Sat around the table were the women, all dressed as though they were attending a dinner party.

Sat between Saorise and Beryl was Ophelia. The girl looked up at Netta only once before looking back down at her plate for the entirety of the meal. The question that hovered in Netta's mind was answered when she saw the way that Sia reached over to seemingly playfully flick at Ophelia's hair.

When Ophelia flinched, Netta felt a cold wave of recognition wash over her.

She shut her eyes and tried to calm the rage inside of herself.

"Is something the matter, child?" The eternally youthful Hera asked it from the head of the table.

Netta, who was sitting at the opposite end of the table, clenched her hands. She felt the darkness coiling itself inside of her, kept in check only by the force of Ashwood, who clung to her mentally. He saved her from certain suicide at that moment, launching herself at one of her Sisters.

This anger in her, it was so potent, so beyond what she had ever experienced before. Was this the feelings of a Monster she was experiencing, something that she had repressed so violently and for so long that she had forgotten about it?

Netta looked up at her mother, a smile at the ready on her mouth. "I was just wondering when Sia had decided that she wanted to play chutes and ladders exclusively."

Sia laughed then, her head thrown backwards. An arm strayed over to Ophelia's hunched shoulders, drawing her in closely.

"Jealousy? Oh my dear, don't worry, I always have time for family -"

Hera interrupted, her gaze piercing her eldest daughter. "You will do nothing of the sort. Her body is mine to do with as I please and I won't have your perversions wasting precious time."

Sia looked down, the look on her face as though she had been struck. Her arm had come off of Ophelia's shoulder.

Beryl giggled, returning to her busy work of brushing out her Barbie Doll's hair.

Hera sighed and turned her attention back on her middle child. "I give my eldest child free reign and this is how she repays me. Neith, darling, maybe it's time we come clean on a few points. First, let's talk about your parentage. Purely speaking, you don't have much in the way of human blood in you -"

"Oh, I know."

You could have heard a pin drop in the house. Indeed, the sound of Beryl dropping her doll on the hardwood floor did ring off of the walls in the room.

Hera stared at her daughter, something inperceptible in her gaze. A flicker on unease, fear? No - Netta recognized a look, of being cheated of something she was certain had been hers.

"What, pray tell, did you discover on your lonesome, Neith?" She reached forward with seeming lazy ease, taking a sip of her red wine.

Netta copied her mother, reaching forward and taking a sip of her wine. She hoped, as she sat the glass down, that neither of her sisters could see the shaking of her hand.

"I had a heart to heart with someone that I thought had died a long time ago. He was quite eager to tell me a few things. Things that you neglected to tell me."

Hera's smile was almost warm, if not for the coldness in her dark eyes. Her eyes flicked in their gaze as they looked down at her daughter's hand before flickering up to her eyes.

A look of recognition was on her face then and Netta cursed the shaking in her hands.

"And how was he, after all of these years of being forgotten about?"

"He was in good humor."

"Is he here with us, now?"

"Oh, yes." Netta could feel the impression, in a similar fashion as Ash, occupying a space in her mind. A faint call, barely perceptible, but nevertheless there.

"Hmm." Hera took another sip of her wine. "So how was it, fucking your own father?"

Netta was too stunned by the vulgarity of her comment to answer.

Hera continued, her eyes busy as they seemed to be examining the contents of her wine glass. "Mind you, your older sister did infect you with some... incestuous predilections, undoubtedly, but I wonder how that strong Monster that you've married took to, what I have to imagine, was quite the awkward three-way..."

Netta felt her sisters' eyes on her, could feel the question floating in the air.

She cleared her throat and forced a smile.

"The funny thing, mother, the hilarious thing, is that in order to become bonded to a Monster, that you need to share closeness with them. Sisters, I have something to confess to now. I am not fully human."

The sound - the gasp from Erwinnia and the sudden, surprised gaze of Ophelia - almost stilled Netta's nerve. She continued, clearing her throat.

