I grit my teeth. "Did you sell it? What did you get this time? Ayole powder?"
Ayole was a drug scraped from the tops of mushrooms that grew on the tallest trees. Griselda had dabbled in it when I was a child, but I thought she hadn't touched it in years.
My mother turns and looks at me. “You know, bread mysteriously showed up on our table last night. I don’t even want to think about what you did to get it.”
“Don’t change the subject. Did you feed them while I was gone?”
Griselda leans back. “I did for the first few days.”
I stand there, breathing deeply, wanting to scream and pull out this woman's hair. The agreement had been that I would provide for the family, and she would take care of my daughters. For most of the last three years, she’s done just that. But I’ve been growing worried.
“What the fuck?” I seethe.
“Don’t curse in front of the children,” she spits back. “Remember, I do this out of the goodness of my heart. You didn’t want to live with their father, and I helped you hide them. No one cared for you. No one let you in except me.”
She’s partially right. Once a slave has a child, they make you stay with the man who sired the babe. There was no way in hell I’d share Thea and Wren, even part time, with the sweating, disgusting man who’d raped me on a cold table.
The stakes only rose when Eneko picked me. He’d known that I’d gone to the breeding pens, but believed me childless. Working all day with a wrapped stomach made me lose most of the softness in my belly quickly, and Hibsej made me wear a dressing gown that covered the marks to sleep with him.
But Griselda doesn’t need to know that. She’s already started to become more reactive and less attentive, which is why I went to find the girls a new home.If she knew her watching them had anything to do with the giants, she’d cast us aside out of spite.
I didn’t realize she would change so abruptly.
"Tell me you won't do it again," I say, my voice low.
“I fed them this morning.”
"Promise. Me,"I demand.
When she turns to look at me again, brown eyes burning, I see the woman who raised me and hated me for it.
“It isn’t easy to raise two young children alone.”
The room spins, and my stomach sours. Words sour on the tip of my tongue, ready to be spit out.
Don’t bring her with you to Enduvida.
My shallow breaths echo in my ears, and my jaw aches from clenching and grinding my teeth.
“I have provided food and peace for you and the girls for the last three years,” I snarl. When I take a step forward, pushing Thea behind me.
Griselda tightens her hands on Wren. I watch her dig her fingers into the taut flesh around Wren's neck.
“Yes. And how have you done that,mija?” she throws back, eyes narrowing.
“I did what you told me: I found work.”
“I told you to become a whore?”
I cross the rest of the way, letting Thea stand with Coco as I yank Griselda’s hands off Wren.
“You told me that you would take care of the girls if I could take care of the family,” I shout.
“Yes. I did. You knew I was the better option because you aren’t fit to be a mother. Hell, I wasn’t either when they made me have you—but I learned. All that learning has benefited these two. Is it so wrong that I seek a godsdamned moment of peace?” Griselda stands up, her knobby joints cracking and her face turning red as she yells back, finger pointed.
“Yes. They need you all the time because they arechildren!” My voice cracks on the last word. Legs that had held strong start to tremble, but not from fear.
"Well, you—“ Griselda starts just as the girls cling to my hips. Griselda makes an irritated sound and rolls her eyes. “Thea, Wren, stop that.”