Chapter 28
Father’s office is just as I remember it.
Tucked away in the cerulean walls of the Blue Wing, the moodiness of the room is welcoming with its glossy black fireplace and dark leather couches.
But I don’t feel welcome at all.
Father’s pace is brisk and determined to the blackwood desk across the room.
Mr Younge arrived before us.
He stands by the phone table, hands clasped behind his back, and his narrowed eyes are fixed on me.
Here, I peel off my mask.
Exhaustion takes over me.
It slackens my face and, rubbing at my eye, I drag myself over to the fireplace.
These old manors get so cold at night.
And even though it’s summer here in England, the draught that snakes into the office is too chilly for the thin polyester of my sweater.
Oliver shuts the door with a faint click.
My cheeks puff out with a whooshing breath before I drop onto the firm leather couch. The button tufted spine creaks under my slumping weight.
Angling myself to face Father at the desk, I listen to the faint crackles and pops coming from the hearth, and the rustle of papers in a drawer that he rummages through.
Oliver spares me a charged look—
One that isn’t nearly as kind as the reassuring moments he’s been peppering through our journey home.
I arch a brow at him.
He sinks into the armchair between the couch and the desk, his jaw as tight as Father’s.
From the armchair, Oliver pins a dark stare on me. “We are glad to have you home, Liv. But you choosing to return of your own accord does not erase the things you have done.”
Planting my elbow on the spine of the couch, I rest my temple on my fist.
All tired snark, I ask, “Was it hard to leave Serena behind or were you just relieved she wouldn’t find out about you and her best friend?”
Oliver’s mouth twitches, as though itching to contort into a snarl.
Father slams his hand down on the desk.
I flinch, and my arm drops from the back of the couch. I sit up a bit straighter.
Hand flat on the desk, Father pins down a folded newspaper. He looks at me from beneath his lashes, nothing forgiving in his stare.
My insides liquidate.
I can’t hold his stare. I’m too weak. So I drop it to the newspaper; turned beige with age.
I can’t make out more than that across the office. Not the edges of the paper, if they are smooth or torn from overreading, or the headline, if the ink is faded or well preserved.
But I don’t need to get a closer look to have my suspicions prickled.
No doubt about it, that is the newsletter from the academy. The one with the article.
The corners of my mouth pin to my cheeks.
Father’s fury is caged behind those hollow green eyes. “Let us start with this.” He straightens up and digs his fingertip into the paper. “What could have possibly possessed you to do this, to think for even a moment that this interview would not put everything at risk?
“The atrocious accusations in this piece have fractured the bond between our two families.
Harold is furious. Our relationship with the Sinclairs is more than an alliance, Olivia.
You know this. I should not have to explain to you what could happen, what would happen, to the world if our families separated.
“But your selfish mind apparently does not comprehend the entire economic crash of the world.
“It is evidently fortunate for us that Dray understands that you have an inclination for chaos when things do not go your way. That understanding from him is perhaps what has saved the world from your tantrum—”
“Barely,” Oliver adds, a dark mutter.
Father goes on, as though not at all interrupted, “Harold has not been so forgiving. If it was not for Dray continuing the family alliance, both The Quin-Que Group and CS United would have collapsed within the first year. The Sinclair-Craven Corporation shortly after. Consider it.”
Father’s stare levels with mine.
He continues, “Truly let yourself imagine what it would mean for those three companies to collapse. The world’s leading manufacturer and distributor of steel, copper, and ammonia—gone.
The leading financial institute, the bank that holds the majority of this world’s wealth, gone.
And our joint corporation that owns over sixty percent of this world’s mining industry—gone. ”
He strikes his hand down on the table again, and a flinch jolts me.
“All destroyed by your tantrum.” His shout booms off the walls. “Do you not recognise what the consequences of such catastrophic failure would be?”
Oliver jumps in, “People would starve, Olivia. The economy would crash, corporations across the world would fall, crops would die, and transport would cease. Thank the gods Dray was more forgiving than Harold, who has refused to even entertain the continuation of our alliance until your shame of his son is resolved.”
“You didn’t listen.” My voice is small, my cheeks aflame, and I can’t even bring myself to look up at Father. “I tried to talk to you—”
Father throws himself away from the desk, and his shout rages through the room, “You are not the only victim of this system, Olivia! You are not the only unwilling bride. For every unwilling bride, there are just as many unwilling grooms! Your utter narcissism cannot come at the cost of the Videralli!”
Tears trickle down my cheeks.
I cringe into the couch, away from Father’s crimson face.
“We are not the wealthy families of the krums,” Oliver says, darkly. “This is the Videralli. You know what we worship. You know who owns us. Do you aim to disrupt the order—to displease them?”
A sickly churn coils in my gut.
Father’s lethal stare, and Oliver’s dark warning, is a stark reminder of the gods.
Not the good kind. Not the kind the krums worship.
I whisper my answer, my waning defiance, “I don’t think the gods care about an article.”
“What?” Oliver snaps—
And it takes me a moment to realise he actually didn’t hear me.
I clear my throat. “Since when do They care about our arranged marriages?”
Father’s eyes almost bulge out of his head. He looks at me like I’m a stain of stupidity poisoning his couch.
