Chapter 2

The Family.

Blackthorne Manor looked like something out of a magazine I used to flip past without reading. Old Money, New Rules, that kind of thing. Gates that opened themselves. A driveway longer than the block I grew up on, or the one I told him I grew up on, whatever, same difference at this point. I sat in the car for a second and didn’t move. Couldn’t really. Dorian noticed, because Dorian notices everything, that’s just who he is, except somehow never the one thing I actually needed him to miss.

“You don’t have to be nervous,” he said.

“I’m not nervous.” I was. Obviously I was. Hands doing the thing, fingers laced too tight, and I made myself unlace them before he could point it out again.

Inside, the woman waiting for us didn’t get up right away. First thing I noticed. Let us cross the whole room before she rose, slowly, like standing for us was a favor she was doing against her better judgment. Marcella Valcrest. I knew her face before I even saw it, the way you know a storm’s coming off the smell in the air before it ever hits.

“Mother,” Dorian said. “This is Seren.”

“So this is her.” Her eyes went top to bottom, quick, not even rude really, just efficient. Pricing me like I was something on a shelf. “Well. Come in, I suppose.”

I didn’t love that. Her. Like I’d arrived a little dented.

The rest of them were already seated. Leander, silver at the temples, on his phone and staying there. A girl my age or close to it, arms crossed, sizing me up over a wine glass like she’d already decided and was just waiting for me to prove her right. And a quieter one near the end who actually looked at me. Just looked, no agenda in it that I could find.

Introductions happened. I said something about being nice to meet them and it came out thin, thinner than I meant it to.

Leander finally glanced up. “Valcrest,” he said, testing the name in his mouth. “And your family does what, exactly.”

Here we go.

“My parents ran a small accounting firm,” I said. Practiced. Worn smooth from all the times I’d turned it over in my head. “Nothing exciting.”

“Local?”

“Mostly, yeah. Small town.”

“Mm.” Back to the phone.

Vianne wasn’t finished though. Lean in, chin on her hand, smile doing this thing where it stopped just under her eyes and never made it any further. “So how exactly did you two meet? Dorian’s usually careful. Picky, even.”

“Bookstore,” I said. True, actually true, one of maybe three completely true things I had going tonight. “He bought a book he never read.”

“I read it.”

“You used it to prop your monitor up for two months.”

Cassian laughed, quick, like it caught him off guard. Vianne didn’t. Kept watching me instead, cataloguing.

Dinner kept going that way. Question, pause, pause held a half second too long, next question. Marcella asked about school. I gave her a state school two hours off from where I actually grew up, had the mascot memorized and everything, a professor’s name on standby just in case. Nobody pushed there. Not yet anyway.

Wasn’t the questions that got to me, honestly. It was the quiet after. She’d let something I said just sit there, like she was waiting to see if it’d crack open on its own.

Dorian’s hand found mine under the table, second course, maybe third. Didn’t say anything, just held on. Don’t know if he felt how tight I was gripping back.

“You married rather suddenly, I understand.” Marcella again, over dessert nobody had touched. “No ceremony. No family present.”

“I wanted it to be about us. Not a production.”

“How practical.” Smile again, and it was a nice one if you didn’t look too close, which I was starting to learn was the whole trick with her. “Some women prefer that. Simplicity.”

“Mother.” Edge in his voice now. Quiet, but there.

“I’m only making conversation, darling.”

“You’re making a point.”

Table went still, different kind of still. Leander put the phone down finally. Vianne watched the two of them like she’d seen this exact fight a hundred times and already knew the ending.

“My point,” Marcella said, hands folding together, done pretending this was small talk, “is that this family has standards. A certain way things are done. And you’ve brought home a stranger, married in secret, no family we could even speak to”

“I told you why.”

“You told me a story. I want the truth.” Turned to me. Direct now. “Where’s your family, Seren? Your father, your mother. Why weren’t they at the wedding.”

Dorian’s hand tightened around mine.

“My father passed away a few years back,” I said. Lie, built right on top of a very alive, very healthy Octavian Arlisse probably eating dinner right now at a table twice the size of this one. “My mother and I aren’t close.”

Marcella’s eyes didn’t soften. Sharpened instead, like she’d caught a scent she couldn’t name.

“How convenient,” she said. “That there’s no one left to ask.”

“Mother.” Dorian stood. Chair scraping back hard enough that Cassian flinched. “That’s enough.”

“Sit down, Dorian.”

“No.” He looked at her and there wasn’t a trace left of the man who’d laughed messy and unguarded on our kitchen floor two nights ago. Someone else standing there instead. Someone used to bend around him. “You don’t get to interrogate my wife at my father’s table like she’s on trial.”

“I only asked a question.”

“You asked for six.” Jaw doing the same stubborn thing hers did. “This is Seren. I married her. Not up for debate. Not tonight, not ever. You can’t manage basic decency, we leave right now.”

Nobody spoke. Vianne’s eyebrows stayed up somewhere around where we leave right now. Cassian studied his water glass like it had become, suddenly, the most fascinating object in the room.

Marcella looked at her son for a long moment. Then at me. Something moved behind her face, calculation wearing concern like a coat that didn’t quite fit.

“Of course,” she said, voice smooth again, like none of it had happened. “Forgive me. I only want to understand the woman my son married.”

Sounded like a truce. Didn’t feel like one. Felt like somebody setting a trap down real careful and stepping back to watch me walk toward it.

Car ride home, Dorian apologized four times before I told him to stop.

“She’s not usually like that.”

“She’s protective of you. I get it.”

“That wasn’t protective. That was an audit.” Rubbed a hand over his face. “I’m sorry. Really.”

“You stood up for me,” I said. “That’s what I noticed.”

He looked over, something in his face going soft, reached for my hand again like he needed proof it was still there.

Let him hold it. Didn’t tell him my heart was still racing, and not from the dinner. From the look on his mother’s face right before we left. Like she already had a thread between two fingers and just hadn’t worked out yet what it was tied to.

The phone buzzed against my leg as we pulled through the gate. Text from a number only three people alive have. Vianne Valcrest, it said. Just her name, nothing else, off an account I didn’t know.

Second message came right behind it.

She’s telling people you’re a gold digger. Thought you’d want to know before it’s everywhere by morning.