“So,” I drawl, twirling the stem of my wine glass between my fingers, “is this what you expect of us during our grand year of servitude? Sitting through dinners where the highlight is watching every man at this table line up to lick your ass if you tell them to?”
Elias exhales through his nose, sharp, but he doesn’t stop me. His silence is as good as agreement.
Uncle’s gaze cuts to me, flat and cold. “Careful, boy.”
I’m tired of the bullshit with him. The dancing around what he really wants from us. All I want is to know what the next year of hell looks like working for him, so I can accept it and get a move on.
“Why?” I grin, teeth on full display. “Because I’m not playing the good little soldier who claps on cue? If this is what you call training us for the big leagues, I’m sorely disappointed.”
Across the table, Dante’s mask slips for the briefest second. A flicker of concern in his dark eyes, or warning perhaps, sparks as they land on me. He schools it away fast, jaw hardening, and his shoulders pull back into that perfect mirror of his father.
But I saw it. I sawhim. The cousin who used to sneak out with me, laugh too loud, get caught and still grin about it. The one who vanished overnight and came back a shadow wearing Uncle’s leash.
I glance out of my peripheral at Elias, catching the subtle tick of his jaw, the way he leans forward just slightly, as if trying to block Uncle’s view of me.
Uncle, of course, just smiles that sharp, thin smile that never touches his eyes. The light from the sconces catches on the silver strands slicked through his dark hair. His fingers drum once against the edge of the table, slow and deliberate, before he threads them together like he’s about to deliver a sermon.
“You sit here, sneering at me,” he says, voice calm in that dangerous way that makes my stomach knot. “But tell me, what would your mother think, seeing her boys squander their strength? You shouldburnfor revenge. You should want blood for the life she lost to the vampires. Every filthy magical leech walking this world that thinks themselves better than us, for that matter.”
Elias’s foot begins to bounce softly against the floor as his jaw flexes so hard I can almost hear his molars grind
“Yet here you sit, mocking me and mocking her memory.”
My own grip on the glass stem tightens as I force a deep breath to fill my chest.
“She wouldn’t want this,” I bite out as my eyes narrow on uncle, each word clipped. “She wouldn’t want us surrounded by the very thing that killed her, risking our lives.”
My hand falls to the sides of my chair, tightening until my knuckles ache.
The glimpse of her blood running down the white walls of our home as I peeked out of my bedroom door, woken up by the sound of breaking glass, rolls through my mind. My breath hitches at the memory I’ve tried my best to bury. Elias’s scream as he ran past my door, bounding down the stairs like his small hands could somehow save our mother.
My fingers find my jeans and press down into my thighs as I struggle to ground myself in the present. I’d been too scared to do anything, and it continues to haunt me to this day.
Would it have made a difference?
“You keep trying to drag us back into that misery and anger, like you’re determined to make us live inside that night over and over.”
The words leave me sharp and fast, and Uncle’s gaze sharpens, pale blue locking on me like a knife pressed to mythroat. “That’sexactlywhat I want. That is how the best hunters are forged.”
Elias doesn’t speak still, but I can feel the anger rolling off him, the way he shifts his weight in the chair like it takes everything he has not to leap across the table.
I know we don’t have long until he does exactly that.
Dante flicks his eyes toward me again, the faintest twitch of a warning to the knitting of his brow before he drops his features back into that perfect blank mask.
My fingers flatten against my thighs as I stare back at him. Maybe he’s willing to just sit here and be treated like a dog, but we’re not.
Uncle’s hand drifts almost lazily across the table to the steak knife he used at dinner, drawing my focus back to him. He rolls the handle between his fingers like a man deciding whether to toy with it or drive it straight into flesh, and my pulse jumps.
He’s never laid a hand on us, but the tales of the torture he’s performed on humans and magical species alike isn’t kept a secret.
He leans forward with the knife between his hands now, elbows braced on the table, and his eyes gleam in the light.
“Soft,” he sneers, the word dripping with disdain as he glances between Elias and me. “That’s what you are now. Soft little boys, too fragile to carry the weight of what was done to your mother. She’d be rolling in her grave if she saw what you’ve become.”
The glint of the blade catches the light as it spins between his fingers, casual and cruel. My throat goes dry. He isn’t threatening us outright, but every line of his body screams that he doesn’t need to.
Across the table, Dante’s jaw ticks once as his eyes fall to the knife. His throat bobs and the fear I see radiating in his steeledframe and the vein in his forehead make me wonder if I should have asked more questions when things changed with him.
