Page 42 of Mortdale

“It is the truth. Your coven sisters are good at being plain and invisible.” His eyes went to Logan. “Must be your luck.”

“Must be,” he echoed, sharing a long, narrowed look with his grandfather, who was wearing a wry smirk.

“It’s good to be plain and invisible,” I said, lowering my cutlery to the plate. “To survive, you have to be.”

“And you don’t?”

“I stopped worrying about survival a long time ago,” I said, realising a moment too late I’d said it out loud.

His gaze turned skeptical, suspicious. “Why is that?”

My foot was about to drill a hole through their dining room floor from how fast it was bouncing. “When you’re in such direct contact with death all the time, you sometimes wonder if the fight is all that even worth it. Why keep clawing if we’re all plagued by this terminal illness that is death?” A more stupid fib had never left my lips. I loved living despite the horrid manner I’d chosen to do it. I loved breathing in and I loved breathing out. I loved the sound of cicadas on a hot summer day. The smell of wet soil. The taste of honeydew. To touch leather and feathers and silk. I loved every mundane thing. I’d stopped worrying about surviving only so I could learn how to live for whatever little time I had left.

Logan’s attention was burning against my right cheek. I heard him huff under his breath before he threw back the entirety of his bourbon. “She likes telling people whatever they like to hear. She’s good at it; guessing what others want to hear.”

My molars ground against each other as I breathed slowly in and out. Why wouldn’t he just let me be? And what did he even know?

It was Morgana who cut through the heavy air. “What about family? Brothers, sisters?”

“Oh, no. None of that. I have an Ethel. We grew up together in an orphanage. That’s close as it gets, I suppose,” I said, chewing on the duck until my jaw started to ache.

“Is that why you had Agnes’s surname?”

Was this how ants felt like when you put them under a looking glass? “Yes, she made me her ward.”

“You must be skilled in the arts of chaos.”

“For a time. But as it turned out, I wasn’t interested in magic like most.”

Her old eyes narrowed on me. “Because you preferred sciences best?”

“That’s enough,” Logan quietly said. “I didn’t bring her here to be interrogated by you.”

Morgana’s frown deepened as she folded the cutlery on her plate. “Can’t we get to know the mother of your future children and the heirs of Darkheim? Galahad, too. They will inherit everything we have.”

Oh, Goddess. The duck was trying to kill me. I coughed, trying to lodge the bit of white meat out of my windpipe.

Logan set his liquor glass on the table, and I might have heard the table legs snap under the weight. “I have an heir, Morgana.”

Her wrinkled eyes pinched. “Piper is your niece. She has her own father’s properties and titles to inherit. You intend to have children, do you not?” his grandmother asked. “Logan? Why did you marry the poor girl if you don’t intend to have children with her?”

We all flinched a little when the crystal glass snapped in his hand. “Did you ask my wife if she even wants to have my children?” he asked, shaking his hand and wiping the blood and the bourbon-stained shards on a napkin.

Both his grandparents went silent when he lit another cigarette, and said, “Apologise to her.”

It was his grandfather who said, “You will have to forgive us, Willow. Ever since we’ve hit a certain age, logistics have taken priority. We didn’t mean to offend.”

“That’s quite alright. I’m not offended.”

“I am,” my husband said.

I stepped on his foot, and his attention snapped at me. Wiggling my nose, I tried to signal him to stop.

“I’ve heard you’re settling well in Mortdale,” Morgana said to break the unnecessary tension.

Cutlery kept sliding from my clammy fingers. “I’m enjoying the lack of sun. My skin is very sensitive.”

“It must have not been easy. Being different.”