Page 51 of House of the Beast

Six shifted slightly, moving closer to me as if to seek shelter.

It seemed he did not feel comfortable joining his once mother—which obviously disappointed Euphina, but it warmed an old, spiteful part of me to think he considered me safe instead.

“We met soon after Maximus was chosen to be First Hand. Zander was very angry back then,” she continued, her eyes still flitting periodically to her dead son.

“I will admit we shared that anger—House Carrine does not garner much favor from certain members of society, despite all the contributions we make. I had a fiery temper as a girl and did not appreciate such treatment.”

On her side of the couch, Sevelie picked at her fingernails, looking uncomfortable.

I could tell she saw something of herself in Euphina.

She, too, was angry in her own way, and had found refuge in confiding in my father.

Perhaps she was finally beginning to understand that this was not the special bond she had imagined it to be.

“I shared ideas with him many years ago, ideas I have let go of since,” Euphina said.

“I knew Kugara’s history—even the parts the court liked to keep out of their books—and Zander was fascinated by me.

” A resentful smile twisted her face. “Or rather, he was fascinated by what I could tell him. About the days when the Despot Queen first summoned the elder gods to our world. He always said, ‘She made them so afraid they couldn’t wait to kill her—men and gods alike.’ It was our favorite topic of discussion: how to lay low the court and make them afraid again.

“But soon after that, I had Ephrem.” Here, her eyes went helplessly again to Six, who shuffled uneasily at the attention.

“I never thought I could love someone the way I loved that boy. He became my life. I was happy to stay in House Avera, to let go of my rage and start anew, as long as I could be with my son.”

Her voice turned rueful, her head tilting and her eyes wide, a silent plea for him to recognize her. I glanced down at Six. He clutched at the hem of his frock as if for comfort, his face turned pointedly away.

Euphina wilted. Her mouth trembled, and I wondered if she would beg for her son to look at her again. But all she did was take another steadying breath. Her eyes met mine, hardening.

“Zander’s interest never waned,” she began again.

“He was obsessed with those ideas we’d talked about.

He wanted to be better than any other Avera vessel before him, and it only got worse after Kaim was born.

House Metia had already decreed that the next Pilgrimage would not take place until Maximus’s new heir was already an adult.

Kaim’s connection to House Metia meant his position was practically set in stone.

I tried several times to convince Zander to let go of his ire, to give his attention to us instead.

” Her lip curled. “It didn’t work, obviously. ”

I found myself snorting in something like understanding. My father not having time to dote on his family was old news. “So, he was already a heartless son of a bitch back then.”

“Hmph,” said Euphina, clearly displeased with me but saying nothing to refute my insult.

“He was... cold. Especially after Ephrem didn’t pass the Beast’s muster.

I loved our son regardless—it did not matter to me that he was not chosen.

Zander, however—I think that pushed him over the edge.

Our relationship was distant, and I did not want to give him another heir for him to ignore.

I suspected he had been unfaithful to me even before that.

He often found reason to have business in other places—even backwater shitholes like Merey. ”

It was my turn to shift uncomfortably. I felt an instinctual urge to defend my hometown—which didn’t make sense, as I had never particularly liked it there.

It was simply because she had spoken of it with such disdain.

But I wanted her to continue more than I wanted to fight, so I swallowed my retort.

“I could have forgiven him even that eventually,” said Euphina, pointedly not looking at me. “But then one day... he took Ephrem out of the estate. I thought little of it at the time. I was only relieved that he was paying attention to our son. Ephrem never returned.”

“The accident,” said Sevelie quietly.

Euphina threw her head back and laughed, startling us both.

“Accident! Yes, Zander told me that. An unfortunate fall when they were walking home along the mountainside. As if I wasn’t the one he used to confide in, about the Despot Queen’s ambitions.

All the things she had done to pursue them—including sacrifices of the flesh.

He murdered Ephrem. But who could I tell back then, without convicting myself in turn?

And now you find yourself in a similar bind.

