[A content warning: This part of Agnes's life is very dark, dear readers. Please bear that in mind if you choose to read further.]

Captain Dremmer did not expect his wife to live a life of leisure; he was a military man, and discipline was his chief concern. Tana might have managed cooking, cleaning, mending, and sewing on her own for herself and her master, but now, the captain was a married man. More comforts would be needful to suit his status; there would be more guests, more social obligations; his wife would require petticoats and dresses and chemises to keep her looking trim for him.

There was more work to be done than one woman could manage. I found all this enough of a challenge beginning the first full day of my marriage, but it was at dinner that night when my main duty as a wife was made clear: to bear a child.

"If we have a son, Wife, we shall name him Rem, after my father," Aroc told me, spearing a cube of pork with his fork.

I sat beside him. The weight of my inescapable future had settled around my shoulders, stifling me. The first night in his bed and the first day trailing behind Tana attempting to learn the running of a household—something for which I had never been prepared, even in the smallest measure—had left me overwhelmed.

I did not care what our son would be named. I did not care if we had a son at all. I opened my mouth to say as much with a spark of the rebellion that once had come so easily to me, but as I tried to shape the words, I found they would not come.

Aroc tilted his head at me, his gaze flitting down to my open mouth. "Are you quite alright, dear?"

I met his gaze, suddenly terrified. I stood up. He, a gentleman, stood too, dabbing at his mouth with his napkin. He frowned at me as he set the napkin aside. "I have not excused you, Agnes. Sit down."

I stood there for a moment, wanting to run—wanting to leave the house, leave him and go anywhere—but as these thoughts raced through my mind, I found myself battling an urge to do as he said. As the seconds passed, I could not stand against it; my limbs moved without my consent, and I sat, my hands quivering on the edge of the table.

At first, I thought it must be the command of marriage. I had vowed to be obedient to him, and now I must. Then, I remembered when once Dannie had controlled me in just such a manner, and I grappled with the terrifying mystery.

Aroc gave me a look of mingled disapproval and curiosity as he, too, sat. "Nerves, dear? There's no need to be anxious. Soon enough, we shall have a son—and many more children besides, I hope."

The thought of children was not what frightened me, although I certainly had no wish to have them. I was so frightened of the strange command he seemed to have over me, though, that I simply said, "Of course, dear. And we shall name our son Rem."

I knew nothing of Aroc's father, and did not care to ask.

None of my nights were my own. Aroc had given me a chamber to myself, but he knocked each night at sundown as I was combing my hair. None of my mornings were my own, either; Tana came early with cold water for my basin, almost as soon as the sun was in the sky.

My only solace as I dressed for the day was that my hands were only hands, even when I washed my face. From the first day after my wedding day, I had been left in peace. I was so relieved, that first day, to see nothing but pale skin when I dipped my hands into my basin—no webbed fingers, no scales—that I stood alone in my room and cried.

I could not make sense of it. The transformations came and went. I could not afford to let my guard down; any day, I might slip into a bath and change into the monster that lurked inside my skin.

Although Aroc loved to listen to me play at my harp, there was little time to practice on my own. I was not averse to sharing my music with others, but not when they greedily took it for themselves; to play for him in the evenings felt wrong, felt like standing on a stage and stripping off my clothes. It was the only thing that was still partly mine—my music.

I struggled through the rudiments of cooking, battling a fear of hot pots that I'd had ever since I burned my hand as a child. Tana helped me as best she could. Little that I turned out pleased Aroc. Eventually we traded, and Tana took over in the kitchen while I handled the sewing. But the first shirt I tried to sew for my husband was wretched work, and I threw it in the bottom of my clothes chest to hide my ineptitude, focusing instead on the plainer work of mending.

That ugly shirt marked the first day of the dark times of my marriage, still so new. It was the first of many days of pain and fear. With Aroc's impatience and his exacting nature I was familiar, but when I came into my room to find him kneeling there with that shirt in his hands, I saw another side of him altogether.

"Husband," I said, trying to hide my surprise. I saw the shirt clasped in his hand and fumbled for an explanation. I had been ill ... My needle was bent ... What would make him believe that I could do better than that terrible stitchery? The crooked collar was an embarrassment.

"I came to make you a gift," Aroc said. He gestured to a gown lying on the bed, a modest thing of dark blue cloth with gold buttons like those he himself wore. "I grew curious, as a husband will. As is my right, I went through your things, wondering what else you had brought in your trousseau—perhaps something pretty I had not yet seen you wear. It is my house, after all, and therefore, these are my things."

"Of course." I could not lie to him; it was impossible for me to speak a direct untruth to him. I had learned that since our wedding, and it was no use trying again. The fabricated explanations dissolved on my tongue. I would need to be honest and tell him I was a poor seamstress. "What a handsome dress, Aroc. Thank you. I shall wear it often."

