Chapter 13: Imprisonment and Abuse

Vivienne spoke first.

"She took my dress," Vivienne said. Her hand was pressed to her arm where the coffee had caught the sleeve. "I brought her a gift. A burgundy dress, because I thought it would suit her. And she took it into the bathroom and when she came back she said it didn't fit." A pause. "I had another dress in the bag, one that would have fit her better, I was going to offer it next. But she maybe saw this one was more expensive, more refined, I should have thought of that earlier, I just didn't manage to find one two sizes larger in time." She stopped. "I don't know why she threw the coffee. I don't know if it was because she saw Killian and me together outside and she was already upset. I would never hurt her on purpose. She knows that."

Every face in the coffee shop had turned toward Briar.

Briar sat at the table with the overturned cup in front of her.

"That is not what happened," she said. "The dress is something Vivienne gave me on her own, I didn't know there was another one. And the zip wouldn't close. And she said things to me. She said things about my mother and about Killian and she told me to pour the coffee on her first, she kept asking me to do it, she said it was a game and then when I said no she just."

"Briar." Killian's voice was very quiet. "Stop."

"But she said things! She called my mother a"

"I said stop."

She stopped.

Killian looked at Vivienne. "Are you hurt?"

"I'm fine," Vivienne said softly. "It's just a coat."

He looked back at Briar.

"We're going home," he said.

---

He did not speak to her in the car.

Briar sat in the passenger seat with the gift bag in her lap and her scraped palms flat on her knees and said nothing because every time she opened her mouth during the drive she read his jaw and closed it again.

At the house he walked her inside and into the sitting room and told her to sit down.

She sat.

"You are not to leave this house," he said. "Not for work. Not for anything. You stay here until I tell you otherwise."

"Killian, please just listen to me for one"

"She had a burn on her arm, Briar."

"Because she kept asking me to pour it on her! She said it was a game! She said it multiple times and I said no multiple times and then she said those things about my mother and I just." Her voice cracked. "I just lost it. I know I shouldn't have. But she started it, she said it first, why does nobody ever believe that she starts it?"

He looked at her for a long moment.

"I genuinely do not understand what is happening in your head when you make these decisions," he said. "Maybe you really are exactly what everyone thinks you are."

Briar went very still.

"Mary will be here in the morning," he said. "You will do whatever she tells you to do. You will stay in this house and you will think about what you've done."

He walked out.

The door closed.

Briar sat in the sitting room for a long time. The gift bag was still in her hands. The tie clip, wrapped carefully, the most expensive thing she could afford this month.

She put it on the side table.

She did not know why Vivienne had done what she did. She had been turning it over since the coffee shop and she still could not make it add up.

---

Mary arrived the next morning at seven.

She was a small, sharp-faced woman in her fifties who had worked for the Vane household for longer than Briar had been alive. She came in with a list.

"Mr. Vane has given instructions," she said, setting a folded paper on the kitchen counter without looking at Briar. "Morning prayers to the Moon Goddess before breakfast. Evening prayers before bed. Both to be conducted at the window facing east, standing, for no less than twenty minutes each."

Briar stared at her. "I've never done that before."

"That is apparent." Mary picked up the paper again. "Meals will be provided after prayers are complete and verified. If the prayers are deemed insufficient, the scheduled meal will be replaced."

"Replaced with what?"

Mary looked at her for the first time. "Whatever is left over."

---

The first week was disorienting. The second week was exhausting. By the third week Briar had stopped trying to calculate how many hours of sleep she was getting because the number was always wrong and always small.

The prayers were long. Mary stood in the doorway and watched, and if Briar shifted her weight or dropped her arms or let her voice go quiet, Mary would say *again* and Briar would start over. On the fourth night Briar fell asleep standing at the window and woke up on the floor with her cheek against the cold wood and Mary standing over her with an expression of profound unsurprise.

That night's dinner was a bowl of rice with something gray floating in it.

During the day there was cleaning. Briar was given the baseboards, the window tracks, the grout between the bathroom tiles with a toothbrush. Work that took all day and left her hands raw. She ate when Mary decided she had prayed sincerely enough. She slept when Mary decided the evening's obligations were complete.

Three weeks in, she caught a cold that settled into her chest and stayed there. Mary provided a thin blanket.

On the twenty-third day Briar sat on the kitchen floor after a long prayer session and could not get up. Her legs had simply stopped cooperating. She sat there with her back against the cabinet and her eyes burning and said, to Mary's feet, "Why. Why are you doing this. What did I do to you. Please just tell me what I did."

Mary said nothing.

She picked up the dinner tray and set it on the counter above Briar's head. Cold rice again.

She walked out of the kitchen.

But in the hallway, just past the door, she stopped for a moment.

Two years ago Mary had come to work with her left sleeve pulled down to the wrist despite the heat, the way she always did Every time she was subjected to domestic violence.

The sleeve had ridden up while Mary was reaching for something on a high shelf, and the bruising was bad that week. Briar had looked at it. And then Briar had laughed.

Briar was not just stupid, Mary had decided that day. Stupid she could forgive. Stupid was not a choice.

But that laugh had felt like a choice. Briar's subsequent ostracism of her was also a result of this choice. Mary couldn't possibly treat her well.

She walked away from the kitchen door and did not look back.