Chapter 9
“I can’t,” I choked out, covering my face and swallowing down the need to scream. “I just can’t!”
“Hey, hey, it’s okay, Bev,” Clare said as she rubbed my arm, apologizing when I flinched away. “I just don’t know where your head is to help you. You’ve been here so many times before, so what is…”
There was no nice way to finish that sentence and I appreciated her not trying to. But I also understood her confusion.
I lowered my hands and let her see the tears.
“He kept so much from me, Clare. Did he even love me or was it just our world not ending because his son was evil? I-I wasn’t lying when it wasn’t me over you, but…
” I let out a shaky breath. “I thought I had one person who loved me which was enough even if I lost him. But it was all lies and—”
“It wasn’t,” she whispered. “I know you’re angry.
I am at him too still because I loved him so much and he just left me with Grandmother.
I needed protecting too. I’ve dealt with most of my animosity towards you—I think I have at least. But he loved you, Bev.
I saw it.” She waited until I looked at her.
“I saw it. We all did. You hung the stars to him.”
“I don’t see it anymore,” I confessed. “I just see the lies. I felt so special because he believed me when no sane person should have, but he knew. It ruins all my memories of him. The only good memories I have of my childhood. The only thing that kept me moving most days. I feel so lost without them.”
“I understand,” she offered.
“You don’t,” I argued. “Alex terrorizing and beating me—the good memories and love from Grandfather helped. I feel like I’m trying to process that like it’s happening now because I don’t have… That security blanket to help.”
“You’re not wrong, but it’s also new injuries can aggravate the old ones,” she said gently.
“I’m feeling that too. Plus the distance from it all.
I have so much more freedom now that I’m looking back on what happened in this house and reliving it.
It’s like the fog of numbness and survival is letting me feel more. I hate it.”
“It will help you heal though,” Emma said from behind. “It’s hard. I won’t lie. It’s beyond hard, but it will help you heal. Trust those around you.”
“Thank you,” Clare accepted after a moment. Apparently, she had known who Emma was, and while she wasn’t going to out her, they’d talked on the side because Clare wasn’t comfortable pretending she didn’t know.
Which Emma and I both agreed was really decent of her. I… I was wrong about Clare. The real Clare. She was a good person at her core.
She was trying to be now that she was free, and that was better than most of us.
“All we needed to do was come today and make it clear we weren’t afraid to,” Clare said. “We did that. Don’t push yourself.”
I bobbed my head. “I just wanted to visit and apologize for changing the last Millen house without like asking him.” I shrugged when she raised an eyebrow.
“I don’t know what he wanted, Clare. We planned a lot, but he died when I was young.
We’re practically tripling the size of the vacation home he loved. I should pause at that.”
She pursed her lips. “Fair. But he kept shit from you, so you get the pass and less stress.”
I mulled that over for a moment and nodded. Yeah, I’d take that. “Thanks.”
“Good.” She studied me a moment. “You’re really not mad at me, right?”
I ran my tongue over my teeth. I wasn’t going to play stupid that I didn’t know what she was talking about. I heard her trying to push Tracey to mediate between us, but Tracey made it clear she was staying out of our Shaw business.
Which I appreciated.
“No, I’m not mad,” I told her but then sighed. “Hurt? Confused for sure, but… I’m trying to put it in context of Grandfather. If I had learned this about Grandfather after loving him for years, I would need answers and—do what you need to, Clare. You know the line.”
What else was I supposed to say about her wanting to have lunch with Grandmother? The woman had wanted me dead for Alex. Had mistreated me my whole life. Publicly accused me of so much and told the world I was “mistaken” about what I’d said about what happened.
When I’d been telling the truth.
So yeah, Grandmother could take a long walk off a short pier and I’d be happy. It was hard to know Clare wanted to continue her relationship with someone so evil, but… Family was complicated.
Even the severely fucked-up ones who sacrificed people for magic.
Mother just happened to be taking a walk—which she never did—as we got closer to the mansion. I wasn’t even going to go in given what Jean and I agreed to, so clearly Mother knew she couldn’t corner me in there and chose this plan.
It was hard not to roll my eyes at her predictability.
“Oh, Bevin, how could you leave the house looking like that?” she asked dramatically. “Are you truly that lost if I don’t dress you? I understand you’ve only come home, but you’re still in public. How can you present yourself—did you learn nothing from me?”
