For these moments, I’d claim what safety I could. I’d cling to the comfort I found.
Once I left here, I’d have to return to reality, and the fact that my future would soon change trajectory. Yet my near run-in with death had shaken me to the point I imagined other possibilities.
Maybe, just maybe, I could run away from it all. Leave my family and everything behind.
Maybe, just maybe, I could find my freedom.
Chapter 4
Several days passed before I was summoned for a dinner at the Triton family estate.
My parents hadn’t asked about my bedraggled state upon my return from being spat out by the sea, and that was for the best. However, both Mina and Angus had reiterated that we’d be having dinner with the Triton family soon to see if an arrangement could be met.
The thought made me sick.
Just dinner. The visit was just dinner tonight—nothing binding.
I hadn’t mentioned the arrangement to Jason—hadn’t wanted to bring it up there—but if I needed somewhere safe to fall, he’d offer.
My plans had begun to thread themselves together.
I slid into the stiff, starched material of the button-down, of the fine tailored suit, like I settled armor into place. Unfortunately, I never quite managed to avoid the blows, even if I pretended like the vipers in high society didn’t bother me. My room was sterile, as always, filled with books on business, andthe stuffy, expensive paintings my parents deemed appropriate rather than the surrealism or art deco I gravitated toward. I could appreciate the mastery in the pieces, but they didn’t call to me, not like other works.
“Are you ready, Elrich?” My mother’s voice sounded from the other side of the door.
“Coming,” I said, slipping on my cuff links and then heading for the door. We’d all be arriving together of course, our driver, Anthony, taking us there. My parents disapproved of my preference to drive myself places when we had drivers, but I’d claim every inch of independence I could.
My mother stood in the hallway, dressed to the nines like always. She wore a tea-length dress with hand-painted flowers across the cream fabric. She rarely donned the same outfit twice, and the sheer waste of her wardrobe bothered me more with every passing day. The jewelry she wore sparkled, delicate yet costly, and guaranteed my father would be wearing his own displays of wealth, from his designer watch to his handcrafted cuff links. I minimized updating my own wardrobe, even when they insisted.
“Are you ready to meet Arielle?” my mother said. “She’s a lovely girl.”
“You’ve met?” I asked. As much as I’d tried to research a bit on the family, a lot about them remained elusive. They were old wealth but secretive, and of course my parents would be drawn to that like flies to honey. Triton Industries was a unique purveyor of orichalcum, a rare metal zealously guarded by the underwater dwellers. How they’d established a foothold in New Atlantis remained a mystery, yet the lucky few they did business with ended up wealthy beyond measure.
Guaranteed that was what my father searched for in selling me off. As if he wasn’t surrounded by enough money.
My stomach curdled at the thought, but nothing could be set in stone without my permission. I was an adult, as much as they still attempted to control my actions, and I planned on walking away the first chance I got.
“Of course we’ve met,” Mina said with a light laugh. Her black hair was pulled back into a low chignon, and a coldness reigned in her eyes, similar to my father’s. “I’ve been to the Triton Estate before.”
“Right,” I murmured, not wanting to engage my mother more than needed. “Let’s go.”
We hustled to the car outside with nary a word, my father waiting for us. Our mansion was a sterile environment I’d hated growing up in, and I continued to hate it now. Nothing like the coziness of Jason’s studio, where streaks of paint were on the floor, cobwebs in some of the corners. It was real in a way I craved.
The drive to the Triton Estate was filled with my father making the occasional comment on an upcoming business proposal and my mother humming along as if she had a part to play in any of this beyond faux-doting wife. I closed my eyes and tried to follow the threads of an image that had been coalescing in my mind ever since I’d almost drowned at sea.
Of my mysterious savior.
The low, dulcet tones of their voice felt like blue and white brushstrokes on canvas, an idle flowing brook and dappled sunshine, and I needed to get that out onto canvas.
“We’re here,” my father announced, snapping me out of my daydreams. This was probably why I made so many mistakes in his line of work. Whenever images took root in my brain, I struggled to dispel them. The itch to get them out on paper, on canvas, on any possible surface, grew stronger and stronger until I succumbed.
Anthony drove us past a wicked wrought-iron gate with a trident adorning the center peak. A winding road led up to the silhouette of a mansion at the top, darkened by the surrounding night. Delicate globe lights dotted the way, as if fairies beckoned us deeper into the forest.
Once we wound around the staggered curves up to the top of the hill, the lights illuminating the Triton Estate cast it into magnificent view. The estate was vast, the mansion itself featuring arched display windows, decorated cornices, regal columns at the front entrance, and sharp steeples on the domes of the shorter spires. It made our storied estate look paltry in comparison, and I guaranteed my father was seething with envy as he often did around his peers.
Anthony pulled to a stop in front of the entryway, where my father stepped out first, then my mother and me. My skin had begun to crawl like the onset of the flu at the idea of being here. Maybe I’d made a huge mistake in indulging them this much.
I should’ve run while I had the chance.
