The Estate. That Night.
Plum was awake when her father came to her room.
She had been reading, one of the books she kept under the bed, the ones about the moon and the creatures that lived there and the ancient families that had descended from things that were larger and stranger than the world currently contained.
She loved these books with the specific love of someone who finds in stories the version of themselves they can't locate anywhere else, Plum in the books was never the round one, never the one who cried too much, never the one who would make a good wife if someone could look past the rest of it. In the books she was just someone moving through a world that had interesting things in it.
She heard his footsteps in the corridor.
She knew his footsteps. Every child who grows up in a house with a man like Metal learns his footsteps the way sailors learn weather, not because they want to, because the information is survival.
She put the book away.
The door opened.
Her father was shirtless.
Something moved through the air of the room that Plum couldn't name yet but her body named for her, cold alertness, the specific awareness of something being wrong in a way that was different from the ways things were usually wrong.
"Hey father," she said carefully. "Do you think mom will ever come back?"
Metal looked at her. "No. Your mother left because she's a coward."
"But you always said she was strong.."
"She was strong," he said. "And she used it to run away. That's cowardice."
Plum pulled her blanket slightly tighter without deciding to. "Father, why is your shirt off?"
Metal moved into the room.
"Plum," he said. And something in the way he said her name was different, not the dismissive flat tone of the kitchen, something else, something with a specific kind of attention in it that was worse than dismissal. "I'm sorry. But I need a child from you."
The room stopped.
Plum's body understood before her mind did.
She moved to the corner, the farthest corner, the one behind the dresser, putting every piece of furniture she could between herself and the door, and her back found the wall and she pressed against it.
"Father stop." Her voice came out smaller than she wanted it to. "Don't do this. Please don't do this."
"I don't want to sell you," he said. Moving toward her with the patience of someone who had made a decision and was in the implementation phase. "But if you give birth to a child we can sell the child instead. It'll be over before you even feel a thing."
His eyes were empty in the specific way of someone who has removed the part of themselves that would have an opinion about what they're about to do.
He charged.
Plum screamed.
The scythe activated.
Not summoned, activated, the same way Butter's had activated in the south market street, biology responding before decision, the Scytherian survival instinct older and faster than conscious choice. The blade materialized and from it came something else, a woman, formed from abi, stepping out of the scythe's light into the space between Plum and her father.
Plum went still.
She knew this face.
She had a photograph. One. Kept in the book under the bed.
"Momma," she said.
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Metal stopped.
"Velmora," he said.
The woman from the scythe looked at him with an expression that had been waiting to be expressed for a very long time.
"I always knew you were a disgusting man," Velmora said. Her voice was steady and clear and completely without fear, the voice of someone who had already paid the cost of being afraid of him and had decided to spend whatever remained on something more useful. "But your own daughter. Your own child."
Velmora "Plum, I am sorry I left you and Einstera. I didn't haver a choice, If i hadn't ran away when I did he would have killed me and your twin sister."
"How are you here," Metal said.
"I'm not here," Velmora said. "Before I fled, because of you, because of what you did, because of what you are, I inserted my abi into both my daughters. It would activate if you ever tried to lay a finger on them." She looked at him without blinking. "Did you think I left without thinking about them? Did you think I didn't know what you were capable of?"
Metal's face went through several things.
Then it settled on rage.
"You worthless woman." He moved toward her. "If you couldn't stop me from beating you when you were actually here, what makes you think your leftovers can do anything."
He grabbed the abi construct by the throat.
Velmora looked at him as he choked her — not with fear, with the specific sadness of someone who already knew how this part ended and had sent what she could because it was what was available.
She dissolved into abi dust.
The particles settled slowly to the floor of the room.
Metal looked at where she had been.
Then he turned.
"Now," he said. "Where were we."
Plum was gone.
The forest behind the estate was dark and she ran through it without a plan because plans required stopping and stopping was not available. The branches found her arms and her face and she didn't process them because they weren't the thing she was running from and her body had correctly identified which things required processing and which ones didn't.
Behind her the sound of wings.
Enormous. Volcanic. The specific heat displacement of something large ascending through burning air, because Metal's wings didn't just carry him, they burned whatever they passed over, the forest behind him catching as he rose, orange light spreading through the trees and throwing her shadow forward.
She fell.
Her hands found the ground before her face did. She pushed herself up. Got one knee under her. Tried to stand and her legs weren't cooperating and she crawled instead because crawling was still moving and moving was still the only strategy available.
Metal landed in front of her.
He looked down at her in the dirt of the burning forest with the patient expression of someone who had never genuinely expected to be outrun.
"You shouldn't run from your father," he said. He looked at her, at the dirt on her face, at her heaving breath "Well. Really. If you weren't stuffing your mouth with so many cookies, maybe you would have gotten away."
"Father." She was crying now. Fully. "Father please stop. Please."
A bark.
Loud. Sharp. The specific bark of something that had been running for a long time and had arrived at the exact moment required.
Metal turned.
Einstera stood at the tree line in her black wolf form, low, alert, eyes reflecting the fire behind them with the specific light of something that has been trained for exactly this.
Metal looked at her.
"Einstera." His voice shifted back to the flat domestic tone of a man discussing bedtime. "I'm disappointed. Bed time is at seven. Why are you up."
"I heard my sister screaming," Einstera said.
"So?" Metal said. "She's always crying about something."
"You will not lay a finger on her." Einstera's voice was completely steady. "You are disgusting. You have always been disgusting, you're the reason mother ran away with Veldessa."
"Oh lighten up." Metal almost smiled. "One day you'll marry a man just like.."
"No." The word came out with the finality of something that had been decided a long time ago. "I will never marry anyone in the Brothers Trinity. I will marry a Gamer before I ever look at a Hammerian."
Metal's expression shifted. "Don't say that. Gamers. Visionaries. Whimsys. Pathetic art classes. Weak men who wouldn't know control if it hit them in the face."
"Plum." Einstera didn't look away from their father. "Hop on my back."
Plum got up.
She climbed onto her sister's back and felt the wolf form shift under her, settle, recalibrate, the black fur warm and solid and present in the specific way of something that had been training for this and was ready.
"Hold tight," Einstera said.
She ran.