I am completely calm. That is the most frightening thing I have ever been.
Not frightening for me. Frightening for everyone else in this room, which is a distinction I am only now understanding I'm allowed to make.
The warmth moves up through my throat.
I feel the collar before it reacts , the woven-metal band at my neck, household rank, the thing I've worn for so long I stopped registering it the way you stop registering the weight of your own hair. My father put it on me when I was eleven. Not as punishment. As category. This is what you are in this house, in this pack, in the order of things. I've slept in it. Trained in it. Scrubbed floors and polished cutlery and stood in kitchens while celebrations happened in the other room with the collar sitting at my throat like a small, perma
