7. Chapter 7
Chapter seven
Monty
C ans clunk as I shove them into the small food cupboard in my van. I’m making a complete pig’s ear of putting the groceries away, but I can’t bring myself to care.
Pink’s words are ringing in my ears. Which is not at all rational of me. Pink did not say anything unexpected. There is no need for me to feel dejected. I understand the terms of our arrangement. I agreed to them.
Access to a vessel with no strings attached, no other obligations, is a fantastic deal. Many mages would chop their hands off to swap places with me. I get to focus on my studies while regularly having use of a vessel to increase my magic reserves. It is a perfect arrangement.
A heavy sigh escapes me. On paper, the deal seems perfect. But now that I’ve met Pink, I’m all over the place. I never expected him to be quite so lovely. I never dreamed that sex would be so incredible. Emotions were the very last thing I was prepared for.
Even so, I don’t understand why I am feeling so rejected by Pink, politely, but firmly, putting me in my place. Heaven knows I’ve always been terrible at making friends. Seeking something more was unlikely to go well.
I shut the cupboard door and roll up the empty shopping bags. The neat and precise order of my food supplies has been destroyed. But everything has been put away. Despondently, I shove the empty bags under the sink. There, all done. Nothing left to do except brood in earnest.
I walk over to my bed and flop onto it. The campervan isn’t big enough for an armchair and I don’t feel like perching on my work stool right now. So lying in bed in the middle of the day is going to have to do.
Another heavy sigh escapes me. I’m acting like a baby. Pink has been through hell. He very recently escaped sexual slavery. Of course he needs to keep his emotional distance. He needs time to heal. He needs peace. He doesn’t need unwanted attention. The fact that I’m whining about it is abhorrent. I can do better than this.
I need a distraction. My gaze drifts around my campervan. It feels strangely empty. I’ve never felt lonely in here before.
My attention focuses on the simmering beaker on the worktable. It needs to brew until tomorrow, and until I can analyze the results, I don’t know which direction to take my studies in. So I can’t distract myself with work.
My body squirms uneasily. It is as if the email on my phone is burning a hole in my pocket. The invitation is mocking me. Taunting and teasing. But accepting it certainly would keep my mind off of things. And it would be dutiful of me to attend. An obligation fulfilled and ticked off the to-do list.
Cold clenches at my stomach, but I’m not a coward. Damnit.
I roll off the bed. I’m going to wash and get dressed. And then I am going to visit my family.
M y father’s bedchamber smells of death. It is warm and bright in here. Well aired. Dotted with fresh flowers. Yet the scent still lingers.
My father looks impossibly small in his fourposter bed. Small, old and frail. His lungs are rattling. It is clear he is not going to open his eyes. He doesn’t even know I am here. The chance to talk has passed. His last words to me will forever be bitter and cold.
I suppose I should feel sad. Remorseful perhaps? But I don’t think I am feeling much of anything. I have never made my father proud. We never liked one another. And he has been dying for a long, long time.
Being sad about any of those facts would be akin to being sad about winter being cold or night being dark. Some things just are, and that is the nature of them.
I watch my father breathe. Healers cannot save him, not even with magic, but I suspect they are going to enable him to linger for a long while yet. Possibly another year or two. Years caught in this half state between life and death. I think it would be kinder to let him go, but that is an opinion I cannot voice.
I glance at my watch. It is time for dinner. I think I’d prefer to sit here in silence, shrouded by temporarily thwarted, yet still impending, death. But I’m here now, so I might as well get on with it.
Wearily, I get to my feet. As I slip quietly out of the door, a servant bows to me and slips in to take my place.
With heavy feet, I walk down to the dining room. My dark suit is uncomfortable and my shoes pinch. I have really fallen out of the habit of dressing smartly. To think I used to wear clothes like these all the time. I don’t know how I did it.
Another servant bows neatly, opens the dining room door for me and announces my presence. I replace my grimace with a false smile and step inside.
My mother and baby brother politely get to their feet to greet me. Mother is dressed severely in black. As if she is in mourning for her husband already.
Laurie is dressed in an uncomfortable looking navy blue suit. It doesn’t suit his lanky sixteen-year-old frame at all. His head is bowed and he is not looking at me. All I can see is his snow white hair.
We all take our seats. Laurie next to me and mother across from us. As soon as we are seated, the servants spring into action, serving the first course. A delicious looking creamy soup. I pick up my spoon and take a mouthful. Heavens, so much better than my hurried, tiny-kitchen cooking.
