She suspected Micah felt the same, now. It was a rush, being loved after such a long drought, and she knew he would inevitably wonder—as she had—if he could ever reciprocate properly. For the longest time, Viv had worried that Sasha had gotten a bad deal, ending up with someone who grumbled in the mornings and was unused to casual affection. But she’d been wrong. Micah would understand that, too, in time.
Now she was heading back to the house where she’d lived largely alone for most of her childhood. The house where Sasha, already big and loud even as a child and nursing a broken finger, had rushed in, demanding to see “that scary witch girl who fixes people.” It was close to the Compound’s entrance, near the cave where Zev used to live with the old headman, and Viv stared at that cave for a moment as she stood at her mother’s door.
Sasha leaned around her to look. “Don’t think anyone’s living there now.”
“I wish I’d realized it earlier,” she said. “What Evgen was doing to him. How he was controlling him.”
“You were a kid,” Sasha pointed out. “You didn’t know.”
That’s what everyone said. They hadn’t known Evgen was forcing Zev to fight his battles in the pits. They hadn’t known Viv spent most of her childhood alone. But they must have suspected. They saw the signs. They just didn’t want to admit it.
Just like Viv didn’t want to knock on her mother’s door.
She rapped on the wood. The sound echoed in the cave, and she heard footsteps, the sound of something scraping against cloth. She reached for Sasha, and behind her back, out of sight, he held her hand as Daria opened the door.
“Vivian.” It was unsettling, how alike they were. it was like looking into a mirror twenty years in the future: they had the same sharp nose, the same blond hair, the same narrow face and wide eyes. But there were more shadows under Daria’s eyes, and her expression always looked tight, wary, like she was being hunted. “You’re pale. Are you well?”
“Is that a joke?” Viv had meant to be as civil as possible, but the frustration pushed out of her like a blast of errant magic. “You know I had a relapse.”
“A… I’m sorry, what?”
Viv squeezed Sasha’s fingers tight. “A relapse, mother. I was sick. Again. As always. The way I am once or twice a year now. Like I’ve been since I was a baby.”
Daria’s brows knit. “I thought it stopped when you married Sasha. You never said—”
“I didn’t need to say…” Viv took a deep breath. “Mom. You know I’ve been sick. You had to know. You’ve been coming by every time, trying to get me to open the door even though—as you’re aware—I’m never really in a good place to walk to the door, let alone when I’m sick. How do you know? Do you track me? Check when I visit the Compound? When I do spells for people and when I stop?”
Daria was silent. Her face had gone white, and she clutched at the doorframe, fingernails digging into the stone.
“Well?” Viv felt like she was fifteen again, begging her mom to do anything, say anything, for it all to make sense.Why do you hate me? Why didn’t you give me away to someone else?But, as before, Daria offered no answers. Just silence and that strange, tight fear behind her eyes.
“I’ve never come to your house,” she said. Viv frowned, but before she could speak, Daria reached for the door. “Go home, Vivian. If it upsets you so much, the next time you hear me? Don’t answer.”
She tried to shut the door, but Sasha grabbed it before it could close. “What do you mean you never came?” Viv asked. “I heard you. We heard you.”
“Go home. You clearly don’t want me around. I know I made a mistake—”
“A mistake?” What did her mother think was a mistake—treating Viv badly, or bringing her into the world at all?
“But this needs to end. Go. You have your own family now. A better family.”
Viv felt anger boiling inside her. “And you don’t want to be a part of it. You never did. You never cared. You never fought for me like Sasha did, like Micah, like Zev. It never mattered to you if I lived or died.”
Her voice echoed in the face of her mother’s ringing silence. Daria stared at her, and there was something new in her expression, a deep, aching pain that grated against Viv’s outrage.
“I lost you before you were born,” Daria said. Sasha only had a moment to get out of the way before the door shut with a resounding thud.
“Fuck you,” Viv said. She kicked the door, cursed, and beat her fists against it instead. “Fuck you!”
“Oh, Viv.” Sasha reached for her, and Viv turned into his hold, grabbing him around the shoulders. She held him for a minute, breathing into his neck. “She doesn’t deserve you. Let’s go home, huh? Bet Micah’s got dinner ready for us.”
“Why did I think I’d get anything out of talking to her?” Viv started off down the corridor, shame making her blush hot. “It never works. It ends like this every time.”
“She knows how to piss you off.”
“Yeah, she’s a real expert at…” Viv came to a stop. “You’re right. She said that to get me angry. Why? Why did she want me angry?”
Sasha looked lost. He always did when Viv analyzed her mother’s motivations. He didn’t have a family he needed to second-guess—his clan was as straightforward as he was.
