Goda's Slave (Lesbian, Dystopia, LGBT Fantasy)

Chapter 39: Falling Into the Roots

"Let her in. She's his daughter."

Kanna did not understand the look of confusion on the first soldier's face when Lila said this, nor did she understand the hesitation of the other women who flanked her father inside the room—but Kanna did not ask, did not speak, added nothing.

She turned her gaze instead to the floor as she pressed herself to the inside of the threshold, her mouth tightening, her teeth chattering. The moment she had seen his face, she had wanted to cover her eyes and cry out. At first, she did not know why his features were so abhorrent to her, but when she finally did realize, she found herself frozen in horror, unable to take another step.

It was because he looked exactly like her.

She had not peered into a mirror for a long time, but glancing across the divide between them, she had found that old self from weeks before staring back. Worse still, the man had grown so skinny that she could see the edges of his skull along his brow and jaw, and it reminded her of how her own flesh was similarly just a living coffin for her bones.

She pressed her hands to her face. Her fingers dug into each bend and crevice, like she was molding it with her nails, like she wanted to tear the skin away.

"Kanna."

She heard her name echoing from in the room. It sounded even less familiar to her than it had before, shaped in that deep voice that she barely remembered. It felt like the first time he had named her.

But then a softer whisper landed in her ear from behind, a faint breath that warmed her neck. "You're free to turn around if you'd like. As I said, no one will force you." Kanna felt a hand pressing lightly against her back—a nudge, a caress. "But I urge you not to run away. If you do, you might regret it for the rest of your life."

"I...can't. I...." Kanna let her fingers drop slowly from her face. As the air cooled the water that had drained from her nose and from her eyes, she looked over at Lila. Her lip curled up into a grimace. "No. I don't want to see him. I hate him."

Lila stared at her for a long time, but there was no pity on her face. "Then hate him," she said. "Never resist hatred. Only remember to hate up close, with open eyes, with loving care—so that you know exactly what you've come to hate about yourself in him." She tipped her head up past Kanna, towards the soldiers who stood at the back of the room. "Come out. She wants to see the man alone. Don't worry, she won't harm him...physically."

In spite of their confusion, Lila's status seemed enough to jostle them. When they shuffled out of the room, they bumped against Kanna in the gateway—hard enough that she wondered if it was deliberate—and one of them muttered, "Have it your way, Hadd, but we're keeping the door open. I don't care what strange ideas you foreigners have about family."

It was then that Kanna remembered: the engineer had mentioned her brother, but all of Kanna's half-siblings had escaped towards the mountains before her uncles and cousins were captured. As far as she knew, she had been the only one to stay behind, to follow her father onto the train.

Of course, there were no fathers in the Middleland. There wasn't even a native word for father, so the engineer probably hadn't known what to call him. Kanna, too, no longer knew.

With a final harsh breath, she forced her neck to twist up. She stared hard across the long floorboards that stretched between her and the man; it felt somehow like she was gazing across a canyon at a lone figure in the distance. He was looking straight at her, bending forward with direct focus, casting shadows onto the white table in front of him.