The bars of the cage glisten gold in the sunlight as they criss-cross the windows and border the white walls inside your family's home. Some humans don't even get to see the sunlight. Where did you hear that? Was it something James told you, or someone else entirely?

Your earliest memory is of gazing up in your child's bed on a day like today, the molding glistening above the ancient metal mobile that always unnerved you for some reason you never understood. A Sister—you remembered neither her name, nor her face, because so many of them came and went—came in to dust the spiderwebs off the gilded moldings on the wall, muttering strange words under her breath about humans and farms and demons and how dare your mother and father pretend they're above all the other livestock when The One ought to eat both of them alive for treating her that way. What way, you didn't know, but you repeated her words innocently to Father and that was the last time you ever heard her voice. James frowned at the two of you, his big blue eyes soft and melancholy, and although he said nothing, you sensed his disapproval and you slept poorly that night.

You hardly remember ever leaving the estate as a child; you think that your parents took you and James to the big city in the human world to stay with your uncle Mike once when you were three years old, but you can't remember a thing beyond a few blurry images of the shoreline that may only be from books and the café with the pink walls where you first tried lemon meringue pie. You and James were happy, and Mother took some pictures of you two posing in your fancy suits in front of the big green statue of the woman holding a torch. Liberty? What a foreign concept. Man is born in chains, and everywhere he is in chains. And yet the people of the human world don't know that and go on living as though nothing binds them.

Then, not even a year later, Mommy and Daddy left you and James for the human world and never returned. They were told they have to shelter in place, James said, but they will return. Just three more weeks. First it was three more weeks, then two, and then one day James appeared in your doorway dressed in black and sobbing into Mother's embroidered handkerchief. They had broken the law and attended a dinner party, and both of them fell ill and died in the hospital. He showed you photos of the two of them hooked up to respirators, and you screamed at him and beat him with your little fists because you wanted them to come back home. But, he assured you, we will be safe, because I am closing the gateway between the two worlds even to our clan to stop the spread of the disease. James had just turned eighteen and was now the head of the Ratri clan, and thus the new gatekeeper. As much as your wanted to see your parents and refused to believe they were gone forever, you trusted your brother and knew that he would keep you safe from the virus, just as he kept the humans out there safe from the demons.

Years passed, and the pain of their loss faded as you and James lived comfortably in your cage. You read so many books; James would sit you on his lap and let you read War and Peace and Crime and Punishment and so many other thick, grown-up books full of big words with him out on the veranda as the stone walls cast shadows over the ancient rose and lilac bushes of the garden. Sometimes, he would also read you stories he wrote about an explorer named Ugo and his pet lemur, set in the forests beyond the deep cliffs that lay just past those walls. Six days a week, you studied with private tutors and took tests while he worked in his office, directing the farms that fed the demon population and giving orders to the other adults who lived elsewhere on said farms raising the cattle children. He didn't tell you much about this, but you picked up on a lot by stealing a transistor radio from one of the Sisters in your household staff and listening in. Who would dare harm you, the Ratri heir, if you got caught? Not James, certainly. But then your math tutor caught you spying on him and gave you a nasty thrashing with his cane, proving you wrong. Such things happened every now and then, but otherwise, things were peaceful and pleasant. You and James read books and listened to your parents' record collection and played out in the garden in your fancy clothes. Even as the human world fell apart, you two found refuge within the cage and lived happily.

You dreamed of growing up and becoming just like him: handsome, refined, responsible, and dedicated to keeping the Promise to protect both worlds.

But now, he turns his back on the Promise and wants to teach the cattle children how to liberate themselves. James, the man you idolized as a child, wants to undermine the balance between the human and demon worlds. Who said they, you, or anyone else should be free? Man is born in chains, and everywhere—at least in your world—he remains thus. What right does he have to change that?

You humor him for a while, helping him build his shelters, design some kind of map-pen-thing, and even edit his old adventure stories, all so he will still trust you while you come up with your plan. Meanwhile, you scheme with the highest-ranking demon families including the queen herself to overthrow him. Later, when you learn of a demon clan who can survive without human flesh, making her a threat to the farm system that your allies depend upon for power, you take it upon yourself to hunt them down—not because they are a threat to you, but because you need to win the nobles' trust to rid yourself of your traitor brother. If he knew of your plot, he would think you mad—and perhaps you are mad, but, much like your ancestor Julius, you are willing to sacrifice anyone you must to keep the worlds separate. You are their servant, their bird in a cage, and you have no choice but to help them keep their system running. You must do whatever it takes to breed them better meat, so that they can maintain their power, their intelligence, and their humanoid forms for eternity.

You were born in chains, but will you die in them? Why, instead of seeking to improve the lives of everyone, do you continue to give in to the powers-that-be? Is it really better to end your own life than to admit that perhaps you did not have to accept your ancestors' Promise of servitude? You throw away your life needlessly, just as you needlessly accepted what you saw as your fate.

Rest in peace, Peter Ratri, if you still can. Perhaps you will find freedom in death, whether or not you deserve it.