Gant
“Isn’t this lovely?” I ask Sylo.
He turns his white, blonde head toward me, the pillowcase rustling as he does so. “Why the fuck are you still here, ?”
Delphine had invited me to tea so we could discuss our cricket match. We’d decided to turn it into a small reunion, seeing as we needed teams. Delphine and a few of the horsemen’s parents had attended college together, and while we played, they could catch up. Everyone, Etienne aside, is in town for the break, and besides, it’s time Delphine met Bart. We’re becoming a family unit after all, and after our late tea, I decided I wanted to stay longer.
“I told you I want to heal my inner child. Cousins have sleepovers all the time.”
“As kids.”
“ Inner child ,” I reiterate. “Besides, you’re still underage. You are a kid.”
Sylo lurches up. “Look, Delphine’s gone. You can stop pretending. I know you want something.”
“Delphine?” I arch my brow. “You call Aunty Delphine, Delphine?”
“Mind-blowing, I know.”
“We should unpack that. Quick, toss the blankets over our heads,” I say, cutting the torch I’d brought on. The light that streams out is in the shape of a star. “Isn’t it cute? It’s like we’ve bought the stars inside with us.”
“Why?”
“I like the starry sky. I’d even go so far as to say I love it.”
Sylo shuts his eyes, and when he opens them again, they’re like ice. “Why do you want me to pull the covers over us?”
“It’s the only way we can tell secrets. I saw it in a movie.” I frown at his sweats. “Why didn’t you put on the pyjamas I got you.”
He eyes me. “If they’re anything like yours, I’m good.”
“I understand.” I nod. “You’re terrified, too.”
He gapes. “At what? Little toy cars?”
“Cars are my fear.” I reach into the gift bag he hadn’t opened and pull out a set of pyjamas loaded with fuzzy black spiders. “These are yours.”
He recoils, sliding up the pillows in the moonlight and away from the fuzzy monstrosity.
“What the fuck is that?”
“Immersion therapy. See, after the accident, I can’t even sit in a car. Just like you can’t bear the touch of a little spider. Since we’re bonding, I figured we could do it together. It’d help if you wore yours too so I wouldn’t feel so alone.” I hold up the top so he can get a better look. “ étienne took great care to make them.”
Sylo’s horrified gaze flickers from the dead spiders sewn on his pajamas to me as he slips off the bed and onto his ass, his left foot tangled in the sheets. “ Fuck off !”
“You don’t like them?” I ask innocently, slipping off the bed to join him.
“That accident gave you severe brain trauma,” he hisses up at me.
“How did you know?”
“What the actual fuck is wrong with you?”
“At the moment? You not wearing your special order jammies. Put them on — ”
“ Fuck off! ”
“Or I’ll put them on for you.”
“What do you want?” He gasps, throwing his hands up to ward me off. “Seriously, just tell me what the fuck you want?”
I lay out his pyjamas and sit on the edge of the bed. “I just want to know you better, Sylo. That’s all.”
“No…” he says, realisation washing over him. “You want answers.”
“A cosy cousin chat.” I smile and stroke a spider.
Sylo follows the motion and swallows because while these are dead, he knows where I keep thousands of live ones. And they’ll be waiting for him the second we step foot onto Beaulieu’s campus if he doesn’t oblige me.
“What do you want to know?”
“Seeing Delphine is like seeing my mother in the flesh again,” I say. “ Sometimes, it’s too uncanny, and I just want to get away, but then I fall into her green eyes, and they put me at peace.”
“Congratulations.”
“They don’t put you at ease, though.” It isn’t a question.
Sylo’s eyes snap to me then. “What are you talking about?”
“I see the way you interact with Delphine with cold tolerance.”
He says nothing.
“You ruined all her raspberry lemonade tarts, purposefully left dregs in every cup of tea you bought her, and listened to your music and podcasts for my entire visit.”
His expression gives nothing away, but I know he hadn’t thought I’d noticed.
“You seem as comfortable with Delphine as I seem with her. Like she’s just an estranged aunt. It’s a juxtaposition to her story of falling in love and creating a manifestation of it via you.”
