The Reckless Oath We Made(18)

“Good morrow. Slept ye well?” I asked, upon finding my parents breaking their fast.

“Well enough,” my father said. “That CPAP may save my life yet.”

“If only because I won’t be tempted to smother you with a pillow,” my mother said.

“And the lady? How fared she?” I dared not speak her name, for she was still an ember to me, and I felt the warmth of her presence unseen.

“She had a hard time getting the little man settled down,” my father said. “He was pretty upset.”

“They must be exhausted, and the news about her sister isn’t great,” my mother said. “They found her car abandoned near the Nebraska border.”

“Her sister yet liveth?” I believed not that my parents possessed sure knowledge, but I longed to hear they held some hope for my lady’s sister.

“Well, it seems to me that if they’d done something to her they would’ve left her with the car when they ditched it. So I think that’s promising,” my father said.

’Twas my habit to bathe ere I broke my fast, but as I went down the passage, Lady Zhorzha opened the door of the guest chamber and stepped out. She wore naught but a blouse and her braies. I would spare her my gaze, but mine eyes caught upon the sight of her bare legs. Her right thigh was covered in black markings that graved her pale flesh. I knew not why. As a punishment? As a claim upon her?

“Oh, hey,” she said. “I was going to take a shower, but if you need the bathroom first, that’s cool. I can wait.”

“My lady.” I would assure her that she might do as she wished, but words came not to my tongue. Fearing that I gave offense, I bowed to her, but she retreated to her chamber.

Before my staring eyes, as she turned from me, the marking upon her shank gained the form of a fantastical beast—the hindquarters and tail of a dragon. In the strike of my heart, she leapt from ember to flame.

“Scarred like a pagan,” Hildegard said.

“Like a pagan priestess.” Gawen was right, for there was power in such graving.

In the bath, I opened the spigot and chastised myself for the heat in my blood. Hildegard lashed me, saying, “Art thou ashamed for thine eyes’ offense?”

“I averted my gaze,” I said.

“Wert thou pure of heart, thou wouldst not need to avert thine eyes. Thou couldst look upon her naked without shame.”

I protested not, tho ’twas untrue. I might do no such thing with a pure heart.

“She is thine to protect and no further,” Hildegard said, but the Witch said naught.

Gawen laughed and said, “The lady inflameth thy liver. Thou shalt have no relief but by thine own hand.”

Sooth, he was right.





CHAPTER 11





Zee



People say, “Stay as long as you need,” but they don’t mean that literally. Most people don’t even mean it past a week. No matter how good a guest you are, how cheerfully you help out around the house, eventually, your host starts to frown at the pile of blankets you try to keep out of sight when you’re not actually sleeping on the couch.

Even with LaReigne, I sometimes felt like she was giving me that look: Oh, you’re still here, sitting on the couch, waiting for me to go to bed so you can go to bed, even though I’d like to finish watching this movie.

Except for the year I was with Nicholas, I’d been living like that since I left home. Even before that, I felt like an invisible guest in Mom’s house. Our house had always been cluttered with her stuff, but it got a lot worse after Dad went to prison. By the time LaReigne graduated from high school, Mom was off the deep end into hoarding. Like if she couldn’t keep LaReigne at home, she was going to collect stuff that couldn’t leave her.

LaReigne went off to Seward County Community College on a cheerleading scholarship, while I stayed at home trying to keep Mom’s stuff at bay. My living space was a twin bed, while the rest of my room got taken over by boxes of collectibles and books and craft projects. I had to start keeping my clothes in a canvas bag hung on a hook from the ceiling above my bed. Otherwise, I’d come home from school and have to dig it out from under whatever new treasures Mom was “just storing” in my bedroom.

When the sink faucet stopped working, Mom wouldn’t let a plumber in the house, and we couldn’t take showers, because of the stuff stacked in one end of the tub. I’d fill up a bucket from the kitchen sink to brush my teeth and take what Mom called a whore’s bath with a washrag.

Then one day at the beginning of my junior year, I came home from school and, after squeezing through the gap in my bedroom door and crawling over the beaver dam of clothes and magazines, I found that my bed had been taken over by three plastic bins of old bridesmaids dresses and half a dozen cardboard shipping boxes. Mom had put them there because my bed was one of the last empty spaces in the house.

At first my friend Mindy and her family were cool with the fact that I was “having trouble at home,” but that only lasted a week. Then I was out on my ass, toting my sleeping bag back to my mother’s house, where I slept one night in the hallway, wedged in between the wall and stacks of magazines all the way up to the ceiling. I couldn’t even turn over, so I laid there all night like a mummy with my arms tucked across my chest, listening to mice scurry around.