20 #2
His eyes are tired, lashes low, dark circles made even darker by the low light in the bedchamber—but there are questions in those shadowy green eyes. And he lifts them to me every so often, even when he’s coiling the bandage around my foot, and still, he doesn’t voice his questions.
Not in front of prying ears.
The imps tend to the fire, stack more into the hearth, before they leave.
And the moment they do, skurrying out through the vents, Oliver sighs, exhausted.
Returning to my desk, he pours another drink for himself, one that might push him into migraine territory. He picks through the papers that poke out of the swollen folder.
My tears stopped a while ago.
They are dried on my cheeks, itchy and raw, and my face is puffy.
I’m suspended in a numb state, like my brain shut down but my body didn’t, and now I just exist on the chaise.
The firelight dances over the back of Oliver’s black shirt as he says, “Asta told me.”
I hug a feather-stuffed pillow and rest my chin on it. “Told you what?”
Gods, my voice sounds like it’s been dragged over diamonds and crushed glass.
I probably look as rough as I sound.
“The night ended downstairs. Amelia took the car home. I assume it returned for Dray, because he had no trouble in storming out of here.”
I fix a frown on his back.
Chestnut hair glistens like caramel in the light, much warmer than the ashy dullness of my own.
Because I was just a lookalike.
A ‘close enough’, probably.
An adopted krum with brown hair, even if it is ashy, and hazel irises, somewhere close to my father’s green eyes.
I look at my brother, knowing he isn’t my brother, knowing he isn’t my twin, and it doesn’t feel real.
“Mother retired for the night. Grandmother returned to the cottage. I retired to my chamber, and Asta was awake. She mentioned that she saw Dray leave with blood on his hand.”
I mumble, hoarse, “Did she wait up to tell you that? Does she not have servants to do things like that back home?”
There should be more derision in my tone. I just can’t manage to summon it.
I only know my feelings about Asta—and I hate that she’s here, in my home.
Just the thought of her waiting up for my brother, in his bed, grosses me out… even in this haze.
“It is three in the morning,” Oliver says and turns to face me. “Most of the house is asleep. And you would do well to acknowledge that Asta did in fact stay up to inform me before the news could reach Mr Younge, then Father. She gave me a headstart.”
The meaningful look he aims at me is less powerful in all its weariness.
But I get it. He’s telling me that Asta really gave me a headstart.
That, thanks to her, I have time to get my story straight before Father storms in here with my reckoning.
I scoff, tired. The feathers in the pillow rustle.
I have no intention of padding my story.
“What are you still doing here?” I ask, dull, and throw him a withering look.
Oliver answers, “Father is coming. I told you that.”
“Are you here to shout at me with him?”
A familiar duet.
But my brother shakes his head with a sigh. “There’s so much you don’t understand, Liv. I wish… I wish there was another way…”
“There is. Don’t shout at me. Don’t blame me for my krum blood.”
Oliver startles.
His face shutters and his eyes flash.
That flaring gaze swerves to me, and he stares at me with a blend of horror and confusion on his face. “Krum—?”
The door blasts open.
I cringe into the pillow, shoulders tucking inwards, as though I can escape the loud strike of the door against the wall, the tremble of the bedchamber.
But I can’t.
I lift my gaze, my chin pressing into the feathery pillow, and watch as Father storms around the chaise.
Oliver pushes off the desk.
Before Father’s purpling face can explode in front of me, Oliver holds up his hand and says, “He tested her blood.”
Father hesitates.
His dark purpling face falters—and he freezes.
At the corner of the coffee table, mouth parted, a shout lingering in his throat, he just… stops.
Oliver steals the moment of hesitation, “He cut her hand and tested it himself on the balcony.”
Father’s lashes flutter.
The ugly, angry purple of his face starts to settle. It turns crimson, then pink, and his mouth closes, firm, into a tight line that’s stroked across his face.
A breath utters out of him.
And he falls his weight back onto one foot.
The fresh leather of his shoe creaks in the silence.
And it is silence.
Thick and suffocating.
The fire crackles. It pops. It flickers.
And the three of us exist in a tension that swells through the bedchamber air, thicker than the heat of the flames.
