Chapter 6 #2
Mother calls it Oliver’s ‘diabetes bar’.
Today, though, he goes for the softer option, the spongey lamington bites.
And that means, he ordered it before he even came to my bedchamber. He knew he was going to stay long enough for a snack and a tea.
Cheek turned to me, he is quiet as he watches Abigail set out the tray on the short table.
She butters the scone for me, spreads the tiniest bit of jam and cream over it, then pours me a coffee before she leaves.
Oliver sets down the envelope, the brochure and the plane tickets on the coffee table.
He swaps them out for the teacup.
“I don’t want you here.”
The bluntness of my objection stills him.
For a beat, he hovers the teacup near his parted lips.
His gaze slides to me—then he sips and sinks into the cushions propped against the arm of the couch.
It would be more appropriate to tell him I have a headache and need to rest, or if I wanted to be rude, I could suggest that he enjoy his tea in his own chambers.
But I went for the blunt bludgeon option.
It brings his hard stare to mine.
“I didn’t come to fight with you,” he says. “I came to see how you are faring.”
I gesture to my face. “Dandy.”
It says it all, really. Dark circles under my dull, lifeless eyes, bloodshot. Puffy cheeks, tear stains, dishevelled hair.
The derisive smile I give borders on a snarl. “It makes everything so much easier to know I have the support of my loving family.”
There’s no smirk or even the ghost of one to lighten Oliver’s hard stare. If there is one thing we don’t joke about, it’s family.
Oliver takes that loyalty more to heart than I do.
But I guess we were raised differently, for different purposes.
Now that everything is crumbling around me, I understand things that should have been clear to me before—but it’s only now that I see them.
My family was never really going to be my forever family.
I was always going to join another.
That…
That’s a harder realisation than I can stomach.
I snatch out for a scone, barehanded, and let the crumbs dust all over the cotton trousers of my loungewear.
I pick at the scone. “Why are you really here?”
Oliver sits with the question for a beat. He drinks his tea, emptying the cup, before he sets it down on the table.
“You can say you’re here to check on me, but you’ve never cared before,” I add, and lift my dull gaze to him. “So don’t expect me to believe you’ve suddenly had a change of heart.”
The breath that escapes him is a whisper of a sigh. “Liv, I do care. I always have.” The sincerity in his eyes chills me. “You might have been the only one who didn’t see this coming. I’m sure that makes it harder for you.”
He speaks like it’s a business meeting, like my life is a business matter. No emotion, no truth of his words reflecting in his eyes.
“Maybe I did see it coming,” I say, and I hardly realise I’m speaking the thoughts creeping through my mind, “and I just didn’t want to believe it.”
Elbow planted on the spine of the couch, he rests his temple on his fist.
He considers me. “Is it really so bad?”
The look I throw at him is outraged, a glare of disbelief.
I stagger over thoughts to words.
Before I can say anything or even sputter out nonsense, he adds, “Dray is as eligible as one can get—excluding me, of course.” He doesn’t say it with flair, he just states a fact.
In our world, he and Dray are on par with one another.
“We have obligations, Liv. This is our world. Dray will give you everything you want, the life and the luxury you are accustomed to. You will still be a part of our family, you will have Serena by your side, and your mother-in-law will adore you, as she always has. That’s a good deal, Liv. Better than most get.”
“A good deal…” The echo hums through me. “Marrying my bully,” unlike Mother did, he doesn’t flinch, “is a… a good deal?”
Unwavering, he watches me. “We are all restricted, Liv. You think you are the most oppressed, the most controlled—and you assume everyone else gets everything they want. But we all make sacrifices for this life. We all suffer in our way.”
Mask discarded, tossed aside, I stare into the stony nature of my brother, the coldness in his eyes.
There’s something stirring deep within him, something buried and ugly.
I wonder if he was always like this, or he was moulded to change, to harden over the years, and I wasn’t close enough to see it.
Oliver grapples with that old, buried, ancient thing in him, then clenches his jaw for a beat. “Our literal purpose in life,” he goes on, firm, “is duty to our family and our coven. Mine is to continue our rank, yours is to replenish the prints.”
I cut in, harsh, “Breed.”
He pauses.
Not for shame, not for guilt, but to find a rope of patience.
“That’s what you mean, isn’t it?” I press. “My purpose is to be a womb. Not a person.”
Oliver runs his tongue over the bite of his teeth.
“Is that how you see Serena? Mother? Or just me, because I’m the deadblood?”
