Margot exposed as little of her hand as possible to accept it. Unlike her cousin, she hadn’t thought to bring her gloves or hat out with her.
“Thanks,” she whispered. Her fingers burned a little when she wrapped them around the cup, but it was a good kind of burn. Bringing it up to her lips, she took a small sip of the spiced cider. Sweetness washed over her tongue, shortly followed by the spice of the cinnamon stick he’d thoughtfully included.
Alric made himself comfortable in his chair. One thing she liked about him was that he never rushed into speaking. Her cousin was perfectly at ease with silence, just as she was.
Even though they’d only lived together for a short time, she’d come to think of him as something like a brother. It was rare that they didn’t share the same opinion, and their habits were strikingly similar. But Alric had a quiet confidence that she lacked.
More importantly, perhaps, he had the freedom to act on it.
Margot took another sip of her cider, trying to wash the thought down. Glancing at her cousin out of the corner of her eye, she noted his faraway expression as he gazed out at the still lake.
“Nice night,” she noted, turning her own eyes back to the snow.
Alric hummed. “Storm’s coming in.”
“How’d you know that?”
“I can taste it,” he answered, sounding very sure of himself. “Also, Sophie mentioned it earlier.”
Margot snorted into her cider. “Some nose you’ve got there.”
“Don’t be rude. I brought you cider.”
“I already said thank you, didn’t I? What more do you want?”
Alric crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back in his chair. It creaked a little under his weight. “You coming back to the party?”
“Probably not,” she admitted.
She braced herself for questions, but he didn’t ask why. Maybe he didn’t need to.
“I don’t want to go back either,” he sighed.
It was perhaps a little hypocritical of her, but Margot replied, “You should. Grandma wants to introduce you to everyone, remember? It’s important that you start?—”
“Developing relationships,” he finished with her. “I know. But I’ve been doing nothing but talk to old people for hours. I need a break.”
She could hardly blame him for that. Margot wasn’t particularly envious of Alric usurping her place as Sophie’s heir on a good day, but she was especially glad about it when she saw just how much handshaking and polite nodding it required.
“You can stay out here with me,” she generously offered.
She caught Alric’s smile out of the corner of her eye. “I appreciate it. I know how much you like your alone time.”
Margot wasn’t sure if shelikedit so much as sheneededit. With a family as big and tangled as theirs, and with her problems as… unique as they were, sometimes the only way to tolerate it all was to run away.
She took another long sip of her cooling cider as she waffled over whether she ought to say something to him or not. In the end, it was the cider itself that prompted her to climb the barrier of her self-consciousness.
Taking a deep breath, she haltingly admitted, “Yeah, well… Having you around is pretty much the same as when I’m alone, so I don’t mind too much.”
Alric’s head turned to look at her. For such a young man, he had very a serious face. It was another thing they shared — that thing in them that people seemed to recognize as being too old, too knowledgeable, and too sad for their age.
Margot silently held out the cup.
Her cousin accepted it slowly and brought it to his mouth for a sip. Breath puffing from his lips, he said, “You aren’t too bad to have around either, you know.”
Figuring now was as good a time as any to ask him for the thing she’d been agonizing over, she muttered, “Can you do me a favor?”
She could almost feel Alric’s focus honing in on her like the beam of a spotlight. He was always so calm that his bursts of intensity sometimes took her by surprise. “What do you need?”
