The house of Venis was quiet when I shuffled inside, the dusty floors untouched in the months spent away. Was it truly a surprise? The quiet settled around me like a curtain, and though I had spent countless nights in pitch black tents and god knows elsewhere, I wanted a light on - as if the light could drive away any lingering ghosts in the hall.

I dropped my bag on the ground with a careless thud, not having to move in the shadows of the house any longer - though my feet tiptoed against the wall as if He were alive to shout at me. Was there a point in conceiving a child that you did not want to remember existed?

I shook my head. He was dead, she was gone, and I was thinking to myself again as if she could respond. Perhaps Booker was right when he said that I was insane.

I trailed down the hall as I traced my dagger behind me, scratching lightly into the dusty walls though I stopped upon the dark oak door left shut months ago. I had closed it in my escape from the night He died. I did not look back, not even then. I could have turned and never opened the door again, but a part of me that I once would have blamed Rastra for opened it with a quivering hand.

The blood was still stained on the wooden floor in manic splatters, for He had not died easily. I had not expected him to try to kill me back, but a part of him must’ve forgotten that I was not Wellin. The child who loved his father died almost a year ago with bruises around his throat, leaving only the bad one, the one with yellow eyes and a wild glare that had always unnerved their father.

If I looked in the ashy fireplace in the back of the room, I knew that I would find the bloodied scissors. When Norn dropped dead after a long, agonizing fight, I had been too tired to think of hiding them. It wasn’t as if anyone in the city would bother looking for his murderer.

That’s what I had thought. Fuck, I was stupid. 

“You truly are,” is what Rastra would have responded with. My heart lurched as I thought of her again and again, thinking of her voice whispering just barely in my ear, as if she were constantly lingering over me. I could imagine the white hair moving weightlessly, the same yellow eyes burning like acid compacted into a glare. Eternal. I wanted to believe that she saw us as friends, that I wasn’t just a tool for vengeance. 

And again I remembered the drow bastard that dared to join us so late in our travels, as if he ever belonged. Vasteri had never met her and yet he had dared to speak the loudest about her. I should have killed him a second time. 

“Does the parasite in your body love you?” He had asked on one lonely night in our tavern room. Someone had fucked up the bookings and forced us to be in the same room, though I soon opted to sleep on the roof. Vasteri had not spoken to me in any harsh words - until he saw my plans to bring her back. Something had made him snap, something beyond the fact that I had attacked him once before. 

I could not speak to Rastra as I could have once before, though sometimes I received vague feelings in the pit of my stomach - breaths of intuition, hints of something that she could have known. It had immediately told me that something was wrong with Vasteri.

“Do not speak to me as if you are something natural,” I said coldly, watching him pace about the room as Norn would have. I gripped my dagger tighter, sizing him up. He was small. It would be easy to take him down, to even toss him out of the open window behind him. Vesteri flinched at my words but his pink eyes were empty. He was good at lying. “Something raised you from the dead. Something is sustaining you.”

He gave me a confused look. “I never died, Rue. Whatever you think you see in me, it is not the same as the thing you let corrupt you. Were you a killer before she gripped your soul tight enough to blind you?”

Something feral overcame me that was not a spirit and I grabbed the sheer fabric of his stupid shawl, slamming him into the paneled walls with a thud. He squeaked in surprise, grabbing my hand with one that I swore was white for a moment. White eyes met mine that took my breath away. I was not hallucinating. I could not be. I was not crazy - no matter what he said. I tried to remind myself that bards were liars, that they would willingly glamour themselves to startle someone.

I remembered his question, but I did not remember the answer. Rastra would have known, but she was gone. “You don’t know either of us. This is our body. I let her in.”

Vasteri’s brows furrowed before he dared to touch my jaw, his hands like ice to my skin. I think I saw a thousand ways he died before he ever spoke. “This is your body. You force yourself to become the haunted house with intruders. She is nothing but an intruder. She would hate you if she could take your body and live again.”

He was the only one who knew, but something about him and the secrets I knew he kept left me soft. I breathed out the confession as I released him, looking at the floor. “What is hatred but adoration?” 

My father had said the same phrase when I last told him that I hated him, and suddenly the words felt vile. I felt as though I were a step closer to being him, but I was perhaps never that far away from such a fate. 

Vesteri had laughed bitterly, leaning against the wall as he adjusted his shawl. I knew that we could never be friends, then. “She does not adore you.”