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Elizabeth used to press her ear up against the door of her father’s office and eavesdrop on the inner dealings of Arbalest Arms Company. Since the beginning, it had been made clear that she would never inherit her father’s position at Arbalest. In Texas, a girl was only good for marrying off, after all. The honor of succession was reserved for one Tommy Lamar, who Elizabeth had been informally betrothed to since about age nine.
Her father had molded her into the perfect girl, the paragon of wealthy womanhood, but he still thought everything she did was worthless. Etiquette? In front of him, she might as well have been raised in a barn. Book-learning? The most perfect essay about his personal hero, Old Hickory, was better off as kindling. Appearance? She was never pretty enough, never poised enough. Eventually she’d stopped trying. She swore, never left the house without trousers on, and ignored everything the teachers tried to impart on her. What good would knowing Bill McKinley’s philosophy do her now, anyhow?
But she kept eavesdropping, kept learning. When her father left for business trips she’d enter the Arbalest factories herself and talk to the workers. She knew the books as well as the accountants. Screw Tommy Lamar.
Across the hall from her father’s office, on a white marble plinth, was a winged statuette of some ancient goddess—she’d never cared to learn the name. Early on, Elizabeth had found her eyes tracing the curves of the woman’s perfectly-sculpted form. It had almost distracted her from the latest revisions for Arbalest’s signature Viper rifle.
The goddess’s laurel wreath never accumulated dust, no matter how many times the maids awkwardly shuffled past when they spotted Elizabeth in the hall. Elizabeth eventually sat by her side, finding the conversations within the office perfectly audible from there. She had an intricate mental web of Arbalest’s best customers and logistic issues, each supplier and product meticulously counterpart. As she aged, she found herself even forgetting about Tommy Lamar, and thinking of Arbalest as hers.
Throughout the years, everyone wisely avoided informing Bennett Ashe that his daughter was caught with cigarettes and hooch at least once a week. This only made him more furious when he found her in his office one night, smoking while she looked through the company records.
“I raised you to be a proper woman, not some…some…” he didn’t even need to finish the sentence, she knew very well what he intended to say.
“You raised me to be the Lamar boy’s broodmare!”
“So what if I did? A husband might be just what you need to mellow you out.”
He’d stormed out then, slamming doors and stomping and making a proper tantrum out of the whole thing. It wasn’t like he even locked his office, though he’d made a whole show of it after finding her that night.
For her part, Elizabeth seethed in the dim hallway. Tommy Lamar had always been the type to huff glue and shoot squirrels with his kiddie rifle. What could he possibly offer to Arbalest that she didn’t have in spades?
“You’re not meant to be a wife.”
The voice seemed like a shout in the silent corridor. Elizabeth’s hair stood on end. She couldn’t see anyone upstairs with her. It was just the office, the heiress, and the statue. Suddenly, the lock on the office clicked. The oak doors swung open at the slightest breath.
“You’re meant for something more.”
Elizabeth drifted towards the threshold without even thinking about it. Just minutes ago, it had been dark as anything, but now, moonlight streamed through the big windows. It cast long shadows over the sumptuous maple floors, and silvered each ornamental Viper mounted on the walls.
“I’ve seen your desire,” a woman’s soft voice said. Elizabeth whirled around. Before the empty plinth stood a pale figure. She was draped in gauzy cloth, her pale hair crowned with laurels. Of course, Elizabeth hardly saw the outfit when there were massive wings to look at. They were white as a wedding dove’s, softly fluttering on her back.
“What the fuck?”
The statue spoke. “I am Victory. I have seen your plight, and I can change it.”
Any anxiety in Elizabeth’s mind ebbed away. Of course. The goddess was here to help her. Victory’s blue eyes met hers, and it was all clear. Elizabeth crossed the office and dug her fingers beneath the gilt frame of a portrait of Arbalest’s founder. Beneath the painting was a sturdy steel safe, whose combination she’d deduced at age twelve (her birthday; the day her mother died).
Inside sat money and gold jewelry and papers and—her hands felt the cool barrel of a worn Viper. She took it, then realized she wasn’t sure why she’d even wanted it to begin with. Victory nodded approvingly.
“To win, one must sacrifice.”
It made perfect sense when she said it like that, but Elizabeth’s hands still shook as she closed the safe.
Victory’s wings ruffled. “Fear not. You will have victory.”
She walked the hall to her father’s room, absent-mindedly loading the Viper. Victory followed behind her, her footfalls silent. Elizabeth opened the door. Her father sat on the end of his bed, looking at the tintype of her mother that was taken before Elizabeth had been born.
“Hold strong.”
Victory’s cold hands helped Elizabeth lift the Viper as her father glanced up. The words he said didn’t matter. She would have victory.
The rifle fired. Warm blood splattered across Elizabeth’s face and her father fell back onto the bed. Cold horror spread through her. What had she just done? The rifle tumbled from her hands. Victory delicately wiped the blood away, smiling like the rising sun.
“You have done well.”
When she kissed Elizabeth, Elizabeth found that she couldn’t even remember why she’d been so upset to begin with.