Exquisite Poison (Original Draft)

Chapter 71 - A House of Usher

A noise in the kitchen made Netta want to leap.

Beryl cried out, clapping her hands.

In the next moment the kitchen door swung open and the world fell away from Netta as she smelled the pungent, overpowering smell of a perfume that she recognized all too well.

The woman sat down at her seat at the head of the table, gracefully throwing her knee over her leg. Her dress was not on par with Sia's, but it demanded respect. Grey, perfectly tailored and full of straight lines and rows of buttons perfectly aligned. Her hair, a pitch black, tied up in a bun that drew attention to a face lightly dusted - just enough so as to not dare suggest whimsy or a detraction from the mostly smooth light tone of her skin - by soft, yellow freckles.

Deep green eyes swept Netta into a storm that, for a moment, led Netta to believe that she was in a nightmare. Her face, her body belonged to a fit, elegant eighteen year old, but it was those eyes that revealed a darkness belying a greater age.

With deep red lips, Hera Oleander smiled at her middle daughter.

"I'm so glad you came to join us. Of your own free will, no less. No fleeing from one of my natural daughters, when the chips are down." She paused, then turned to gaze at Sia, an uncomfortable smile pressing her lips. "Be a dear and let the poor thing speak."

Sia smiled fully at her mother. "Of course." She turned her gaze over to Netta, raising her hand to snap her fingers towards her.

Netta cried out as she felt something akin to a malevolent energy ripping out of her. She shuddered, wrapping her arma around herself, the perverse impression that whatever her older sister had used to control her felt like she had been dived into.

Barely fighting back tears, Netta said, "How?"

Sia interrupted sharply, barking, "Show respect to your matriach, wretch!"

Netta tried to find courage, tried to recover her earlier will from somewhere.

"Mother, how - how are you - how can you be here?"

Hera's gaze flicked over to her eldest daughter and smiled indulgently at her.

Hush, Saorise." Her voice was soft, but beneath it Netta heard an almost hidden tone that made her skin crawl. It was like she was soothing a child with her words while smacking a blunt instrument in her hands.

"Dear child," she said, turning attention abruptly to Netta. "you aren't overjoyed by the return of your own mother." She smiled then, indulgent at first, then feral. "I could not be more proud of your instincts if I tried."

Netta felt a moment of shock that she could not place. Then it came to her.

She realized that not once growing up could she recall a moment in which Hera had ever given her a moment's mention of pride in relation to her.

Had she spent her whole childhood wanting it, craving it?

Now, at the sound of her mother's praise, she only felt sick. Could it be Ash's influence on her, or was it something in the way that her eyes had widened when she said it, the momentary flick of her tongue again her lower lip?

Hera continued. "We had a feeling that you would try to flee, when your Sisters found out that we had left two runts out in the woods." At her words, Netta felt a chill run through her, a shaking that she could not suppress. "Lucky for all of us, you decided to show a moment of clarity and you came to us."