“Little Flower,” Her voice was soothing.

  Threatening.

  Maud opened her eyes.

  The room around her was dark. The hearth was only casting shadows that danced above one end of the table. The rest of the house was shades of black that her eyes painted colors over from memories. That wall is gray stone because she knows it is. The open bedroom door and the walls of it are brown wood. The pelt she had finally decided to pull from under the dresses and sleep with is black, but her pillow is tan. Only because she knew that’s what their colors were. But she couldn’t see them. All she could see was that faint glow and the puff of her breaths.

  “Little Flower,” that voice again. Above her.

  Maud looked, pulling the pelt and her knees tighter to her chest. Nothing but darkness. Her eyes weren’t placing colors anymore. It was just black now. The cold touched her face like ice being rubbed across her skin. She didn’t shiver. The air leaving her nose was a cloud of translucent white. She searched.

  The ceiling was darkness. A flicker of shadows, a blink of the hearth glow, and her vision formed shapes. Beams. Nothing. The far wall. Her blood was thinning. Shapes were forming. Stones. The floor had arms, jagged lines, ripples…dresses in the pile. Nothing. The clouds of her breaths were thinner but forming quicker.

  She sat up. Her fingers clutched the pelt. Her toes clutched the sheets. She shouted for Ma.

  Silence.

  Alone.

  “Little Flower,” She sounded disappointed. She sounded close.

  Maud’s hair shifted on one side. She shivered and jolted the other way. She tugged the pelt and blankets with her.

  The hearth splashed into a flutter of ashes and shadows.

  No shapes.

  No shadows.

  Beams disappeared.

  The only stones were the icy ones her back pressed against.

  She held onto the pelt. She could smell Draka on it. She could smell her own fear.

  She tasted her tears.

  “Precious…”

  She searched up. It was hard to breathe.

  “Little…”

  She searched side to side. Alone. No one knows. No one can help.

  “Flower…”

  She closed her eyes and let her ears see for her.

  “Why won’t you be our daughter?”

  Maud threw the covers off and ran.

  Alone.

  She didn’t open her eyes.

  Fight.

  She didn’t try to see through the darkness that had engulfed her.

  Run.

  She let memory carry her. She turned when she knew she should. Twisted into a chair when she expected to strike one.

  Fight back this time!

  Reached over the table when she knew it would be there.

  She grabbed the knife. There was no wince when it sliced her finger on her search for the handle.

  She slammed the knife into the table and carved. She struggled against a whirlwind.

  “He loves you so dearly.” The voice soothed into her ear. Above her. Below her.

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  Next to her.

  Something was grabbing at the knife handle.

  She braced with both hands. Her teeth ground together. She pulled the knife through the wood.

  “I shall love you just as dearly.”

  The pulse of her blood spilled sticky, cold, and wet over her fingers. Her hair whipped her face. She carved. Everything was spinning. Lamps. Dresses. Chairs.

  “But if you love your mother…”

  She was frantic, now. Nearly there. A few more letters…Maud’s eyes were open. Darkness, thick as the clogging weight of the whirling noise in her ears broken only by the voice. By that voice. That perfect, musical, soothing, sensuous voice.

  Chairs struck walls.

  Maud dragged the knife harder. There was more resistance. Another hand over hers now, squeezing hard enough that it was rubbing her knuckles, spreading that sliced finger open until it was gushing. The pain was fire and needles through her.

  Lamps shattered.

  She screamed. This time, she could hear it. But she didn’t let go of the knife as she pulled to make that final line. One last line. One final jerk…

  She was frozen. Unable to move.

  Silence.

  She felt the punch of each syllable on her ear as Lilith said into it, “You’ll tell her not to pursue the divorce. Or I will come. And this time, I won’t play with my food.” Lilith kissed her cheek with lips warm as hot coals. Her whisper cut deeper than a blade ever could when she said, “You’re only alive so long as he considers you thusly, Little Flower. The moment he doesn’t…”

  Maud concentrated on her hands crushed around the knife handle. All she had to do was pull. All she had to do was make one last mark. One last line.

  “I will stop hiding you from Him.”

  Maud dragged the knife with both hands hard enough that it carved over the edge of the table with a loud grunt.

  The hearth was still burning bright with the fire she had kept up from before she went to bed. The kitchen and most of the room was lit by its glow. She held up the knife, fighting against the pain of the sliced finger, ignoring to the constant flow of blood trickling down her arm as she twirled her way around the room.

  The walls were walls. Beams of the ceiling were beams. The loft was boxes and crates. The chairs were around the table. The bedroom had the bed and furniture untouched. Maud knew the stickiness was her spilt blood on her toes and the soles of her feet.

  The house was warm.

  She let the knife down. The slice was deep through her finger and had torn nearly into her palm. She looked around her at the mess she had made from it.

  Though she made sure to wrap her finger with a cloth first, she quickly dipped her quill in one of the thick drops of blood and wrote on a parchment before she forgot, ‘No divorce or she’ll attack.’ Maud bit the feather in thought before marking, ‘Hiding me from who?’

  She left the parchment on the table when she went to put water over the hearth to boil. As she filled the bowl with vodka she had kept from the hunting supplies, she eyed the note.

  Draka’s daughter, Lilith’s step-daughter.

  It wasn’t chills that crawled her spine as she unraveled string into the vodka. It was worry she felt as she threaded the needle with one hand and her teeth, her other hand cradled against her already bloodied chemise. Confusion. Anger.

  Maud leaned her head back and tipped the bottle of vodka into her lips for a long gulp. It wouldn't help the pain, really. Just make her care less about it. Then, biting down on the handle of one of the wooden spoons, she dipped her hand into the bowl. Her scream was muffled, and it wasn’t only from pain, which wasn’t as bad as she expected, though it was terrible. The choice was taken from her, wasn’t it?

  She plucked her hand out and lay it on the table. It was shaking from the pain. Shaking like it once did. Shaking like she always did. She was still biting the wooden spoon. She took up the needle. She bit down harder.

  Who would she be hiding me from? Maud pressed the needle into her skin. The scar this will leave behind will be nastier than her mother’s neck. But she wanted the bleeding to stop before she went to anyone about this. Before she went to Draka.

  Not her mother.

  Not Father Hagen.

  Draka.

  Never again.

  She groaned rather than screamed around the teeth digging into the wooden shaft. She pulled the thread through and looped it for the next stitch. Another swig of vodka.

  Never again will she haunt our dreams. She pressed the needle into her finger. The pain of the next stitch made her stop and rock in her chair.

  Never again will she come for me in the night, in my bed. She slapped the table, shouting around the wooden handle she bit down on. Her back arched in the chair as her feet stretched, but she kept her wounded hand pressed on the table. The bowl splashed.

  I’m going to carve it on every door, every brick, every bed in this house. Maud took another swig before replacing the wooden handle in her mouth, threading the next stitch with a muffled growling scream.

  Crudely carved Celestial letters on the table, filling with vodka and blood, formed the ancient oath made by Lilith herself to God, revealed to Maud by Father Hagen. One look at it, and she is bound by her oath to turn away in peace.

  ‘LILITH.’

  Maud finished her stitching and grabbed the knife, ignoring the syrupy blood squeezing between her gripping fingers.

  “One day,” Maud thought out loud as she began carving into the bedroom door, “Your Husband will bring you to judgment, as is his oath…”

  “…And my Mother will make sure that judgment is passed. That is my oath to you.”