I’m going to try to concentrate on enjoying the good food and try to ignore everything else. Including father’s empty seat at the head of the table.
“How have you been, Laurie?” I ask.
“Lawrence,” Mother corrects sternly. “He is too old for pet names. He has begun his vessel training.”
My stomach clenches so tightly I don’t think the soup is going to go down at all.
“Which trainer did you settle on?” I ask.
Mother sniffs. “I have acquiesced to your request regarding Mr. Richards, and hired Mr. Smithson instead.”
“Thank you, Mother.”
The things I have heard about Mr. Richards should be more than enough to make any mother not want the man anywhere near her child. But my mother has never been particularly maternal.
“Do you like Mr. Smithson?” I ask Laurie.
“Montgomery!” snaps Mother. “That is a very inappropriate question for a mage to ask a young vessel-in-training.”
Her green eyes blaze at me. I stare back at her. She really isn’t going to let me talk to my brother at all, is she? She has always done her best to keep us apart. Seems she is adamant about it now. She’ll claim it is some nonsense about vessels being seen and not heard, but I know it is more than that.
I bite my tongue, drop her gaze, and eat another spoonful of soup.
Silence descends. Thick and cloying. Nothing save for the clink of cutlery against crockery escapes it.
Until my mother decides it should be broken. “When are you coming home?”
A knot forms in my stomach. “I’m not sure yet.”
She sniffs daintily. “You are about to become Duke Eastminster.”
“I am aware,” I say with a calm I do not feel.
“You also need to take your father’s place in the Covenant.”
My spoon drops into the soup bowl and clangs loudly. Beside me, Laurie flinches.
“That, I will not be doing, Mother,” I say firmly.
Her eyes narrow.
I breathe in through my nose. “I do not have the head for complicated plots and politics. I would be no good at it.”
Nevermind that I think secret plans to reopen the old portals and allow the fey back into our world are absurd. A childish fixation at best, a disaster at worst, if they somehow manage to succeed. Fey were cruel. Dangerous. Thinking that they would see the noble families as their descendents, and reward us by sharing power, is deranged thinking. Nobody even knows for sure if the reason we have magic in our souls is because our ancestors were fey.
Mother says nothing, but her silence speaks volumes. She cherishes the prestige father’s position in their cult gives her. I’m quite sure she doesn’t truly believe in the cause. She just likes the status.
The staff efficiently dart in, clear the first course and serve the second. Numbly, I pick up my knife and fork.
“I suppose you are going to continue to leave all the work of finding your brother a husband to me?”
My hand tightens on my knife. So many things I cannot say. I cannot say that the cult is crazy and delusional, because they are also dangerous. A proper little secret society of cloaks and daggers. They would wholeheartedly believe they needed to kill me to keep me quiet. They’d never understand that I couldn’t care less about what they get up to as long as they leave me out of it.
As for sweet little Laurie. Mother can’t know that I am hoping that father dies before Laurie turns eighteen. Then when I am master of the house, I can forbid my baby brother being given away in servitude.
If she knew of my plans, she’d find a way to thwart them. Possibly something truly awful, like giving Laurie away before he is eighteen. Or arranging a scandal that would tie my hands.
“I am busy with my studies,” I say, with the best haughty, uncaring tone I can muster.
I don’t look at Laurie, but out of the corner of my eye I see his head lower even more. His shoulders slump. Not so much as to earn a berating from mother about posture, but enough that I see it.
My throat tightens. What a mess. A tangled web of misery.
Visions swim through my mind. My campervan. My worktable. The simple life I have carved for myself. Pink’s pretty eyes. His kind, gentle soul.
My lungs tighten painfully.
I see it now so clearly. It is a wonderful thing that sweet Pink put up a clear boundary between us. Dragging him down into my life would be unforgivable.
This little interlude of living in peace in my campervan in the bottom of Pink’s garden, is just that. An interlude. As soon as my father dies, my real life is going to drag me back kicking and screaming. There is no escaping it.
Pink deserves none of my mess. He deserves the world, or at the very least, a peaceful life. I can’t court him. It would be unfair of me to try to win him over, because if I succeeded, bringing him here would be awful.
I want Pink to be safe. I want him to be happy. Therefore, one thing is perfectly clear.
I really do need to keep Pink far, far away from my heart.