She would die and never grant me absolution of being satisfied with what I’d done.
I was the firstborn son.
I’d bowed to conformity and rules all my fucking life.
Yet, it was never enough.
Nodding stiffly, I muttered, “I won’t let you down, Grandmamma. I won’t let anyone down.”
I’ll make you see that your frailty only increases my power. I’ll make you see that fire is better than ice, and I’ll fucking show you how youth comes before wisdom.
I’ll make you see.
Just you watch.
* * * * *
That night, I retreated to my wing at Hawksridge Hall.
I turned off the lights.
I sat in the dark and welcomed the shadows to claim me.
Before me rested my arsenal to ‘fix’ the things wrong inside me.
And just like my father had taught me—just like I’d done countless of times before—I found the frost deep inside and permitted it to chill me, calm me...
...
make me impenetrable.
Chapter Nine
Nila
I KNEW IT was too good to be true.
The last three nights and two days of being Jethro-free screeched to a bitter end when he came for me at daybreak.
I wasn’t asleep but mid-text with Vaughn.
The early morning sun had a horrible habit of highlighting the stuffed birds around the room, sparkling on death and reminding me that my future only held carnage—no matter how alive I felt. No matter how strong I’d become from taking power from Jethro, in the end, it would all finish the same way.
With my head in a bloody basket.
I should’ve been petrified—wallowing in misery at the thought of how a successful career and life in the limelight had suddenly become so limited with options. But...strangely...Iwasn’t.
If anything, I was more focused now than I’d ever been. More aware of consequences of choice and the brutality of the world that’d been hidden from me. I’d been raised to believe in fairy tales—my father deliberately kept me young. Why? I hadn’t figured that out yet, but now my eyes were open, and it was...refreshing to know the world wasn’t pristine and taintless.
All my life, I’d pretended to be perfect. And all my life, I’d nursed the truth inside that I was far from it. The Hawks were crazy—there was no other explanation for their fixation on something so far in the past—but they werepassionateabout it.
Passion had trickled from my world as if every dress and collection had been vampiric—sucking my will to keep striving forgreatness in my designs.
If you felt this strongly about it, maybe you should’ve gone on holiday. Had a break from being a Weaver.
But that was the thing. I would never have admitted it to myself, because I would never have recognised it. My vertigo spells, my lacklustre acquiescence of my father’s wishes—I couldn’t see how lost I was from my true self. I’d never been given the time to figure out who I was—only what was expected of a daughter born into the Weaver empire.
The beauty of distance meant Isawmy life without being immersed in it. It all boiled down to the fact I’d never had anything of my own. I’d shared my life with a twin, who I positively adored, but who outshone me in every way. I’d been drowning with self-doubt and nervousness. I’d crippled my instincts and skills, terrified of letting others down.
