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“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize—” the guard starts.
“Where did they go?” But as soon as I ask the question, I know the answer. There’s only one place she would go. So, I stalk out of that room and, heart pounding, blood rushing, I go to the churchyard.
Sure enough, I find her there, kneeling at the foot of the icon. Her broken god.
“Leave us,” she says to the nurse standing by with the wheelchair, which couldn’t have been easy to wrangle over the path.
I wonder if she was expecting me.
“Go!” I bark at the woman who hurries off.
Once she’s gone, I stand watching my grandmother. She’s collecting pieces of the statue. I’m not sure what she intends to do with them. Her hair is tied into a long ponytail at the nape of her neck and she’s wearing one of her dresses, not a hospital gown. But when she turns her head to look at me, I see the toll the cancer has taken on her. She’s diminished.
How did I not see it for so long? How did I not see the strange, sickly, consumptive-like sheen of her eyes? The hollows beneath them, the wasting away of this once formidable woman.
“I hear congratulations are in order,” she says in that tone I hate so fucking much. She turns back to the task of gathering pieces of the statue.
“What did I tell you about raising a hand to Rébecca?” I ask, reminding myself what she did, what she has been doing, to a defenseless little girl. Sick or not, she is not to be underestimated.
She doesn’t answer for a long moment but brushes dirt away from one of the blocks of stone. It’s the bastard demon’s eye.
“It’s a rock, Salomé. Nothing to be revered. Worshipped. Nothing to nearly murder your own granddaughter for.”
At that, her back stiffens, and she slowly stands. I see the walking stick at her side then and try to remember if I’ve ever seen her use it before. I think it used to be our grandfather’s but I can’t be sure. I do see the Delacroix insignia with the broken crescent moon stamped into the polished brass handle. I’m so fucking sick of it.
“I know what you did,” I tell her.
She faces me, studying me before answering. “Do you?” she challenges. “I only did what I had to do in order for you to act.”
She isn’t sorry. She isn’t remotely sorry.
I step toward her. She doesn’t back away, and although she may not stand as tall as she used to, the look in her eyes reminds me she is no weak thing, sick or not. This is a woman determined. Obsessed.
And I understand something.
“No, Salomé. You did it for you. You did it because no matter how cruel, no matter who it costs, you will do anything to cling to your petty little existence. Well, it’s over. You’re finished.”
She takes her time to process this, to think of her retort. She’s unapologetic. Unhurried and calm as ever. “I told your wife a little while ago that I, too, had been foolish once. I, too, had to learn the hard way.”
I am surprised by this turn in conversation, but Salomé continues.
“Did you know that my brother, Tobias, also bore Shemhazai’s mark on his back?”
“Tobias? What the hell does Tobias have to do with any of this?”
I know he lived in this house before my parents came but I don’t know much about him. Apart from the fact that he let it go to ruin. Based on snippets of overheard conversation from my parents, I suspect he was an alcoholic, but hell, this family will do that to you.
“But when it came to the Wildbloods, well, he simply refused,” she continues as if I haven’t spoken at all.
He was a Penitent? Tobias?
“We’ve paid for my brother’s weakness,” she continues. “For your father’s in marrying that who—”
“She was my mother, and you will respect her in death even when you could not in life.”
“When he married so young,” she continues with a mocking curve of her lips. “He too bore Shemhazai’s mark.”
“They’re fucking birthmarks. They don’t mean anything. Get that through your thick skull!” I try to keep my hands at my sides but am finding it increasingly difficult.
“They are the symbol of Shemhazai’s strength. After he was stripped of his wings, he did not cower. He did not go quietly. He made himself a god.”
“Do you hear yourself?”
“The only flaw in judgment on Shemhazai’s part was to choose Tobias as Penitent and not me. If it were me, I’d have done what he required. I’d have made the whore pay the Tithe.”
“You’ve lost your mind, Salomé.”
“My foolishness, my part in this, it came with my brother. I was young then. Easily dismissed. Did you know that I was born in this house?”
