.

The tutor who had been arranged for me visited once and tried to interest me in lessons, and I ignored him.

I lay in bed all day and wept when I was able.

My father stayed away for the first few days.

I hoped that meant that somewhere under all that conceit, he was experiencing some semblance of guilt.

Whatever the reason, eventually he rallied himself enough to storm into my room to yell again about “duty” and “squandering one’s blessings.

” I had embarrassed him in front of his household by making a scene.

I had stolen something like a common thief.

The Antecedent was disappointed, and Darantha was being unbearable, did I know that? He’d expected better from me.

I tuned him out. By now the mattress held a dent where I had curled up on it, unmoving.

The sheets were beginning to stink because the attendants hadn’t dared ask me to move in order to change them.

Everyone had heard about the guard. They whispered to each other outside my door, and I picked up enough to understand that though they miraculously stopped the bleeding that night, the shock had killed him before morning came.

At the tender age of eleven, that was two deaths I was already responsible for.

***

I FESTERED FOR DAYS. I LET MY BODY AND MIND WASTE AWAY. But despite all the time I spent curled up in bed, I slept seldom and, when I did manage, poorly.

I dreamed of terrible things: the chop of a blade, the terror in the guard’s eyes. Sometimes I woke and saw him in my room, a reproachful phantom hiding in the dark, before I blinked and the image dissipated.

The other shadows that had been lurking around since that night in the temple grew bolder.

I imagined they were my Avera ancestors, risen from the mausoleum to come cast a reproachful eye upon me.

Some of them, I noticed dully, were especially insistent on getting my attention.

They would hover at the edges of my vision, stretch out their unsteady limbs as if to tap me on the shoulder.

My ghosts, watching me and whispering things I could not summon the energy to make sense of.

I wondered if my mother was among them, wanting and dreading it so much I could barely breathe.

Eventually, I was too weak to defend myself any longer from the thing that had been waiting for me in the dark.

About a week after my mother’s death, I felt it sit beside me on the bed. I ignored it. My skin crawled and every one of my instincts screamed at me to get away, but at this point I didn’t care. It wasn’t that I wanted to die. I simply could not muster the energy to live.

I thought of all the depictions of the Beast I had seen around the estate, with His great jaw and mane of writhing shadows.

I imagined myself being torn to shreds by His many hands as He pronounced me unfit to serve Him.

I imagined my father walking in to discover my body.

The truth was that if I died here, he would probably consider it nothing more than a minor inconvenience.

No one would care, now, if I was gone. It hurt more than I could stand.

“I would care,” said the thing sitting next to me. “I would miss you quite terribly.”

I turned my face away from the musty divot I had made in my pillow and opened my eyes. The curtains had been drawn back in an earlier attempt to rouse me. But now the sun had set, and my room was encased in gloom.

Except for him.

He was back. My friend—the one that I had dreamed up as a child in Merey to keep myself company, silver-haired and starry-eyed. It felt like a lifetime ago. I hadn’t thought of him in years, and now he was perched on the bed beside me.

“You’re not real,” I said, my voice creaky from disuse.

“Would it help if I proved I was?” he said, eyes shining as he leaned in closer, like the boys I used to see in Merey when they found a bug they liked. He reached for my hand, which was still curled uselessly into my chest, and pinched the back of it. It stung.

I shot upright. “Ow! What the—”