Breaking Her In (Court of Paravel 2)

All right, I did cause a fuss by riding Onyx, but that was a mistake. “I’m just here to talk. Is he around, please?”

She shuffles to one side. “You’d better come in.”

I follow her down the hall, past a sitting room and a staircase. It’s a grand house and furnished comfortably, though spotlessly untouched. It doesn’t seem to be Cassian’s style at all, seeing as he gets about in faded jeans, and that puzzles me until I realize that this must have been General Lungren’s home. Expensive furniture must have been his taste.

We enter a cozy kitchen, which looks like the most lived-in room in the house. There are mystery paperbacks stacked on a table beneath the windowsill, which I assume belong to the woman who answered the door. A cupboard displays painted china, and there’s a wood-burning stove in the corner. The walls are adorned with watercolor paintings of the countryside. A scrubbed wooden table is set with tea things and a sliced cake. I expect to see Cassian, but another woman is sitting at the table about the same age as Cassian’s … housekeeper? Aunt? Guardian?

She points to a chair with a severe forefinger. “Sit, please, Lady Aubrey.”

The other woman is staring at me in astonishment, and she’s introduced to me as Mrs. Polkis, a neighbor. She gathers her skirts closer, as if she’s terrified of offending me with her clothing, but I’m the one dressed in dirty boots and riding pants.

I take a seat. “Thank you, but we haven’t been introduced.”

“I’m Ms. Muriel Bantam,” she answers, and places a teacup and saucer in front of me with a slightly shaking hand.

“I’m hoping I can talk to Cassian if he’s around?”

“He’s not,” Muriel says, her expression growing grimmer as she pours tea into my cup.

I feel like I’m about to get a talking to. “I don’t know what you’ve heard about me, but I’m not a troublemaker, and I’m not trying to cause problems for Cassian. I come here to ride, that’s all.”

Muriel presses her lips together again and makes a doubtful sound, while Mrs. Polkis leans forward and says in a rush, “We saw your picture in the papers after you won at the dressage competition. Congratulations, my lady.”

I take a sip of my tea and smile at her. “Thank you. You’re very kind.”

“What was it you wanted to talk to Cassian about?” Muriel asks, as if she can’t bear pleasantries from me. She’s a tiger guarding her sole, precious cub.

“That’s between Cassian and me.”

Muriel’s face suffuses with annoyance, but I’m glad to see it. Someone else cares about Cassian, too. “Are you his mother, or…?”

She looks down into her teacup and says carefully, “After his mother and father passed away, he became a ward of the State. I was allowed to raise him, but not adopt him.”

“Why not?”

Muriel takes a slow sip of her tea, and I get the feeling she doesn’t like to talk about this. “Punishment.”

I frown at her. “I’m sorry?”

Muriel and Mrs. Polkis exchange glances.

“You weren’t raised in Paravel, were you, Lady Aubrey?” Mrs. Polkis asks in a soft, quivering voice.

“No, I wasn’t,” I reply. “I was born and raised in France. My mother didn’t like to talk about her years under the People’s Republic.” Mother was the sort of person who believed that if you didn’t talk about unpleasant things, it made them less real. Or perhaps it just made her too sad and lonely to remember that she’d lost her family, her husband and her home, and then had been forced to flee the country and live in exile.

“Cassian already had his chance at a mother and father,” Muriel says, haltingly. “Cassian’s father took his own life. He was a very important man, and suicide was deemed the destruction of State property. The people belonged to Chairman Varga.”

“But that’s despicable! Cassian was punished for something his father did?” I remember Wraye’s story about Varga riding Onyx and trampling protesters in the street. He thought he owned them, so he could murder them if he chose.

The air is suddenly thick with tension. Both women avoid my gaze, as if worried that too much has been revealed. We’re sitting in General Lungren’s house, and I can almost feel his angry ghost breathing down my neck. “Yesterday, my friend and I were walking through the streets next to Royal Park, and we came across a child singing a skipping rhyme. It’s about Lungren and Cassian’s mother, isn’t it? He really did kill her?”

Muriel has turned white and doesn’t seem to want to answer. Mrs. Polkis catches my eye and gives a small, scared nod.

Maybe Muriel was in the house when it happened. Maybe Muriel even saw Gunvald kill Aimee. And—what a horrible thought—maybe Cassian saw it happen, too. I dearly hope that, if he did, he was too young to remember it.