Malachi, whom I’ve been ghosting but will see tonight.
Will he attend the meal with Ines? Just the thought has me gagging. And reaching for my phone to ask Cillian if he’s free to play the part of lovesick boyfriend during family dinner.
I run my hand through my hair, peering at my outfit in my floor-length mirror—black jeans, black tank top, black boots. Functional, goes-with-everything, boring black.
I eye the row of clothes Calanthe has added to my closet since she’s entered my life. Every week or so, she buys me something colorful. Even though I’ve tried most in the privacy of my own room, I’ve never removed the price tags or crossed my threshold wearing anything but dark hues.
No matter how many times I tell her to stop wasting her money on me, she treats my style like a personal demolition project. If only she understood that there’s no grand metamorphosis waiting to happen, that I’ve already hatched.
Into a moth.
Not all of us are meant to blaze in the sun. Some of us are built to blend with the dark.
A thought suddenly assaults me: What if that’s the reason Malachi doesn’t look at me the way I’d like him to?
Before I can chicken out from experimenting, I rip the tag off a red sleeveless turtleneck and swap it with my black top. A grimace hooks my lips as the loud, clingy material pleats around my waist. A moth in a butterfly’s clothing, that’s what I look like.
Nevertheless, I force myself not to cast it off. If nothing else, Calanthe will be ecstatic.
DORIAN:ETA?
I step into the mirrored elevator that services only the Penthouse.
ME:36 seconds.
Yes, I’ve timed it.
ME:You can call off the search and rescue.
DORIAN:Afraid it’s already underway.
I hike up my eyebrows at that. It isn’t that my brother doesn’t have a sense of humor, but— Actually, it’s exactly that. Comedy isn’t Dorian’s forte. What he does excel at is showing up.
Goddess, can my brother care. He loves as deeply as Calanthe. Those two are, in many ways, kindred spirits.
That sends my mind drifting back to my own kindred spirit.
I open my chat with Cillian.
ME:Did you make it out of the tow lot alive?
I erase it and replace it with a: “Hey.”
I’m about to erasethatwhen the elevator dings, and I’m greeted with such an unexpected presence that I startle and press send. “Mom?”
“Surprise!” My mother’s smile is incandescent in her tanned face.
“What are you doing here?” I walk straight into her open arms for a hug.
One that I reciprocate—something that took me years to do. My parents’ and brother’s infinite patience ended up eroding the walls I’d built around myself to survive my loveless, abusive childhood.
“Well, you didn’t come to us this summer, so I came to you. You know I need my monthly children fix.”
For some illogical reason, my first thought is that Dorian told her about Cillian—and she’s come to stage an intervention. But that would be extreme, even for Dorian.
Mom hooks her arm through mine and walks me out of the four-story-tall glass and white marble hallway.
“Yosef wanted to come but he was worried about leaving the island unattended. You’d think the Holy Hunters were aboutto invade us.” Since she speaks in Atlantean, the name of our mortal enemies is lost on my favorite doorbabe.
