“You should have some. I’m about to speak ill of the dead. Sugar helps with the bitter.”
She and Doolittle were separated at birth. Every time I suffered a near-death experience, he brought me syrup and claimed it was iced tea.
The older woman leaned back, gazing at the garden. “When I first saw you, you were two years old.
You were such a cute, fat baby. Big eyes. Then Voron left and took you with him. I saw you again when you were four and then some months after, and then again. Every time I saw you, you got harder and harder. I’d braid your hair and put you in a pretty little dress and we’d go to Solstice Day, or out to our coven, and you would be so happy. Then he’d return and make you take it all off, and send you out to hunt feral dogs with a knife. You’d come back all bloody and sit by his feet like some sort of puppy, waiting for him to tell you that you’d done well.”
I remembered that, sitting by Voron’s feet. He didn’t praise me often, but when he did, it was like I’d grown wings. I would’ve done anything for that praise.
“Finally Anna Ivanovna called me to come and see her. You were seven then and she was an Oracle Witch at the time. Old, old woman, frightening eyes. I took you with me. We visited at her house and she looked at you for a while, and then she said that it wasn’t right what Voron was doing to you. It never sat well with me, and I’m not one to hold my tongue, so I cornered him that night over dinner and told him so. I told him that you were a little girl. An innocent. That if you were his own flesh and blood, he wouldn’t be treating you this way.”
If this was true, she stood up to Voron for my sake. Few people would. “He made me this way so I would survive. It was a necessity.”
Evdokia pursed her lips for a long moment. A shadow darkened her eyes. Something inside me clenched, as if expecting a punch.
“What did Voron say?”
Evdokia looked down at her knitting.
“What did he say?”
“He said that you weren’t his flesh and blood, and that was the whole point.”
It hurt. It was the truth and I’d known it all my life, but it still hurt. He was my father in everything but blood. He cared about me, in his own way; he . . .
“I told him that the Covens would take you in,” Evdokia said. “He said no. So I asked him what did he think would happen when you and Roland finally met. He told me that if he got lucky, you’d kill your father. If his luck ran out, then Roland would have to murder his own daughter and that was enough for him.”
A sharp pain stabbed me somewhere right below the heart. My throat closed up.
It wasn’t true. That conversation never took place. Voron loved my mother. She died for me. He trained me to make me stronger so that when the final confrontation came, I’d hold my own against my real father.
Anger vibrated in Evdokia’s voice. “I told him to get out. I thought he’d cool off and I’d persuade him to give you to me. But he vanished and took you with him. The next time I saw you, you came to ask for a favor in the Belly of the Turtle. I almost didn’t recognize you. It’s not what we wanted for you. I know it wasn’t all him. Kalina had ruined him, but I blame Voron all the same. It was his fault as well.”
I struggled to speak, but the words wouldn’t come out. I felt helpless, as if I were stuck in the middle of some void and couldn’t break out of it.
“You were one of ours. We would’ve taken you in and hid you and taught you, but it was not to be. It gnaws at me to this day that I couldn’t get you away from him.”
My mouth finally managed to produce a sound. “What do you mean, one of yours?”
“Because of your mother, of course.”
I stared at her.
Evdokia gasped. “He didn’t tell you, that pridurok. Kalina, your mother, she was one of ours. An old Ukrainian family. Your grandmother’s sister, Olyona, married my uncle Igor. We’re in-laws.”
The world jumped up and kicked me in the face.