“Would it lessen your sorrow if you were to breed,” he spits the word without shame, “with a man who loved you more, or a man you loved?” The shake of his head is slight.
“We all do what we are meant to for our families, for the gods, for the world. And we all make sacrifices. We all bury feelings that do not serve us to suffer. Luxury and power come at a cost, Liv.”
This.
This is the reason he came to my chambers today. He didn’t come to give me the present, or see how I am, he came for this.
“Father is in no state to speak with you at the moment,” he tells me, tone as dark as the strands of tousled hair falling into his eyes. “And if you are to be stubborn in your childish, na?ve behaviour, then it was for the best he chose not to come.”
“Did he send you?”
Oliver blinks, slow, a condescending glint to his gaze. It says obviously when his words do not.
I huff a disbelieving sound. “What, then? What do you want? Just say what you came to say, then get out.”
There’s no hesitation before he dives into it, as cold as the stare latched onto me.
“It is best you continue your obliviousness. Dray has made it clear he prefers to be the one to tell you, in his way, and when he decides. You are not yet supposed to know. We expect you will maintain the guise of ignorance.”
The tip of my tongue rolls around my cheeks.
The scone is crumbled in my grip, flaking all over my lap, but our stares stay locked.
A smacking sound comes from me as I suck my teeth free of crumbs—then I toss the scone onto the coffee table.
It rolls once, then sticks, butter-spread down.
But my mind is on the command.
The command that comes from my father, whether or not Oliver is the mouthpiece.
Why Dray wants to be the one to tell me, when he decides, I don’t know.
It’s not often done that way, if ever.
I voice my thoughts, “It’s not like Dray has been discreet about it.”
Oliver hums, curt. “Blocking Grandmother’s cane on the flight was risky.”
So he agrees.
And yet he only goes off that one act from Dray.
He hasn’t been around all the other times Dray has cornered me—all the other times he’s dropped hints.
“You understand, Liv,” he starts. “There is no negotiation here. You are not to let on that you know.”
“What if I figured it out?”
Oliver tilts his head. “But you didn’t figure it out. You were told.”
The look he gives me is utterly condescending, dripping with mockery.
“Liv,” he says with a growing, vicious smile, “Dray has seen your grades. He has seen your stubbornness throughout the years, putting yourself in his path over and over. Do you think he would believe you to be some secret genius? Do you think any of us would expect you to figure it out all on your own—no matter how many canes he stops?”
My throat thickens.
Well…
Fuck.
That stings.
That was a carving knife to my chest cavity.
The breath I loosen is shaky, not with only the tears I feel stirring in me, but with rage too.
I have been judged by others my whole life.
Not just as a Videralli heiress, but as the deadblood, the one who attends the academy, the one who mingles with the diamonds on the crown, but will never really fit the design.
I never knew I was judged as stupid.
Oliver forgets his insults too easily, like they haven’t struck me deep.
He looks over at the mantel, gaze snagging for a beat on the gold framed photograph of me on the yacht two years ago, perched beside Oliver on the bench.
I trace his gaze to the picture, the sincere smile that softens his face in it, the pinned one on mine, forced.
It is natural on him, the smile, the loosely gripped tumbler of scotch that he rests on his thigh, his arm around my back and hand gentle on my waist—and beside him, I am stiff, a statue, forced to endure the photograph Mother insisted on getting of us.
“That was a nice week,” he says, distant. “Do you still have the collection of Byron?”
Every day, the yacht would dock, and we would wander the streets of some town or city along the coast.
It was in a little bookshop that Oliver found a dusty, rotted copy of Byron’s poetry—and bought it for me.
Never cared much for poetry.
And I don’t know where it is now.
Maybe I threw it out when we returned home, or I tossed it overboard when we were still on the yacht.
Not sure.
So I stick to silence and wait him out—wait for his gaze to turn back to me.
There is more softness in him now as he considers me, his gaze drifting over my face before tracing down the over-the-shoulder braid that’s frazzled and poorly done.
I hate when he looks at me with softness, like he has these moments of genuine care.
But those moments should not be fleeting, and they were so few and far between when I needed them.
So I am unmoved.
I wrench him back to our battle.
The question whispers from me, “Why does Dray want it kept secret from me?”
“I asked him that myself.” Oliver reaches for a fresh cut of lamington cake, then turns his frown back to me. “He told me he doesn’t trust you. That’s all he said about it.”