When Antonina Stark is a baby, Maria secrets a family heirloom into her nursery. It's small and golden – a tetrahedron that Howard frowns at and picks up, once, figuring out that it opens before Maria distracts him. When he mentions it again next week, being reminded by some other three-sided pyramid in his workshop, Maria tells him the truth.
"It's been passed down the female line of my family for centuries. It's just a trinket, Howard."
Howard leaves it at that, but at night, when she tends to her baby – to her daughter, to the little girl she'd dreamed she'd have one day since she was eleven – she twists her wrist and murmurs an activation phrase. The tetrahedron opens in a swirl of sparks, a lullaby bubble appearing, a recording of her ancestor singing the Carbonell lullaby in sweet Italian. It's a song about the sunset and the fading smells of dinner, of little children smiling in their beds and doing as they're told by their mamas.
Antonina, of course, falls asleep one the last note, as every Carbonell witch does.
Maria thinks of what might have happened if she'd had a son instead of a daughter. She thinks that she would have cried, that she would have mourned the loss of her Family Line. Maybe she would have been distant, maybe she would have held her son close and apologised to him, never telling him of the world he's missing.
Sometimes, she sings the lullaby herself, but her voice was never built for singing. Howard hears her a few times and oh, how Maria wishes he was a wizard when he sings it to little Antonina, who thrives under the positive attention. Howard might not approve of his daughter being an inventor like him – he might shout at her and roar at Maria when she defends her baby girl for her creativity – but he can be gentle, when he's happy and isn't feeling guilty over how his Vault has been dispersed all over the world by Leviathan.
There comes a point, though, a point where Antonina's genius shines through and she questions every piece of magic Maria does in front of her. She plays with the tetrahedron and opens it with her own power, her own magic and the first time Maria gets angry at her is when she tries to show Howard.
"No!" Maria exclaims, grabbing the lullaby bubble before Howard can see it spark and open. "No, Antonina, no playing with this!"
Howard grunts from behind a cigar. "Bad girl," he scolds, frown in place. Antonina – baby Antonina, toddler, three-year old Antonina – looks between her parents, face collapsing as she begins to wail. Howard stands, "You're being a bad girl, Antonina – don't play with your mother's things."
Antonina keeps crying, dramatically shying away from Maria's arms as she goes to pick her up and Maria sees the warning signs seconds before Howard grabs Antonina's arm and slaps her behind. Maria freezes, horrified at the corporeal punishment. Antonina, likewise, goes silent, shocked into a kind of stupor at the pain.
"Do not play with your mother's things and then get upset at us," Howard says, before picking her up and walking out of the dining room. Maria is stationary for a few moments, but then it all whirls and clicks into place in her mind as Antonina starts to cry and she snarls, transferring in front of Howard, who stops abruptly, blinking in astonishment at her magical appearance.
"Maria?" His cigar drops and Maria takes Antonina from his arms, soothing and rocking her. "What in gods name was that, Maria?"
Maria ignores him, up until he tries to back away. She snaps her fingers and all the doors in the entry hall slam shut. Howard jumps, twisting towards the dining room door again and rattling the handle. In her arms, Antonina still cries and Jarvis, as quiet as he ever is, nowadays, drops his tray, their dinner spilling all over the floor.
"Edwin," Maria calls him over as she manages to soothe Antonina somewhat, waiting until he's stepped over to her to hand her daughter over, who does not like the transfer. "Take her to her room. Pack a bag. We're not staying."
It's not a hard choice. Maria married Howard because of Antonina, even if they were courting for several years beforehand. He was her friend and she was happy to do it, for Antonina, but...hitting a child is despicable and Antonina has dealt with enough verbal abuse from him before this. Maria has dealt with enough verbal abuse from him before this – not to mention when he slapped her, last year. His ring had cut her.
Jarvis stutters as he nods, "Yes- yes, of course, Mistress Stark." They disappear up the stairs and Howard tries to follow them, but Maria slams him up against a wall with power she's not used that way in years. It feels good to use her magic again without fear of being caught.
"What are you?" He questions, baffled and fascinated and afraid. Maria thinks of the Code, which says magic is not to be used for harm and never to be revealed to non-magic users and finds it lacking, in that moment. She tries to think up a spell for forgetting on short-notice, but nothing comes to mind. I'm too out of practice, she thinks irritably, instead deciding to silence her husband and lock him in a closet – silencing the door, too, when he beats against it.
She feels a thrum in her veins, like- like excitement, or maybe it's just adrenaline for no reason.
Maria knows Jarvis will look after her baby, so she goes to her bedroom, which she doesn't share with Howard because he always – always – ends up on the twin in his workshop. She crouches down and pulls out her trunk, pressing her hand to the false lock and murmuring the pass-phrase to open the magical one. Inside, her books on magic, her old robes from L'istituto Romano di Magia and an old, dusty box of trinkets. Maria reaches for her books, rather than her trinkets – full of things enchanted in days gone past and a necklace that used to belong to her mother, before she died.
In the books, she finds a memory spell, one that works. It won't just work on Howard, either. Newspapers, pictures and strangers who Maria has never met, but who know of their existence – of Maria's existence, of Antonina's – they will all forget. Maria wants to cast it, but she's not strong enough on her own, she knows she isn't.
To her mirror she goes and her coven, she calls.