When I get home and I’ve showered and changed, it’s lunchtime. Wraye is there, and she, Daddy and I sit down together. They discuss things that are happening at the palace and the people they both know. Daddy smiles at her and fills her glass, all his love and attention on her.
Cassian’s right. I am jealous. I feel lonelier and lonelier as I watch them. It’s not that I don’t want Daddy and Wraye to be happy, but I imagined that they would be happy separately. That I would get to enjoy their happiness separately. Now, they’re their own little twosome, and I’m a third wheel in my own house. The day I walked into Barbican Manufacturing to meet Uncle Galen and found Daddy and Wraye kissing, Daddy told me that he was sorry I was upset, but that he has to lead his own life and I need to do the same.
I remember wistfully the days when Wraye and I were lost together. It’s so much easier with two.
My lunch companions have stopped eating and are looking at me. Daddy and Wraye exchange glances, and then look back at me.
Wraye smiles tentatively at me. “We’ve got some good news. Devrim and I have set a date.”9Cassian“What were you doing with that girl?”
Muriel’s tone is uncharacteristically sharp. She hasn’t scolded me since I was a boy and I taught the neighbors’ kids how to cuss. I glance at her as I walk past her into the house. There’s anger in her expression, but fear as well.
“Nothing. We were talking about her horse.”
She follows me into the house. “Don’t lie to me, Cassian. I know when you’re lying, and I could see that there was something going on between you.”
I yank open the fridge and take out a carton of orange juice. “I said it was nothing.”
It should have been nothing, but teasing Lady Aubrey always leads me to wanting to rip her clothes off and devour her.
Muriel clicks her tongue. “Men. Always thinking with what’s between their legs, instead of between their ears.”
I give a short bark of laughter. “Muriel, please.”
“Don’t Muriel me. Your father was the same. He couldn’t settle down with a nice, practical woman, could he? No, he had to get himself mixed up with that woman and they both wound up dead.”
I round on her. “I told you never to talk about them.”
If she has to bring up my father, now and then, fine. She was his housekeeper for ten years, and she respected him, but I can’t bear any talk of my parents, as a couple. I have a handful of photographs of my mother tucked into an envelope, and she was beautiful. If you’re going to become obsessed with a woman, it may as well be over a woman as beautiful as Aimee Bellerose.
Or Aubrey Levanter.
Aubrey’s face flits across my mind. She doesn’t look anything like my petite, fair-haired mother, but she’s just as stunning. A woman worth obsessing over. Maybe I’m more like my father than I thought.
I push that dangerous thought away. The last thing I want is to end up like my parents.
Muriel regards me for a moment, then sighs and eases her stiff body into a kitchen chair. “I worry about you, Cassian. This new world, the people you’re mixing with, they’re dangerous.” She fixes me with a dark look. “Always remember that they have all the power, and they can and will crush you if you get in their way.”
I pour a glass of juice and swallow it down. I wish I could brush off what she’s saying as melodrama. Whoever is in charge, be it Chairman Varga or King Anson, or someone else, they’ll only ever be concerned with the power they wield and the money and influence they can gather, leaving everyone else to fend for themselves. Even if Lady Aubrey doesn’t want to crush me under her expensive riding boot, her family might decide they do, and then, that’s the end of me.
In the afternoon, I’m spreading horse manure on the vegetable garden when a sleek black car pulls into the yard. A man in a suit and sunglasses gets out, and I recognize him right away.
Jakob fucking Rasmussen.
He casts me the merest of glances, and then walks into my stable. Who the fuck does he think he is? I throw my fork down and follow him.
Inside, Rasmussen is examining Aubrey’s horse over the stall door.
“Can I help you?”
Rasmussen doesn’t look at me, and he hasn’t taken his sunglasses off, like he thinks he’s in the goddamn FBI. “Who does this horse belong to?”
Rage mounts in my chest, and both my hands curl into fists. This is my land and my business, and Rasmussen can’t just walk in here and demand what he likes. “I think you know already. What do you want?”