Thwack.
Ryatt doesn’t notice a thing either.
But I stop for some reason, my hand shooting out to my brother’s arm so I can stop him too. “Hold on.”
“Why?” he whines.
I scratch my arm. “Just stay here for a sec.”
He frowns, and I know he’s going to argue, but luckily, one of the horses comes over to the fence just then and distracts him. He climbs up on the fence and starts to pet it, and I immediately hurry forward. But when I pass the stable, there’s no one inside.
Thwack.
I whip my head to the right, my feet carrying me forward.
And then they jolt to a stop.
It’s not the stablemaster. It’s not a crop. It’s not a horse.
It’s my father, standing over my mother, the two of them against the outside wall of the stable. I can’t figure out what I’m seeing right away, so I just stand there and watch.
But then my father’s hand comes down, and he slaps my mother so hard that she falls down onto the ground. His mouth is moving, hissing out angry words, but I can’t hear them.
Shock freezes me in place.
There’s a loud sound in my ears. Or maybe the sound is in my blood, because I can hear it and feel it at the same time. My back itches. My arms feel like ants are crawling all over them. My veins feel cold. Even my head feels weird.
For a second, I’m just standing there like a statue, feeling and hearing. My blood, my skin, it’s so loud I think I might pass out.
But then my father raises his hand again. My mother ducks her head. And I get so mad that it mixes with the noise and all of it just…bursts.
Before my father can bring his hand down again, I’m screaming at him. “Stop!”
I move faster than I can think, and then I’m shoving him with all my might. There’s a look of shock on his face as I push him, but I look at him with hate. So maybe hate is stronger than shock, and that’s why I’m able to make his body slam into the stable wall.
But…I didn’t think hate was strong enough to bring down a wall.
The wooden stable was built solid and strong, but somehow, the wall collapses as soon as he hits it.
The wall falls in, making my father fall with it, and I watch as the wood disintegrates, tiny splinters puffing up into the air like dust as he goes crashing to the ground in a heap. The noise in me is now the noise of part of the roof caving in, and the rest of the wall going with it, burying my father beneath the boards.
“Slade!” my mother calls, scrabbling backwards with fright.
I start to go to her, but my father’s fist punches through the scraps, and he snaps his fingers, making his power lash out, breaking the wood on top of him with a crack. It falls away from him as he gets to his feet, and the look on his face makes all the blood drain from mine.
“How dare you!”
He’s furious. Black eyes stuck in a netting of bloodshot veins that make him look even angrier. I know he’s going to strike me next, but I don’t care. I don’t care, so long as he doesn’t hit her again.
He steps toward me, and I brace myself, feeling like all the coldness in my veins drops right down through my feet, and my father lurches to a stop. He pauses, staring at the ground around me. “What the—”
I follow his gaze. The grass around my feet isn’t green anymore. It’s the pale, dead color of wheat. There are patches of dirt where I can see weird looking lines drawn through it, and those same black lines have spread up what’s left of the crooked stable like ugly roots. The wood itself looks like it’s been in hard weather for years and that a single exhale will knock the rest of it down.
“Slade…”
At my mother’s voice, I look over at where she’s still crouched on the ground, but the lines didn’t touch her. She’s on the only spot of ground where the grass is still alive and green. Her gaze isn’t on my face as she watches me with wide eyes. She’s studying my neck, my arms, my back.
Right then, it sinks in that I hurt. All over.
My father spins toward her, but I jump in front of her. I’m breathing way too fast and feeling way too short, but I’m not going to move. I’m not going to let him hit her again.
“No,” I tell him, and my voice is the last thing that’s loud, because everything I was hearing inside of me has gone quiet, and I’m suddenly really tired.
Behind me, I feel my mother grab my leg and try to push me away, but I ignore it. Father has taken the cane to me before, and I was fine. I can handle it again because I’m not a baby. I want to tell Mother this, but then Father strides to me and grips me by the shoulders, his eyes wide.