I get home at midday with blood dried at the corner of my mouth and my cheek still hot from the shelf.
The house smells like rose soap and hot tea, and Selba's friends are already laughing in the front room.
Selba: There she is. The stain. Took you long enough, you useless bitch.
Selba: My hem's coming loose and my guests are here. Get on your knees and fix it.
Selba: And don't look at them. You're not worth looking at.
I kneel on the rug with my needle, and the floor is hard under my knees the way it has always been hard.
Kiva: Does it even know how to sew, or does it just chew the thread?
Dessa: It sews. That's all it's good for.
They laugh like I'm not a person in the room.
Selba: Mother says you're to drink this. It's for your nerves.
She tips the cup before I can even reach for it.
The tea is hot and bitter, and it runs down my neck and into the cut on my lip and stings like salt.
Selba: Oops. Clumsy me.
Selba: Look at that. Even the tea doesn't want to be inside you.
Kiva: Waste of good tea on a wolfless freak.
I keep my hands on the hem and my eyes down, because if I cry they win, and I've decided I'm not giving them that.
Selba takes a fistful of my hair and pulls until my neck bends back and my eyes water.
Selba: Look at me when I'm talking to you.
The slap lands on the same cheek and splits my lip open again, and I taste blood, hot and thick.
Selba: There. Now you match.
Selba: One word to Mother and she'll sell you to the first man who'll take a wolfless bedwarmer. You'd be good for that and nothing else.
And I know she isn't lying, because Mother has said the same thing with her hand locked around my wrist.
Dessa: Come on, let's go before the smell sticks to us.
They leave, and the door clicks shut, and I stay on my knees a moment longer because my legs don't trust me yet.
The cup is still half full on the table, dark and bitter.
I pick it up and pour the rest into the plant by the window.
The plant never called me a stain and it never slapped me. It just sits there and grows.
Let it have the tea. Let it be stronger than me for a while.
Then I wipe my lip and think about the archive, where Luna Thera asked for me by name and the oldest book in the pack waits for my needle.
Gilda's bruise is still on my arm from training, and it's proof I'm getting stronger, and nobody in this house knows that.
I'm not nothing. I'm just quiet about it.
I rinse the cup, and I go back to the archive before anyone can call me again.
They think kneeling is all I'm good for. I know better, and that's mine to keep.