” She gestured serenely at me. “Tell the court of Zander’s ambitions, and risk them detaining you both—or keep it quiet, and keep yourself free of trouble?

You did not come across this information without going through a slew of complications for it, that much I can tell. ”

I narrowed my eyes. We had not told her of what happened to Olissa Goldmercy yet—but it seemed she had put two and two together and drawn her own conclusions.

“A sacrifice?” Sevelie repeated weakly.

“Of his own flesh,” Euphina confirmed. “Father and son.” She looked at me. “Father and daughter.”

My hands gripped the seat of the couch. A sacrifice of his own flesh.

Was that what he had needed me for? What he had done to his own son?

I had not thought my disgust for my father could climb any higher, but it seemed I was wrong.

I had always known he was a killer—but there was a difference between taking lives in service to one’s nation and murdering one’s own child.

I looked down at Six, who had been listening to all of this very quietly, and wondered if he thought anything of it.

If he remembered anything. I imagined a face just like his twisted up in terror as my father ended his life, and felt sick.

“For what?” I asked grimly.

“I couldn’t say,” said Euphina. “It has been a long time since he confided in me. But of all the things we used to talk about, he was always most captivated by the Despot Queen’s attempts at transcendence. By the idea of ascending into godhood.”

It was preposterous. A heresy. The separation between deity and man was not to be breached. My father had always been so fond of calling out any insults against the elder gods—why would he do something like that?

The answer presented itself to me too easily. He wanted power. More than anything, more than even his respect for the Beast, he wanted power.

Sevelie put a hand to her mouth, looking pale.

“How?” I demanded. “Even the Despot Queen could not manage it, with all the people whose lives she gave to the gods. How does my father think he can achieve this?”

“I do not know,” said Euphina. “But I suspect there are many secrets in the umbral plane I am not privy to. I am, after all, just a daughter of a House once disgraced by its connection to the old sovereign. If Zander’s found some other knowledge that he believes will guide him on this path, then he has certainly not shared it with me. This is all I can tell you.”

Silence took hold in the wake of these revelations.

Euphina sat stubbornly proud, but something about her seemed deflated, like she had been holding all of this inside her for so long and now had finally let it out.

I had my hands clenched in my lap and my bottom lip between my teeth, worrying at it.

My father had wanted to bring me into the umbral plane to sacrifice me.

Had that been his goal from the beginning?

From the moment he had taken me from my mother, had he been planning to kill me?

I had known there was no love between us, but even then, it hurt to think I mattered so little to him.

It hurt even more to think that I had been wrong—that my plan to take the House from him might have been for nothing after all.

If his goal had never been the glory of First Hand, if he had wanted something else all along, then how was I to sabotage those plans without even knowing what they were?

Sevelie had begun to quietly wring her hands together, pale and stricken.

Out of us all, she seemed to be the most affected.

All her desperate hopes about my father had been utterly crushed—he truly was not the man she had imagined him to be.

I had thought I would feel vindicated when she finally realized this, but I simply felt sorry for her.

She was the one who broke the silence first.

“You should withdraw from the Pilgrimage,” she said to me, mouth in an unhappy but determined line. “It’s not worth the risk. We’ll tell someone about Lord Zander, and Olissa Goldmercy. Six can be proof of his misdeeds.”

I knew it was the sensible thing to do. She was right about the risk. I imagined how things might play out: my father being arrested, detained from the Pilgrimage, and questioned. We might have enough evidence to even convict him.

Perhaps that would be enough to ruin his plans and make up for my lost revenge.

But even as the thought crossed my mind, I knew that it felt wrong.

I had not come all this way, endured all these years of hardship, in order to hang back and be nothing more than a spectator to my father’s demise.

And there was no doubt that I would be withheld from the Pilgrimage as well, for I was now embroiled in this plot.

Then, the only suitable heir to House Avera would be Kaim.

I thought of all the blood I had spilled, the guilt that had almost crushed me earlier.

I thought of my promise with Aster. I could not give up now, so close to the end.

“No,” I told her grimly. “I will not withdraw.”