Chapter 6 #3
“Doesn’t trust me…” I echo the words, but they feel empty, hollow.
Oliver adds his thoughts, “You are theatrical no matter where you are, no matter the audience. You can’t be trusted not to overreact—and ruin your final months at Bluestone or affect Dray’s.
” Between his lightly pinched fingers, not a crumb falls from the cake.
“These coming months are challenging, and perhaps he doesn’t have the time to worry about your tantrums while he prepares for the examinations. ”
The tickle of a tear runs down my cheek.
It’s not the deal with the problem later approach that my brother and Dray have taken.
It’s that my own brother looks me in the eye and tells me that I am being sold off to a villain, and that any upset I might feel about that is a tantrum, and that I am so fucking insignificant that my feelings and my existence is an inconvenience to them.
I am a nuisance.
That’s what it is.
At the core of it all, I am just a nuisance.
And my brother, my twin, speaks about it all so clinically.
“I’m not aware of his plans for you,” he adds, and finally takes a small bite from the spongey lamington, the crimson jam, the cream layered through it.
“I don’t know how he’s going to be with you this semester, if he will court you or ignore you.
But the rumour is out there. So one might guess that the rest of your time at the academy will be… different.”
Different to the past ten years of my life.
Different to any existence I’ve ever known at the academy.
It’s a bitter truth.
My mouth twists, wet. “A taste of life on Dray Sinclair’s arm.”
Oliver doesn’t match my bitterness.
He lifts his chin, and the sudden resemblance to Father is striking. “You are allowed out of your chamber now. Father and I will be in the dungeons until midnight. You won’t cross paths today.”
The answer I give is a frown, slick with tears.
Oliver’s smile is tight. “Someone has to make your dowry. And since Dray is your betrothed, your dowry has doubled.”
I huff a whooshing breath.
Who gives a fuck about a dowry?
This is my life.
I don’t care if Oliver and Father exhaust themselves into comas trying to make up the extra gold.
I care that no one else cares.
That’s all I want.
A little love. A little support. A little understanding.
Maybe I’ll call Nonna again.
I need her.
I need her warmth to soothe me after facing down such coldness in Oliver’s eyes.
This brother of mine, the one I always deluded myself into thinking harboured a little scrap of love for me, buried somewhere deep, is hollow.
Maybe I thought he regretted his acts against me at the academy.
Maybe I thought one day it would be different.
Wishful daydreams.
Now, I look at him and I see him.
I’ve always known he’s a serpent.
But I didn’t know how lethal he is.
I was fooled by my brother’s mask, his smiles, his softness, his friendliness that comes and goes.
I was fooled like others in the Videralli will be.
I have overlooked him.
‘Whoever has been snitching to your daddy dearest is anyone but me.’
And it clicks, like fingers snapping in my brain, as I look at him now.
“It was you, wasn’t it?”
His frown knits for a beat. It’s aimed at the cake. “Be more specific, please. I have done so much in my life already.”
All that time at Bluestone, I was convinced that it was Dray telling my father every little thing I did.
But it was Oliver all along.
I know it. The truth is firm in my rigid bones, and I speak it with conviction, “You were the informant. You called Father to let him know everything I was doing, didn’t you?”
The frown smoothens out.
Understanding hardens his face, not regret.
His answer is firm, “Yes.”
The word barely settles between us before I’ve lunged at him.
Oliver grunts at the impact, at the knock of my knee into his gut as I rip the cake from his rising hand, as if he can block me.
But I get a fistful of the lamington—then bring it down on his face.
The crumbs, the mush, the cream, the jam, and my flattened hand, all come striking down on his stupid fucking face.
The impact is hard. Hard enough that I feel the waver of his nose, the cartilage, the grunt of his shout before he shoves me in the middle, and I’m thrown off of him.
My back hits the arm of the couch.
Oliver grunts a string of curses, and wipes at a glob of jam on his mouth.
No, not jam.
That’s blood.
His lip is split, and there’s a trail of crimson at his left nostril.
The rest is cream and jam and a pair of deadly emerald eyes glaring at me.
My lips curl around my teeth, an ugly look I aim right at him. “I hope you and Father feel every ounce of my dowry you make. I hope you feel every flake of gold from your body. I hope it takes from you both as you both take from me.”
Oliver kicks off the couch, then boots aside the coffee table. It shudders, the teacups and saucers rattling, before he storms through the chamber.
Muttered insults and curses follow him out the door, and it slams shut behind him so hard that the wall shudders.