“There’s a flaw in your thinking,” my mother said. “You say he ended up like this, that he reached a certain point. It doesn’t work that way. Where he is, it isn’t the end. He has the rest of his life to live, and I guarantee you, he won’t be where he is now in five years. Because any fear or respect he claims to have isn’t earned, it’s stolen. It’s forced. And that never lasts. It never leads to a legacy. He is small.”

“Then what are you? I don’t even know what team you belong to. What credits do you have to your name? That you can wear a tight-fitting costume without completely embarrassing yourself at your age? What do you even do?”

“I’m a lawyer of some repute. I’m a mother. I’m a heroine of some capability.”

“A lawyer in a world without any laws, a heroine I’ve never seen or heard of, and as for the mother part, if it isn’t obvious seeing two of you interact for five seconds—”

Damsel made a small scoffing sound.

I could see my mother’s expression change at that. Shock. Like it was somehow a surprise. Because it was a thing? Or that it was that obvious?

“Hey,” I said. “Damsel. My business, not yours.”

Was I defending my mother, interrupting Damsel? Should I have been?

“This is between me and her,” Damsel said, indicating my mom.

“No,” Swansong said. Her hand clutched my arm a little tighter. “When my teammate and our housemate draws the line, respect it. Or you’re disrespecting both of us.”

I saw Damsel pause. She was riding a high, being combative, going toe to toe with my mom. Enjoying it, as bitter as the discussion objectively seemed.

“Fine,” she said.

“What he steals and earns, he doesn’t keep,” my mother said, and her voice was hard, now. While we’d talked and debated among ourselves, my mom had been formulating her argument. I was more than familiar with it, from my times getting in trouble as a teenager. “He might live in a manor for a few weeks or months, but he spends years in jails. He’s never married. He’s never celebrated an anniversary or enjoyed the quiet kind of love, if he’s ever known love at all. He never held his daughter when she was a newborn because her mother was scared to bring up the pregnancy. He, as I understand it, never celebrated a birthday with his daughter that wasn’t in prison.”

I winced at the mention of Amy.

“Some people don’t want those things,” Damsel said.