Mother forces Arien’s stained fingers over the candles. I grab her arm, trying to pull her back. “Stop! You can’t do this!”
Everything happens fast, like a spark on a wick. She turns on me, her face tensed, and slaps me. The sound fractures the air, and the world turns white from sudden pain. I fall against the table, my hand pressed to my throbbing cheek.
As I try to shake the ringing from my ears, Mother shows me the blackened marks on Arien’s skin. “You know what this darkness is, Violeta. The Lord Under will claim him.”
“He won’t. He won’t.”
The candle flares. She shoves Arien forward. He bites back a cry as his fingertips glow bright, haloed by flames.
Mother thinks the darkness in him belongs to the Lord Under—the lord of the dead. That the shadows will call him to us the way he’d be drawn to a dying soul. But Arien is kind and good. The shadows are only dreams. He isn’t the same as the darkness of the Lord Under, or the magic in the world Below.
I grab her arm again. “He’s not some blighted field to be burned down!”
“Leta,” Arien whispers, quiet and desperate. “Leta, don’t.”
But I ignore him. Let Mother hurt me—I don’t care; at least then she’ll leave Arien alone. I brace myself, ready to be struck again, almost hoping for it, but instead she shakes me off and pushes Arien’s hands back over the flames. He scrunches his eyes closed, hisses a breath through his teeth. I stare at them, feeling so powerless, so angry.
I have to do something. She’s going to burn him until his hands are clean. She’ll keep hurting him, unless I make her stop.
On the table is a glass idol, a candle burning at the center. I snatch it up and throw it—hard—onto the floor. It shatters into a jagged star. The sound stills the air.
Mother goes pale and her mouth draws into a sharp, furious line. Incandescent anger sparks through her eyes as she steps over the glass and grabs my wrist. Her fingers bite into my arm, marking fresh bruises over ones left from the last time she hurt me. I let the pain wash over me, glad for it, glad that it’s me and not Arien.
She wrenches me toward the floor. “Kneel down.”
“What—？”
“Kneel. Down.”
I look at the jagged glass, the splattered wax, the smoke from the ruined candle. Arien shakes his head, his expression helpless and furious all at once. There are tears on his cheeks, and his burned fingers are tucked into a twist of his sleeve.
“Mother, stop!” He falters, eyeing the candles, steeling himself to reach back into the flames again. “I’ll do it, I’ll do it.”
How can Mother think that hurting him, hurting me, will keep us safe? At this moment, if there’s anything we need to be saved from it’s not the Lord Under. Not the dark. It’s her.
I feel as fractured and ruined as the shattered glass beneath our feet. But I keep my gaze fixed on Mother’s face. Before she can speak again, before Arien can move, I kneel down. One knee, then the other.
The first cut is a bright shock. I put my hands on the floor, trying not to make a sound as I hover above the shards.
I can’t do this.
I have to.
The glass pierces my knees with a hideous pain that stings all over: my fingertips, my scalp, the soles of my feet. I flinch, but some scrap of pride holds me still. Arien is safe—safe from the candles, from being locked in the dark, from everything. For now.
Mother’s hurt us before, but never like this.
She crouches down and cups her hand against my cheek, her palm incongruously gentle over the place where she hit me. “I’m trying to protect him, Violeta. I’m trying to protect you.”
Her expression and her voice are soft, as though she’s truly sorry to see me like this. And there’s a horrible, treacherous part of me that wants to lean against her hand, to let her comfort me. Tears prickle my eyes, but I blink them away. I stare at Mother, clench my teeth and let more of the glass cut deeper into my knees.
She watches me, unmoving, then she stands up and brushes her hands over her skirts. She crosses the kitchen, and her steps go hollowly along the hall, back to her room. The latch scrapes as she locks the door closed.
Once we’re alone, Arien extinguishes the altar candles with a swift breath. Smoke wisps the air. He helps me move away from the shards, and I curl up on the floor near the hearth with my back against the wall. The room smells bittersweet from the pot on the stove, full of the cherry preserves I’ve made. On the shelf above are empty jars, ready to be filled once the preserves cool, our contribution for the village tithe tomorrow.