I can see you withering. I am afraid tomorrow I will see straight through you. I am afraid the next, you will be gone.
“I tried to tell her,” says the master of the house. “I whispered in her head. I shouted through her dreams. I told her she must bring him back to me. Or . . .”
Her father staggers, collapses to his hands and knees. His skin so thin over his bones, his body withering before her eyes.
Olivia rushes forward, but the master catches her wrist. “Watch.”
Her father looks up then, and for a moment, just a moment, his eyes meet hers, and he sees her, he sees her, she swears that he sees her. His mouth opens and closes, forming her name.
“Olivia,” he says, and it is the master’s voice, not his, but the sound of it still cracks her open, wraps cold hands around her heart.
And then, as she watches, as her mother watches, as they all watch, her father crumbles, a plume of ash by the time his body hits the floor.
“She should have brought him back to me.”
It wasn’t her father. She tells herself it wasn’t her father, just a mimic, an echo, but her hands are still shaking. The bit of bone sits in the puddle of ash.
“Perhaps I lost my temper then.”
Her mother stares in horror at the empty space. She sinks to her knees on the ballroom floor.
“I did not make you, but I made the thing that did, and I could feel you out there, like a piece of me. A missing bone. You are mine, and she refused to bring you home.”
Her mother presses her palms against her ears as if something is screaming inside her head.
Stop, thinks Olivia, as her mother folds forward, running her hands through her hair, the braided crown now loose, her body thin and brittle.
Stop.
“If she had only listened.”
STOP.
Her mother collapses back into dust, leaving only a sliver of bone on the ballroom floor. Olivia stares down at the ashes, hands clenching into fists. Tears burn her eyes, angry and hot.
And then, the master of the house does something worse.
He brings them back.
A flick of his thin fingers, and the ashes bloom around the bones again, until her parents are on their feet, exactly as they were before, her father reaching down to take up the helmet, her mother watching him with wonder. All the fear and horror has been wiped from their faces. They look to each other, as if for the first time, and the horrible play begins again.
Olivia tries to back away, only to feel armor plate against her shoulders. The wisp-thin soldier blocking her way.
“Do you know what you are, Olivia Prior? You are amends. You are atonement for your father’s defiance and your mother’s theft. You are a tithe, a gift, and you belong to me.”
Her parents drift together on the ballroom floor. Their hands entwine. Her mother leans in to whisper in her father’s ear. Olivia cannot stand to watch it all again.
Why are you doing this? she thinks, tearing her gaze away.
“This?” He sweeps a hand at the ash-born players, and they stop, mid-stride. “This is what I’m offering.”
Olivia shakes her head. She doesn’t understand.
“You are not just a Prior,” he says, stepping toward her. “Here, you are something more.” He looks down at her with those white eyes. “I can shape death,” he says, gesturing to the conjured figures. “But you can give it life.”
Understanding washes over her like cold water.
Her parents turn to look at her. Waiting.
“You belong here with your family. And for a drop of blood on an old iron door, you can have them back.”
Her father embraces her mother.
Her mother reaches for Olivia.
“In your hands, the house will mend. The gardens will grow. You will be happy. You will be home.”
It would be a lie to say she doesn’t want it.
A lie to say she isn’t tempted.
A drop of blood for this. For a family. For a home.
Wouldn’t it be worth it?
You belong here.
She looks down at herself, the way she blends into the grays of this world. This world, where no one but the master speaks, yet everyone can hear her. This world, where she would never be alone again.
Her mother smiles, and she can imagine the color flooding back into her cheeks. Her father looks at her with love, with pride.
Her palms begin to burn.
But they are not her parents.
Her mother was flesh and blood and human, and she is a ghoul in her family’s house. Her father may have started out like this, born of ash and shadow, but he became more. And even though she never met him, she knows he would not have wanted this.