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To avoid thinking about her abduction by the lessers, which he still blamed himself for, he recalled one of his most vivid memories of her. It had been about a year after he’d taken care of business at home and put her father in the ground. She’d been seven.

Rehv had walked into the kitchen and found her eating a bowl of Frosted Flakes at the kitchen table, her feet dangling from the big-girl chair she’d been sitting in. She’d been wearing pink slippers—the ones she didn’t like but had to put on when her favorites, the navy blue ones, were in the wash—and a Lanz flannel nightgown that had strips of yellow roses separated with blue and pink lines.

She’d been such a picture, sitting there with her long brown hair down her back and those little pink slippers and her brow all furrowed as she chased around the last few flakes with her spoon.

“Why you watchin’me, rooster?” she’d piped up, her feet swinging back and forth underneath the chair.

He’d smiled. Even then he’d worn his hair in a Mohawk, and she was the only one who dared to give him a cheeky nickname. And, naturally, he loved her all the more for it. “No reason.”

Which had been a lie. As that spoon fished around in the sugary milk, he’d been thinking that this calm, quiet moment had been so worth all the blood he’d gotten on his hands. In fucking spades.

With a sigh, she’d looked over at the cereal box, which was across the way on the kitchen counter. Her feet had stopped their rocking, the little piff, piff, piff of the slippers on the chair’s lower rung drifting off into silence.

“What are you looking at, Lady Bell?” When she didn’t immediately answer, he’d eyeballed Tony the Tiger. As scenes of her father had flashed through his head, he’d been willing to bet she was seeing the same thing he was.

In a small voice, she’d said, “I can have more if I want. Maybe.”

Her tone had been hesitant, as if she were dipping her foot in a pond that might have leeches in it.

“Yeah, Bella. You may have as much as you like.”

She hadn’t leaped up out of the chair. She’d remained still in the manner of children and animals, just breathing, her senses threading out through her environment, testing for danger.

Rehv hadn’t moved. Even though he’d wanted to bring the box to her, he’d known that she was the one who needed to cross the glossy red cherry floor in those slippers and bring Tony the Tiger back to her bowl. Her hands had to be the ones to hold the box as another school of flakes got sprinkled into the warming milk. She had to pick up her spoon again and eat.

She had to know that there was no one in the house who would criticize her for getting seconds because she was still hungry.

Her father had specialized in that kind of thing. Like a lot of males of his generation, the piece of shit had believed that females of the glymera needed to be “kept trim.” As he’d said over and over again, fat on the aristocratic female body was the equivalent of dust accumulating on a priceless statue.

He’d been even harder on their mother.

In silence, Bella had looked down into the milk and weaved her spoon through it, making a wake of waves.

She wasn’t going to do it, Rehv had thought, ready to kill that bastard sire of hers all over again. She was still scared.

Except then she’d put the spoon to rest on the plate under the bowl, slipped from the chair, and gone across the kitchen in her little Lanz nightgown. She didn’t look at him. Didn’t seem to look at Tony’s cartoon-vivid puss when she picked up the box, either.

She was terrified. She was courageous. She was tiny and she was fierce.

His vision had run red at that point, but not because his bad side was coming out. As the second serving of Frosted Flakes had been poured, he’d had to go. He’d said something cheery about nothing in particular, walked quickly into the hall bathroom, and shut himself in.

He had wept his tears of blood alone.

That moment in the kitchen with Tony and Bella’s second-best pair of slippers had told him he’d done right: The approval for the murder he’d committed