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I hadn’t seen her when I arrived. Mom was the one who met me in the foyer and directed me straight upstairs, but Kami had to be there somewhere. Most likely, she was with Lavena, mingling with the guests, chatting, waiting for me to make some grand entrance like some damn bride on his wedding night.
I would have muttered a curse, but Mom took that moment to slip into the room before the quiet echo of her knock had even had a chance to fill the space.
“Hey baby,” she said, a vision in soft, glittering silver. Her pale curls were piled on a messy, yet elegant twist at the topof her head and held in place with a comb I recognized as my great grandmother’s heirloom. “Don’t you look handsome.” She crossed the room to adjust the satin bow at my throat. She was still beaming as she brushed light hands across my shoulder and down my arms. “Everyone is downstairs and so excited to see you. I had to make a lot of promises to make this night happen after that whole dinner fiasco, but honestly, I think it actually helped weed out a lot of people, you know? Your great uncle … cousin? Hendrik declined, thank God. Last thing we need is to have the silverware—”
“Mom?” I interrupted without meaning to.
Her big eyes shot up to mine. “Yes?”
“How did Dad know to contact Abilene Beaumont?”
It always amused me when people considered my father the biggest threat to them when in reality, my mom was the one they needed to worry about. She had the face of an angel, the manners of a southern belle and the fury of a goddess. My father had no patience for games. He would outright kill a man and go on with his day, whereas my mother played the long game. She took a weird sort of pleasure in dismantling a person’s entire life brick by brick in the most traumatic fashion. She enjoyed watching their world burn to the ground.
“What do you mean, sweetie?” she asked.
“I know about your tea with Abilene every Sunday. I know you told her about Edmund. Why?”
She stared at me long enough to make me fidget. Her scrutiny made me feel like I should have known the answer already.
“Your father is a brilliant man,” she stated evenly with a defiant tilt of her chin. “But even he is limited on his own.”
“I don’t know what that means,” I said, and earned a roll of her eyes.
“Why does this matter right now? There are nearly two hundred people downstairs waiting—”
“Because you don’t like tea, yet you inexplicably find yourself in a café on the very opposite end of the city exactly the minute Abilene Beaumont gets out of church giving you the perfect opportunity to have a long and heartfelt conversation with her where you break one of our first rules by telling her about Edmund. She thinks you were vulnerable and needed a friend, but I know you and a steel trap has more weak points than you. But somehow, not long after, she has dinner with a friend who happens to be my judge and my sentence is mysteriously lessened. Then, Father just happens to pull Abilene’s name out of thin air just in time…”
I broke off when her eyebrow lifted. “In time for what, Darius?” Her eyes were steel and brittle amusement. “You’ve figured it out this far. Keep going. In time for what?”
I drew in a breath. “You know about Volkov.”
Full lips painted a violent red pulled back in a smile that would have terrified anyone else. “Here is what I know, my dearest heart.” Her palms flattened against my chest plate. “I am simply a mother who will do anything to protect her babies. That’s my job. It’s in my DNA to destroy and annihilate anyone foolish enough to think they will ever get past me to you.” Her right hand lifted and touched my cheek. “And you’re wrong. I’ve become quite fond of tea.”
With that, she took a step back and started for the door. She paused only briefly with her hand on the doorknob to tell me to come down when I was ready.
Then she was gone, and I was left with the fading vibrations of her words caressing my soul. My amusement tilted up the corners of my mouth until a faint chuckle escaped.
That was the mother I knew. Not some weak wisp who went crying to strangers. She was cold and manipulative as she waswarm and generous. She was playing battleship while everyone else was playing cards.
Still smirking, I tugged down the hem of my coat and accepted my fate. It was now or never, and it was too late to run; Mother would have guards at the door.
The cacophony of chaos spilled into the foyer, a heavy wave of sounds and smells coming together to create a living, breathing force I had to step through to get to the party. Part of me hoped I could slip through the throng of bodies, find Kami and sneak her off somewhere without anyone being the wiser, but I knew that wouldn’t happen even before the first exclamation punctured the air.
“There he is!” someone shouted, drawing all the attention to me.
Faces painted in hues of purple and shadows from the swaying lights clustered above pivoted and found me in the doorway, already regretting my choices.
I needed Kami.
I knew it even before I was physically grabbed and pulled into the sea of faceless forms all trying to shake my hand and congratulate me on my freedom. But it was the compression of bodies moving against me that had my spine prickling. It made me wonder why it was necessary to be so close. Why did they feel the need to crowd and rush, and invade? I had the sudden urge to shove the next person who got in my way and tell them to fuck off. I didn’t care who it was.
A man thumped me on the back hard enough to dislodge a spleen and was gone before I could knock their teeth in. I was still simmering when sharp, red claws grabbed my upper arms.
“My goodness, you have become even more handsome, if that were possible,” one of my mother’s friends cooed, a woman I vaguely recognized from some function a million years ago. She had a buxom figure with lips so puffy, she could have beenhaving an allergic reaction. Her breasts, each one the size of a toddler’s head practically spilled from the flimsy cups of her turquoise dress with her jiggle. I kept trying to back away as they bounced forward. “You know, I heard you work up a lot of frustration being locked up.” Her hand slid up my chest to touch my bowtie. “Did you find that’s true?”
“Meriam.” Mom appeared out of the crowd like an angel, a champagne flute in one hand and a smile of razor blades on her face. “How nice of you to come. How’s your hand?”
I could have caught on fire for the way Meriam snatched her fingers back. The woman behind her nearly dropped her drink when Meriam bumped back into her with her hasty retreat.