"My father is Thornleaf, a rather ancient Monster. I bonded with him through the simple act of being fathered by him."

"How -" Someone asked it, only to be cut off by Hera.

"As it turns out, Neith was my little science experiment. All you need is the deaths of a handful of Witches," Hera said, running an index finger lazily along the lip of her wine glass. "and to know the right words, then you just need to have sex with a Monster. A disgusting prospect, but a necessity. I laid with two separate men for your sisters, but I like to think that humans are on a higher level than their ilk."

Netta twitched. "Tell me, was it my father who told you to do that?"

Hera laughed. "I would just as soon take orders from a shit-covered beast than to listen to Thornleaf. The creature made me aware of the legend, surely, but I decided to go through with it. And when the creature began to being to act as though It knew better than me - trying to be sneaky in how It was trying to indoctrinate you - I banished It." She laughed, the sound like broken glass in Netta's ears. "I suppose once opportunistic, always opportunistic."

Netta silently took another sip of her wine. She was trying to hide her anger and could feel Thornleaf's own indignant anger.

"So you plan to kill me now?"

Hera blinked at her, a mock sense of innocence in the unnaturally youthful set of her feature. "But of course, daughter mine."

There was a pause. When Netta did not say anything in response, Hera continued. "Your life will serve our kind well. And Coven Oleander will go down in the historias to come as the single greatest, the phoenix which rose from the ashes of our misery."

For a moment, all Netta could do was stare at the flickering, robust rippling of the flame on the candle immediately behind her plate.

She had felt an increasing loathing for her mother, in light of what she had learned. It gripped her heart, the rage that beat at her was difficult to control.

And without Ash's presence in her mind, it seemed to spiral through her, wrathful, burgeoning.

Hera interrupted Netta's shock in an upbeat, warm voice. "Oh. And the Monster who fathered you never bothered to tell you the other part of the legend, now, did It?"

Netta allowed her chin to bob up, kept her eyes trained on the light, irises of her mother's eyes as she spoke. "He told me plenty."

Things that break my heart, the more than I think about them.

Hera finished laughing and was wiping at tears in her eyes. Smirking, she asked, "And what did that washed up boot-licker tell you?"

"My birth was destined to be the one who brings back a rebirth of Monsters in the world."

Silence. Then, laughter from Netta's two biological sisters and then, finally her mother.

In the midst of the laughter, Hera said, "You can take that fool at Its word, but I can assure you, it's all bravado. I suppose now would be as good a time as any. Tell me, do you know what day it is?"

When Netta did not answer, Hera answered, "We are standing on the precipice of a new year. My final blow as the one that will being a new world order to this messy, broken mass we call our world will be in time to usher in a new year. Tell me, though, Netta, what you meant."

Netta smiled softly, running a hand down the curve of her wineglass. "Do you think I'm at all like any other Monster?"

Hera sighed. "I would have your tongue cut out for lying, if only I didn't have need for your body as a sacrifice. I may grow old, but I can sense desperation quite easily."

Netta forced a smile on her face. "You can't do any such thing."

Reverberating in her mind were the ominous words of her father. The only way to save her is to kill her.

Hera spoke, returning to her earlier calm. "Oh, I assure you, it's very possible. Tell me, pet, would you be against walking with me for a moment, before you make any foolish, rash decision?"

Netta turned her gaze up to her Mother's clean, very perfectly shaped face.

As soon as her gaze passed by her mother's over sharp eyes, she found that she could not bear to continue to look into them. Turning her gaze to her lipsticked lips, Netta saw as the crimson red line parted for a moment, a flash of white teeth.

Her mother continued. "What's this discomfort? You cannot be so... ambivalent to your own kin. Come now, I insist," She stood up then, the sound of her chair against the wood of the floor a wild animal's screech of pain. "we will go for some private time - well, as private as you can get, with your little friends in your head."