Father’s face twists.
He turns his cheek to me and, slowly, he drops onto the armchair.
Gutted.
Defeated.
Devastated.
I see it all on him. Written in the creases of his face, the way he drops it into his hands, the sag of his shoulders.
He doesn’t speak.
Neither does Oliver, who turns towards the fire and places his hand on the mantel.
I look over my shoulder, and my tired eyes find Mr Younge by the door. The door that he must have shut quietly behind him.
Normally he wears a face carved from stone. Unreadable most of the time. Sometimes cracked with derision.
But now, he has his head dropped. Like he can’t bring himself to look at me, at any of us.
Like this is devastating to him, too.
Father draws in my numb stare.
His breath shudders out of him.
For a beat, I almost think it’s a sob.
Then he lifts his weary face, reddened by the grip of his hands, and the twist of his mouth gives it away.
It was a curt, bitter scoff. Almost a laugh. Teetering on the edge of true shock, the kind that needs a witchdoctor.
I look at Father, and I see a man who—for the first time in my life, maybe his life—doesn’t know what to do.
Elbows planted on his knees, his hands come together in prayer, fingertips pressing into his chin, and he shuts his eyes.
He thinks.
Then—
“You will go to Thornbury.” Father cuts his gaze to Oliver. “This needs to be dealt with now.”
Oliver shakes his head. “We let it settle.”
The outrage flashes in Father’s eyes. “And if he leaks it?”
Like I’m not here, and I didn’t find out the krumness of what I am, they discuss it—like it’s a business deal gone wrong.
Oliver argues, “Dray isn’t a rash man. But his anger will be formidable if we approach now. I will call on him later tomorrow. He will not leak this. It’s too damaging for the coven. He will want answers first.”
“Answers would be nice,” I murmur into the pillow—
And that suddenly reminds them that I am here, that I exist, that I am at the centre of it all.
Father blinks at me once, then frowns… but it isn’t a frown of rage and disgust and disappointment.
It’s pain.
Torment.
Oliver draws away from the mantel and, coming around the edge of the chaise, drops onto the coffee table.
Facing me, he takes my hands in his, careful with the bandaged one.
“Whatever you think you understand,” he tells me, soft, gentle, “I promise you, you don’t. This goes so much farther than your deadblood—”
I shove forward, my teeth baring around the words, “It isn’t dead. It isn’t magic at all. It is krum.”
“No.” Father breathes the word with so much despair that I blink at him, at the harrowed expression slacking his face. “You are no krum, Olivia.”
I falter at his sincerity. The truth I see in his pained, glistening eyes. Like he’s on the verge of crying—for me.
Oliver’s hands tighten around mine.
I wince, and his apology is a murmur before his grip softens.
My breath trembles with the ache spreading in my chest, “What is going on?”
His mouth twists, and for a long moment, he can’t bring himself to look at me.
“I saw the blood myself. I saw it.”
But I see no lie in the way Oliver looks at me, tired, exhausted, but hurt, too.
He exhales, his mouth puffing, then he drops his forehead to my hands.
Father turns his face away, hiding it in his hand, elbow now planted on the arm of the chair—but I see what he’s hiding.
His tears.
Father weeps.
Dread spills deep and heavy in my gut.
I squirm against it, an unwelcome intrusion, and unpeel my basketed legs. I flatten my feet on the rug.
I echo, “What is going on?”
“You are not a krum.” Oliver’s murmur is muffled by our connected hands—and it is reluctant. “You were born a witch. We both were.”
I shake my head, cheeks wet, and a loose strand of hair sticks to the tears.
Father whooshes out another breath, then runs his hand down his jaw. “The firstborn of twins is often the strongest of the pair. That is the case with you and your brother.”
I nod, mute, because I know.
Oliver was born first.
I always thought he ate up my magic in the womb. Or at least I wondered.
Oliver kisses my hands, then straightens his spine—and his wet forest eyes meet mine.
His throat bobs, a swallow so thick that I hear it.
But I almost don’t hear his words—words that echo around me.
“You were born first, Olivia. You were born strongest.”