* * *
I don’t getanother chance to talk to Hawthorn. The rest of our family has returned from their lunch by the time I wake from my fainting spell. I make excuses about drinking too much champagne and retire to my room early.
I lay in my nest staring up at the gauzy canopy, still feeling traces of magic skating over my skin. My magic. The very magic that destroyed our conservatory.
The very magic that I’ll use to burn this whole manor to the ground one day.
One day with a bite on my wrist.Luca’s?I wonder. Saints, I hope it’s his and not Rad’s. But no, Rad would bite my neck like a proper alpha. Nausea stirs in my belly and the memory of smoke sticks in my nose, like I’m trapped between the past and the future.
Someone was coming for me two years ago when I destroyed my mother’s conservatory. My father? To take me to lock my magic? It must have been. The timeline fits and my memory of the time is just hazy enough for me not to trust it.
There are two things mages absolutely cannot do: they cannot see the future and they cannot read minds. Is this what an affinity is?
I itch to ask Hawthorn, but my sister and brothers return to New York City the next day, leaving me alone in the house with my father, a skeleton staff, and a full squad of beta bodyguards for my personal protection.
I rarely see my father. He doesn’t come home every night—often staying in his downtown condo, I’m sure—but even when he does, I don’t see him. I know of his presence in the house only by what he leaves behind: his sandalwood and yew scent, fresh scuffs in the carpet outside his study.
I yearn to hear the crunch of town car tires on the driveway, for Marcus to return from California to take me back to Fairhaven. I long for our little cottage, to hear Marcus’ padding around the lower level in his sock feet as I work on my homework.
There is nothing in Rose Manor that makes me feel at home any longer. My home is at Fairhaven.
I pass the rest of the break in solitude. I pick back up the knitting needles I had so enjoyed when I was younger, knitting up scarves for Luca, Simon, and Marcus and silly hats for Alyssa, Bitsy, and Ellie. When I’m not knitting, I’m reading the books Ian gave me and working on my essay, and before bed every night, I flip through the Saint Rosamund biography Hawthorn got me.
It’s peaceful, yet lonely. And I’m forever waiting for the peace to be shattered, for my world to fall down around me.
I don’t stray near the conservatory again, though I think about what I saw there constantly, what Hawthorn told me.
There’s so much I don’t understand, what this affinity they fear I have is—certainly it’s something other than my impossible magic or my magic wouldn’tbeimpossible. Whatever is happening with my magic, with the thoughts and emotions I pick up, the things I see, they’d be an affinity—not something no mage has ever been capable of.
Then again, I still don’t know what an affinity is and I’m too leery of my father spying on my internet usage to look it up, even on my phone, even with the layers of encryption Simon built into my phone.
What did I know back when I was sixteen, when my magic and designation were fresh? What could have been so bad that my father nearly killed me to bury it—and would still see me dead before it was revealed?
What is my family doing at Rose Pharmaceuticals and how can I stop them?
CHAPTER19
When Marcus picks me up, I greet him politely though I want to throw my arms around him. I want to hop into the front seat and fiddle with the radio like I did on the way back to Rose Manor. I want to leave these past few weeks behind and finally return home.
And Marcus is such a huge part of that.
But Hawthorn’s warnings of bugs and cameras haunt me, so I take a demure seat in the back after Marcus takes my bag. When we’re finally miles away from Rose Manor, making our way north on the highway, I clamber into the front seat, much to Marcus’ dismay.
“You know I could have pulled over so you could do that, right?”
“Fine then, pull over.”
“What for?”
I roll my eyes. “Just do it, would you?”
When he finally does, I lean across the front seat and give him the biggest hug I can manage. “For that. I missed you, you know? Home doesn’t… it doesn’t feel like home anymore. Not like our cottage does. I can’t wait to get back to school.”
“We have to make one stop along the way,” Marcus says solemnly, and it doesn’t dawn on me until we’re pulling into a familiar gas station, a neon-pink omega sign blazing against the dreary, snow-laden sky, that the stop we have to make is for snacks.
Marcus pulls out a bill, but I wave him off. “My father got me a shitty present for Christmas. He’s buying our snacks.”
And he buys alotof them. And our coffees, black for Marcus and a white chocolate latte for me, straight out of the machine in the gas station.
