Eyes Like The Ocean | A Culled Crown Novella

Chapter 3

The Kevlar House.

Erydia.

He had once told her she had eyes like the ocean.

She took his word for it, since her home was too far inland, to have ever afforded her a very good glimpse of the sea. Leighton had seen it though. His father's farm was in Minden, a city that was right along the water.

He had sailed on ships; traveling for days at a time around the outer islands, and into Gazda ports where he helped his father deliver meats and trade goods. She loved to hear Leighton's stories and often pictured herself on that boat with him.

But she struggled to imagine the ocean, the way it must move and flow so endlessly. 

Perhaps comparing irises to oceans was a normal romantic thing to say. Maybe it meant nothing. Leighton tended to be silly and say charming things just to make her blush. Still, Viera thought that, judging by the oil paintings she'd seen in the galleries of the art district, the comparison was fair.

She thought of the ocean as she walked up the front stairs and stepped into the Kevlar house.

The foyer was dark. The only light the soft glow of early evening as it filtered in through the glass panels around the front door. The house was always uncomfortably warm, even in summer. Viera was just about to turn and go upstairs to her bedroom when her father stepped into the foyer from the parlor entrance.

The first words out of his mouth were, "Have you heard the good news?"

Viera schooled her face into a pleasant smile. "The Culling has been announced." She nodded back to the front door, to the newspaper boy still shouting outside. "I heard on my way home."

Her father stepped towards her, his arms outstretched. It took every ounce of strength Viera had not to recoil, not to dart for the door—to run for Leighton. The floury smell of freshly baked bread enveloped her as his arms did. He hugged her to him, too tightly, too forced.

The Kevlar's didn't know how to love each other like this. Her father had never hugged her, he'd never kissed her cheek. It was not his way. His arms around her felt so much like a cage, she could almost hear the sound of a lock clicking into place.

She did not return the embrace. She didn't know how.

Viera had half expected her father to be drunk when she returned home. He'd started to day-drink after her mother's health had started on its most recent decline. Whether it was sadness or self-loathing that kept the bottle in his hand, she didn't know. Anger was the emotion she saw most, seconded only by disappointment and malice. The alcohol didn't quell his temper, it only strengthened it.

She could barely remember him before he'd started to drink. Viera associated his drinking with her mother's accident and the subsequent health problems that had arisen because of it. All her life, he had always taken wine with his supper, but his consumption had increased as time went on. Maybe he had always been that way and her mother had just hidden it better before, Viera didn't know.

She supposed it didn't matter.

It had been a long time since her mother was healthy, almost ten years.

Viera was eight years old when her mama, Lorna Kevlar, had fallen down the grand staircase of their house. Lorna had been seven months pregnant at the time. That baby would have been the first Kevlar son in a line of three daughters. Her father would have been so proud.

Proud enough to possibly forget the disappointment his youngest daughter was. It might have even been enough to distract him from her completely. The Culling and her part in it may have mattered less to him if he had a son to dote on.