Netta wanted to tell Hera no, but no sooner than she thought it than she felt herself standing up. She was pushing the chair in, stepping around it, past Calliope until she was standing before her beaming mother.

"Come, pet, come with your Mother for one last walk."

"Oh, now," Hera cooed, her hands coming over to clasp onto Netta's shoulders, steering her, propelling her out of the room. "Let Mother assuage your fears."

Hera pushed Netta through the hallway, pressing her into the living room. She stopped moving only when Hera held her hand up.

And then something occurred to Netta. Something that made her skin feel as though it were going to crawl off of her bones. She said, "I am - I've been your Familiar."

The horror, the disgust, that Netta felt when she said it, was unlke anything that she had ever felt before.

The wide, triumphant smile on Hera's face chilled Netta further. "Yes! Gold star, my daughter understands her predicament now!"

Netta collapsed then, falling until she was half splayed on the love seat. Her mind spun, and she clutched her hands to her head as though in a vain attempt to stop it.

"I - I don't understand - we never - that is to say, I never -"

Hera interrupted once more, walking to the other side of the room. There, she seemed to be busy looking through the cabinet of books.

"No, we have most certainly never... mmm, what's the best description of it? Fucked." She did not turn around as she said it, but she paused, the word lingering in the air like a freshly bloodied knife. "You came from me, so I skipped that aspect needed. You were born to serve me, it was why you were born."

Netta struggled, forced herself to sit up. No matter how she tried, she could not seem to settle on the loveseat. Throwing an arm over the arm, she said, "That doesn't make any sense." Netta reached up, clutched at her throat. "I have my own Familiar -"

Hera chuckled, her hands busy as they fluttered over the spines of books. "That you do. Do you ever. But," She seemed to find whatever it was that she was looking for, her hands working quickly as they pulled a book loose from its companions. "you make a logical fallacy that should be easy to step over. Even given your... predilections for mental weakness."

She turned around then, holding the book out with a flourish. "Here. I know you haven't wanted to give any thought to your place here among us. You've been doing great work of avoiding us for a great many decades. And you've missed so much."

Hera threw the book that she had been holding, and it landed in Netta's lap.

Netta grasped the book in hands that seemed to no longer move of their own will, turning it so that she read the title - "Family Memories".

Netta closed her eyes, and felt, briefly, the touch of warmth in her mind - two voice, one of her husband's, and the second was her father's. They broke through the wall that kept them silenced, if only for a moment.

Their words meant nothing to her, but the warmth they shared flowed through her as she watched her hands moving of their own accord, fingers flipping through pages of photographs.

The first were ones that Netta easily remembered - the first photos taken of the Coven's members, when Netta was a child herself. In the first black and white, unsmiling photographs - things that she remembered had been long ordeals to take, with the sisters all in their uncomfortable formal dresses - there were Hera, Calliope, Saorise, Netta and Beryl.

As Netta flipped the page, she saw first one orphaned girl, then another. In one photo, brown and white, there were three little orphaned girls, bearing the same expression that the rest of them did.

Every one of the girls looked lifeless, as though they may as well has been mannequins or dolls.

Netta shuddered, the memory of how too accurately the photos told of a stiff, quiet house. Among the two women who oversaw the children, it was obvious in each photo who stood powerful over the rest.

Hera, in decadent clothes that fit her ageless body perfectly, always stood in profile to the camera, a Mona Lisa smile planted on her lips. It was always as though she knew more than everyone, the camera included, could ever know.

Netta's hands flicked, taken over as they were by a will that she loathed.

Hera said, "Do you know how many Covens have had the prosperity that we've been allowed? Do you know why we got family memories, the ability to find your Sisters?"

When Netta did not speak, Hera continued. "Why it is that while others were forced into exile for fear of the hunting of our kind by the Humans, I pushed us into an era of prosperity?" Hera breathed the word out. "Sacrifice."