"Whose is this?" Aroc stood, holding forth the crumpled shirt. The brass buttons twinkled in the candlelight.

"It's yours, Aroc," I said. I couldn't meet his eye; I knew he was displeased with me, and I had come to fear his displeasure. He had a sharp tongue. I looked at his feet. "I know it is not much. I shall do better. I hid it away because I was ashamed. I have not had much practice—I was always fonder of the harp than the needle." I tried to smile at my self-deprecating joke.

I was blinking up at him through tears of shock and pain before I knew what had happened. The hot throbbing in my cheek told me that he had struck me, but I could not grasp it, not at first.

Why would he hit me?

I had told him the truth.

I was sprawled on my knees, tasting blood in my mouth where my tooth had cut my cheek. I sat back, hard, onto the floor. "H-husband—"

"You lie! Do you think I do not know where this shirt came from? You wretched trollop!"

He threw the shirt at me. It hit my face and flopped pathetically into my lap. When I opened my mouth to speak again he raised his hand, leaning forward as if to hit me a second time. I cringed back from him, raising an arm to shield myself.

No one had ever struck me in my life. Not my father. Not my mother. Not any servant. The first person to raise a hand to me was the man who had sworn to honor and protect me only a few months before.

"It's from that urchin of yours, the one who gave you that turtle. You look surprised, Agnes, but I know. If you could not hide your wanderings from your brothers, how could you have hoped to hide it from me? You were no blushing virgin."

I was immobilized by cold shame. I could not speak. I couldn't deny what he said, for it would have been a lie.

He stood over me, looking down at me with an expression partway between jealousy and disgust. "I will not stand for this. You are my wife, and your affections are mine. Leave any thoughts of that boy behind. You do not wish to make me a jealous man. Mark my words, Agnes."

I did not know what to do. I was shaking so badly I could not have stood on my own two feet. I whispered, "Yes, Husband. I am sorry."

I do not think he heard the last word; he strode past me so quickly I felt the wind from his coat, his heavy boot heel grinding the shirt into the floorboards. I blinked stupidly at it, at my frail effort to please him which had gone so terribly awry.

He did not come to me that night. It was the first and only night I ever longed for him to come. What weakness there was in me then, to wish for what I hated; but I knew it would be a token of his forgiveness, and he did not grant me that.

The next morning, Tana wordlessly gave me a poultice for my bruised cheek and hurried me along through the day.

As the weeks went on, nothing changed. I could not disobey the captain in anything. It was completely beyond my power; I could think against him, but I could not act against him. Even had I the ability to rebel, I would not have had the will. Not after I knew he would raise his hand to me.

I had thought I had known unhappiness before; this was a new thing. This was torment. At last I understood what may have driven my mother to disembowel my father in a fit of bloody rage. Had my father had the power over her that Aroc had over me? Was to become a wife to become a slave, unable to act or speak of one's own will? Had my father beaten her, as Aroc beat me?

I hated the person I had become. It is an ugly, cruel thing indeed for one to be disgusted with one's own self. I wished I could be strong, could run away. But I could do nothing but obey.

It was worse still when the babies came. I knew only the rudiments of childbearing, so even the smallest part of mothering was frightening to me. Yet I was with child within that first unhappy year. And then again. And again.

I wondered how my poor mother had managed to carry her four doomed children until they had any shape at all. Mine, I lost before they were recognizable; they clawed at my insides like monsters and left my body over the course of days. I only knew they were children because Tana was there to help me through it.

My husband lingered on the periphery, greedily waiting, hoping the creatures would cling to my insides. He was always disappointed. There was nothing in what came out of me that was like a child at all; just blood and blood.

I knew what he thought; he never told me, but he made it clear enough that soon, I began to think it myself. I was not even woman enough to give him a child.

Had I been my own woman, I would have left off the attempt. I found no pleasure in it, and the suffering seemed to be such a waste. But I could not bar the door to my husband, and he would have his son. He made me feel selfish for my failures, and more selfish still if I indicated in the smallest way that I needed a respite.

I felt I knew my mother then as I never had before.

I heard Tana speaking to my husband one day as he sat at his breakfast alone. I had been in the yard, tending to our small garden, but I came in quietly enough that I caught the end of their conversation.

"Is there hope for it, then?" Aroc was asking.

"I know not, sir. I've never seen a woman take on as she does; it's as if her body can't bear it. She ain't made for childrearing; it's as if her blood runs thin, and none of 'em nest proper at all."

I knew a normal woman would cry. I paused a moment, judging my heart, trying to sense if tears hid somewhere deep inside me, but I could not bring myself to feel anything but a dull apathy as I set my basket of filthy potatoes on the sideboard.