Oliver scoffs. “Marriages are arranged with purpose. It isn’t first come, first serve, or any old offer will do. Prints matter. Why risk a brewer reproducing with a predictionist, when the prediction print could be lost to the brewer bloodline?”
He uses the Barlows as an example. And both the Barlow sons—Landon and Grey—are disappointments with their prints.
A brewer and a herbalist.
My mouth twists.
I drop my head as if to hide—hide from the three fierce stares aimed at me like weapons, hide from the unease that’s fidgeting my hands on my lap.
But Oliver chases my line of sight.
He leans forward and braces his forearms on his thighs. “This is about more than alliances, Olivia.”
I lift my gaze beneath my lashes.
Oliver continues, “Without monitoring the production of prints, we risk a generation of witches who can only brew some fucking potions.”
“And how do we hold power then?” Father snaps. “How do the gods respond when their instruments are weakened by sheer neglect?”
I… I don’t have an answer to that.
I truly don’t know.
The Videralli has never lost power over this world, not since they took control, hiding behind whichever face of control was there. Whether churches or empires or royalty, the Videralli was behind them all.
I suddenly feel miniscule.
The Videralli has made itself integral to the world. The Videralli made it that, if we go down, everything goes down with us.
I just always thought of myself as separate to that. An individual among the masses, fairly neutral in these dynamics. Just along for the ride, if anything.
“We all have our parts to play,” Father tells me, and it sounds so much like a warning, “and you ran from your duty. You shamed the gods, you shamed your family, and for what? In your quest to marry some mediocre professor of stars?”
I lift my gaze to his angry face unwillingly.
I shake my head, and the tears cast a filminess over my vision.
I whisper, “It had nothing to do with Eric. It was you.”
I blink and Father’s face is stone. It is contained rage.
“You,” I say, and my voice is trembling now, “were forcing me to marry the man who bullied me all the way through my school life. You told me that my pain didn’t matter, so I decided you didn’t matter.”
Out the corner of my eye, Oliver’s nostrils flare—like he’s suddenly inhaling all the air in the room to subdue the rage swelling up inside of him.
Mr Younge turns his clenched cheek to me, to all of us, and shuts his eyes on the wall, as if to find a grip on his silence.
But Father explodes.
He rounds on me, eyes blazing.
“You do not matter, Olivia,” he shouts. “None of us matter outside of the collective coven. We all make our sacrifices, and if you haven’t learned that by now, then I don’t know how else to get it through your head!
Did we spoil you too much, and now you believe you are at the centre of the universe?
Or did we not give you enough, and so you self-destruct every five minutes for attention? ”
He distorts it.
The truth, the reality I lived, the life I suffered.
“That’s not it—”
Father towers over me, his hiss lethal, “Then what is it?”
The words whine out of me, “You don’t love me.”
My face twists with a fresh onslaught of tears.
“None of you do,” I say, voice trembling.
I lift my watery gaze to Father, to his unreadable face, all that rage re-contained, re-caged, but nowhere near dormant.
I shrug. “Mother maybe, but not enough to protect me.”
Oliver’s face shutters—
It falls.
He pushes off the leather armchair, a slackness sagged over him, like despair. “You think I don’t love you, Liv? You are more important to me than you’ll ever know. You are feeling less than adored in the face of our anger—but to believe you aren’t loved?”
Father tenses, and his gaze swerves to my brother with a warning. “It is another of her manipulation tactics, Oliver. A way to escape consequences.” He turns his dark stare down on me. “Your relationship with Eric Harling is over, do you understand me?”
I nod, because, duh.
If Father just listened to me for once, he would realise I don’t give two shits about Eric Harling.
But he is so determined to not listen.
Father takes a pause in his anger. Reigning it in, he runs his hand down his face, then, “Mr Younge has already confiscated your phone. Do not expect it returned to you. Do not ask for it. The phone in your room is also disconnected.”
A snivel runs through me.
I nod again.
“You are confined to your chambers. You are not to leave them, you are not to try, and you are not to do anything that I have not approved. Am I clear?”
This nod is hidden behind my hands as I wipe at my wet cheeks.
Snot bubbles at my nose, and I’m fairly certain it’s in my throat, choking me too.
Oliver pulls back towards the desk.
I glance at him, seeing that he’s gathering a bunch of papers and the newsletter, then stuffing them into a folder that looks sort of like a briefcase but disposable.
Father sighs, then drops onto the coffee table. He buries his face in his hands.
For a moment, he just sits there, right in front of me.
Then he drops his hands and his voice is exhausted, “I don’t know where I went wrong with you. Sometimes you feel more like a punishment than a daughter.”
His words are a punch to my chest. All the air is forced out of me, and I double over.
I thought Father couldn’t hurt me.
I was wrong.
Oliver’s steps advance, soft on the rug.
Defeated, I look up at him.
His throat bobs.
His eyes dance with tears, unshed, and he hands me the bulging folder. “This will catch you up on what you have missed. Study it.”
Father says nothing more to me.
Mr Younge escorts me through Elcott Abbey to the Green Wing. But as we pass the staircase above the foyer, I hear it.
The sound of celebration.
Laughter and music and the crack of a pool cue, and glasses clinking.
It’s all coming from the parlour room.
Guess I’m not invited to my own welcome home party.