I gritted my teeth and couldn’t answer.
Whisper never left my side and Rook...she was the only reason I didn’t break. She was a drop of cold in my world of heat. A snowflake that I clung to even as my bones melted.
Something was wrong with me.
Something was terribly,terriblywrong.
I needed space.
I needed ice.
I need her—
“Xiao Lu,” Uncle Wen cut into my surging thoughts.
I was suddenly seven again—knees scraped, hands sticky from candied hawthorn—my mother laughing as she brushed dirt from my trousers, telling me not to run so fast—
That nickname from my youth.
The innocence of such a thing that’d become the worst sort of foreshadowing.
Did my parents call me Luxin because they knew all along what I was? Did they know what I would become? That I would die on the very same day that I returned home, detonating into a pile of ash on the marble tiles where I’d played as a little boy?
“You must be hungry, Xiao Lu,” Auntie Mei said.
“I’ll get you something to drink, sir.” A serving girl smiled.
“Come. Sit. Tell us where you’ve been all this time,” Uncle Wen urged.
Too much.
Toomuch!
Whisper lost all his obedience, feeling me so close to snapping. Launching forward, he shoved them all back with a fanged snarl and clawed swipe.
And I didn’t have the strength to stop him.
These people thought I was the same innocent child that’d been stolen.
They would never understand the depth of my hatred for Marcus and the board members who’d betrayed me. Never know the bloodthirsty savagery to slaughter them all—
Only one person could come close.
One person I desperately needed to help me...
I reached for her blindly and found her beside me, cold and calm and mine.
Her presence snapped around me as I crushed her against my side.
Someone tried to press a plate of sweets into my hand.
Someone offered me wine.
Whisper kept most of the crowd at bay, but it wasn’t enough.
I’d thought coming home would be silent and still.
That the estate would be abandoned, and I could gather my strength for the war I still had to win.
