My eyes close at the lie.
I know that’s what it is.
But I give into it, sinking into her hold as I release him all at once and stumble backward. She holds me still, moving too. Cosmo catches his breath, gasping before I hear him turn the knob to settle the burner. The smell of smoke is still bitter in the air but the heat is gone and I am in this space of Karia’s arms and I wish thatthiswas the forever she spoke of.
The man claimingto be my grandfather sits across the table from me in one of the two dining rooms of Haunt Muren.
I don’t recall the last time I sat here at all, if I ever did.
Next door there is a sitting room; the very same where I read Karia’s letters scrawled atop stationery with the anatomical headers, a fire usually roaring in the grate because Stein always wanted the heat.
In some ways, I want to take her there.
Show her the exact place I imagined her, envisioned her words, thought about the gorgeous blue shade of her eyes. The room where I decided to stay alive, just a little longer,just in case.
But as forks scrape against white plates and glasses clink along the wooden table—Karia’s glass, specifically; orange juice and champagne that she is drinking far too greedily for Thursday morning at nine—I stay silent. My plate is already empty. Cosmo is good for nothing except, perhaps, scrambled eggs and shredded hashbrowns.
I don’t look at him, though, situated at the head of the table as if he owns this space. The darkened room with heavy drapes pulled closed and glittering black marble floors, the chandelier in the center of the room reflecting over the ground.
I stare at Sanford Rule.
Karia is on my other side, farthest from Sanford and Cosmo both, and I keep my elbows on the table to ensure if she tries to get closer, she cannot.
I ignore her drinking and lack of eating. For now.
And I wait for Sanford to lift his deep brown gaze to mine as he adjusts the cloth napkin tucked into the collar of his stark white dress shirt. I imagine it is one of Stein’s and my skin crawls envisioning that man’s room.
I have never been inside of it.
I never plan to go.
Sanford slowly sets down his fork and knife, his own plate mostly empty save for bacon grease and a smear of ketchup. He, too, has worked up quite an appetite from living underground. Or perhaps simply living a fucking lie.
“You look as if you want to leap across this table and finish what you started yesterday,” he says, his voice thin and husky both as his arms disappear below the table and he sits up even straighter, his posture an arrow.
Karia picks up her goblet again.
I hear her swallow.
Cosmo mixed her drink and I wanted to burn him all over again, melt his skin from his bones, but I try to focus on one thing at a time.
Karia told me as Cosmo finished cooking that Sanford was lying, maybe about everything. But before she could elaborate, the man walked in. Aside from bruises around his throat from my grip yesterday when I wanted to murder him for assuming he knew just how many guards were crawling this compound—when I wanted vengeance for watching a man assault Karia before I stabbed him to death after I finished off another guard—he looks completely unruffled. Unperturbed.
I really want to fucking perturb him.
I glance at Karia and see she is avoiding his gaze altogether. That is unlike her. She is tough, smart, mouthy; but despite her hurried claims that he’s a liar, she does not seem to be in the mood to confront him.
That’s fine with me. It’s why I exist. To fight her battles for her, when she chooses to let me.
Cosmo continues to eat but I feel him staring at me.
He said nothing about Karia’s claims. In fact, he pretended she wasn’t speaking to me at all as he cleaned up the kitchen before calling everyone to the dining room.
“Why are you here?” I ask Sanford, although I suppose I could’ve said the same to Cosmo. Maybe Karia believes it is for friendship; I know better.Friendsmean nothing. He wants something more from her.
Sanford’s brows pull together, lines forming in his face as he stares at me. “Do you expect me to choose Stein’s side, after all he has done to me?”
“You’ve lived with it this long.” I shrug one shoulder, refusing to think of the man we have in common. The link between us neither of us ever wanted; particularly notme.“Why defy him now?”