A long silence stretches between us. At first, I’m patient, then I grab my star torch and flicker it on and off, waving it around to create shooting stars across Sylo’s face.
His talons sink into my wrist to stop the motion. “Was… was your mother okay?”
“What do you mean?”
“My mother was fixated on Marisol and you .”
“Everyone is obsessed with me. Ask Elle.”
Sylo rolls his eyes.
“Besides, her sister cut her off. What’s abnormal about her craving a reconnection?”
“That’s just it. It was a craving, and too much of anything is a bad thing.”
I lift my brow.
“She was obsessed with you. You saw the newspaper clippings. She wanted a connection with a little boy, but I was right there. Actually, no, I wasn’t. I was at boarding school from the time I was six.”
Interesting.
“Is that why you’re so jealous of me?”
Sylo snorts. “I’ve never been jealous of you.”
“Yes, you have. I thought it was because I’m so handsome and you’re so… translucent .”
“Some girls find that appealing. Your girl would know — ”
“Say Elle’s name and I’ll shove your tongue down your throat and string it through your intestines and out your fucking asshole.”
“She’s just a girl.”
“I’m just your cousin, but you hated me like I did you wrong.”
“You did!”
“ After. At first, I thought it was because I’m a better dancer than you. Your mother wasn’t a prima, but she was close. She trained you. When you showed up at Beaulieu, I thought you had some weird one-sided competition in your mind since our mothers were rivals in their later years.”
“That rivalry was one-sided. Your mother hated mine. Mine wanted to be her little sister again, her confidant.”
“Too much? You said she was obsessed.”
“Yeah,” he snorts. “To the point of wanting to be her, and if she were Marisol, what do you think that’d make you to her?”
All the paparazzi photos. The constant calls over the years. Even Sylo’s enrollment into Beaulieu. Was it all to get to me because while my mother is gone, I’m still here? And Delphine could still try to make it right. She could just pretend.
I suddenly see Sylo in a new light that has nothing to do with the star I’m projecting onto his face.
“Your parents, are they still in love? If my mother was so jealous that Delpine married for love when she couldn’t, then it must have been a whirlwind romance.”
“There’s no one in the world my mother loves more than my father,” Sylo says, but I hear what he doesn’t say. Including me.
“This was enlightening,” I say, flickering my light off and on in Sylo’s face.
“Are you satisfied?” he eyes the spider set. “Can you get the fuck out now?”
“Not quite. I want to face my fears tonight,” I say, touching a little car above my heart. “Before I go back to Beaulieu.”
Sylo looks at me, puzzled.
“You have cars here, don’t you?”
“So?”
He doesn’t know. He really doesn’t know.
“I want to deepen my immersion by sitting in one,” I say, getting to my feet. “Let’s go to the garage.”
“You can go, and take those fuck ass pyjamas with you.” He shudders. “You’re just as creepy as that friend of yours.”
“ étienne isn’t creepy. He’s misunderstood.”
“Yet you knew exactly who I was talking about despite having a whole entourage of lackeys.”
“Would you like to join us?” I ask. “We graduate in a few months, and you told me you were taking the sceptre. Your ascension won’t feel so foreign if you learn the ropes now.”
I didn’t think it possible, but Sylo turns whiter. “You want me to hang out with you and your friends?”
I nod. “You’re my little cousin. The brother I’ve always wanted.”
“You’ve wanted a brother?” he asks in disbelief.
“More than you know.”
“I’ll think about it,” he lies.
No one turns down an invitation from the horsemen because it isn’t an invitation at all. It’s a strong advisement.
“ Fantastic. Now, let’s go to the garage.”
“I said you can — ”
“I cannot. The alarm system was updated since my last visit. There’s a fingerprint scanner on the interior door now, but that shouldn’t be a problem. I’m sure Silas has scanned you into the system.”
He eyes the spider pyjamas, then me, before donning his house slippers because he knows I’m not really asking.
“Immersion therapy, right?”
“ Right. Let’s take a drive around the estate. It’s quiet, and there are no other cars around like at the penthouse. It’s the best case scenario for me.”
And you.