We split around a tall, black lamppost.
Landon’s words rattle around in my skull.
Property.
Possession.
Territory.
Dray hasn’t blocked Mildred’s attacks on me out of the goodness of his heart.
This isn’t romance, it’s not love—not regret or protection.
This is thedon’t touch my stuffsort of thing.
He was always like that.
Even when we were children, young, silly, naïve—and in no way prepared for this bitter future, Dray never let anyone play with his things.
Except me.
But that’s because I would throw screaming, shrieking, flailing, sobbing fits if he tried to take anything away from me, and chances were I would bite someone in the tantrum, often Dray himself.
That’s all that worked for me.
I learned fast in my youth that that was how I was going to get my way.
Dray learned faster that it was easier to not trigger the tantrums in the first place.
It was all so different then.
But then there were days that echoed our futures.
Like the day Landon didn’t want to play with us.
I don’t remember why.
I do remember that for the most part, he was up on the terrace of Thornbury Park, overlooking the gardens, and the rest of us were down in the hedge maze.
Sometime later, when we finally emerged, Landon was by the pond—and he was playing with Dray’s brand-new electric boats.
They were toys, of sorts. But like drones are today.
Those little remote-controlled boats weren’t toys for sticky fingers or heavy hands.
Dray paused on the path, like he flinched into motionlessness, and he blinked stupidly at Landon just smacking the toy boat, worth thousands, along the sludgy grass, over and over.
Something in him just snapped.
Dray drowned Landon in the pond.
Literally.
Dray held Landon’s head underwater until his arms went limp and the bubbles stopped churning to the surface.
The memory is an echo of fresh spring flowers and grass flooding my senses, blended with the shouts of Serena and Asta calling for our parents on the terrace.
I didn’t shout for help.