“Mother,” Clare snapped, but Mother ignored her and kept going.
And going.
And going.
It was about five minutes of insults ranging from my fashion sense to my looks to being unintelligent to have females guard me and “pitying me” that was all I could afford all the way to gleefully saying my mess in the media wouldn’t have happened if I had just done as I was told.
Clare kept trying to jump in to defend me, but I waved her off.
I met Jean’s gaze as she joined us after several minutes of trying to look like she wasn’t hurrying…
While hurrying to stop this dumpster fire.
“She is a liability, Jean. She is too selfish to be of help or use. She doesn’t care that we have an understanding or fragile alliance.
She wants to tear me down to get revenge—”
“Yes, I’m aware,” Jean said with a tight smile. “Which is why you were to be anywhere else, Mother.”
“I’m not a child,” Mother snapped.
No, Rebecca. This woman wasn’t my mother any more than Charles was my father. They were monsters.
“Then stop acting as petulant as one,” Jean bit out.
“If I was anyone else, our understanding would be done,” I told Jean. “And I would be valid.”
“Yes, you would. What do you want?” The annoyance was in her eyes… And exhaustion.
“Nothing,” I told her, nodding when she raised an eyebrow. “I let it go on to make a point. She can’t even do this for you. It’s always about her and—”
“I was his victim too,” Rebecca snapped. “Why does everyone—”
“No, no, you do not get to use that with me, Rebecca,” I cut in, my voice louder than I liked.
I took a threatening step towards her. “Not me. You whine and throw that bullshit around to anyone else, but you were just as much the fucking villain as Charles was in my life. You knew Alex hurt me and threatened to mate me to someone who would do the same. Charles didn’t—”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she argued. “Always so sensitive and—”
“No, you don’t gaslight me. The maids taunted me about it! I have recordings where they taunted me in my room, walking in when I was naked and laughing at bruises that you knew about and said it was my future. That you would mate me to someone abusive and I would deserve it!”
I felt better when even Jean looked at me in horror, Clare beyond upset.
“I would like the names please,” Jean said. “That’s beyond—those aren’t people to trust.”
I nodded, trying to get myself back under control and met her gaze. “I don’t want anything except that Rebecca Shaw not traumatize any more of her daughters. She focused on me and Clare—you were her princess. She doesn’t have us anymore. You will take it all because she is vile.”
Jean gave a small, tired wave. “I know. I know, Bevin. I agree, and thank you both for pushing this.” She shot Rebecca a furious gaze.
“She made it clear that if I banished her when she’s finally free of the monster too that she would misbehave worse than I could imagine.
Especially with the guards, and I couldn’t handle having a bastard sibling right now. ”
I blinked at her for several long moments before bursting out laughing. I tried to talk but then laughed all over again before smirking at Rebecca… Who had steam coming out of her ears.
Rebecca ranted for a few minutes that she was the victim and we were being unfair, completely ungrateful for all she’d done. Jean bit out for her to shut up when she saw I could talk and that eyebrow went back up.
“She’s infertile,” I told Jean, pointing to Rebecca so there was no doubt who I was talking about.
“What?” Jean hissed, Clare echoing her.
I nodded, a huge smile on my face. “There is a price paid when you decide to sacrifice a child. The gods won’t let you have any more.”
“No, it…” Jean trailed off and blinked at me this time.
“It’s why she hates me so much, Jean,” I promised.
“Because Charles wouldn’t believe it or that he became infertile as well.
So, when they thought I didn’t have magic and couldn’t be sacrificed, the broodmare was needed again.
” I pointed to Rebecca once more. “And every time the pregnancy test was negative, Charles would be worse to her.
“He would tear into her that she was useless and couldn’t even do the one job she had.
The one purpose for her and she couldn’t perform.
I heard him threaten to kick her out when I was ten unless she conceived.
They saw healers who confirmed it. But he wouldn’t listen and so he kept the schedule, and she had to service him like a mare to—”
I saw the slap coming and didn’t react, long since used to Rebecca slapping me. Things were different now, but some part of me would always be the abused child in front of her.
Suddenly, a hand grabbed her wrist and I was pushed behind someone.
Someone with the same gorgeous chocolate brown hair Kelton had, but much longer and down to her mid-back.
Rita.