I pause. It’s his turn to flinch.
Good, he knows what’s coming.
“She arrives every Wednesday, always between seven and ten. Same black car, same driver, and through the service gate nobody uses. Your guards change, yes, but the pattern never does.”
“You always did get stuck on patterns,” he interjects disdainfully. A quiet snort follows, meant to unravel my composure. “Always digging, always dissecting and fixating. You think that makes you intelligent. It makes you obsessive, Eryxon.”
But I’m not twelve years old anymore, heart bursting inside my ribcage as I yearn to fix myself for the man before me. The comment slides down my back, and his right eye twitches.
I proceed. “The northern wing has been cleared for some time now. You told the court it was due to weather corrosion, then it needed structural assessment until finally being repurposed into a storage space. For what? Archives.”
He hasn’t sipped from his glass since I started speaking. “Being clever doesn’t excuse being invasive. All you’re hearing is noise.”
“That might just be the smartest thing I’ve ever heard you say.” A muscle in his jaw ticks. “Noise… I’ve always detested it. But the noise surrounding her became so loud that it was almost rhythmic. A simpletap tap tap. It became a pattern, and I just couldn’t help myself. The tray combinations. The guard rotations. The lights that stay on. Your study door opening.”
I tilt my head, voice low now. “Juliette Atkinson.”
His hand slips. He tries to place the glass down, but the angle is wrong and the move too fast. Liquid spills onto his fingers and the wood, but he doesn’t notice. “That name means nothing.”
It’s barely a threat. All I see is a plea in disguise.
I stare at him the way Henrik watches the bodies during his true crime show binges. Not exactly with horror, nor pity for their deaths, but more the understanding that what I’m looking at was once a living thing.
Except now it’s all decayed and stinks worse than the devil’s asshole. My heart’s doing that odd stuttering thing, and I hate that it means I’m not unaffected. I’m thinking of the way hespoke, the utter conviction, and the disgusting thing is that I believe him.
But I almost don’t want to. Because if Juliette Atkinson means nothing, then my mother means less than that.
And so do we—the sons she carried for him and his cursed line.
I click my teeth, look to the fire, then back at him. “Playfair Display.” The words carry the nonchalance of somebody commenting on the weather, and I see it cut through the webs he’s trying to tighten around me. “It’s Juliette’s font. A headline font, all for show. Beautiful at best, performative at worst. The kind of beauty that cracks when dissected.”
Chuckling to myself, I lean forward. “It’s a pretty font; that’s why I used it for the header. The one on the dossier. The one that outlines your off-ledger expenditures, the reshuffled staff schedules around the northern wing, and the full breakdown of Juliette Atkinson’s existence. I’ll be submitting it to Parliament, as well as the press.”
There’s an ache of restraint in my jaw, and the lie feels heavy in my mouth. The dossier is real; I spent three nights working on it, but I won’t submit it to Parliament. Not yet. Not unless he gives me a reason to. There’s still power in his stare, but it flickers like a candle flame frightened by too strong a wind.
“Is that a threat, Eric?”
Oh, he’s using the kingly tone now. I’m shaking in my fucking boots.
My hands smooth over the front of my shirt as I stand, and I run my tongue across my teeth. “No, Father. It’s not a threat.” I straighten the cuffs and look anywhere but at him because I know that irks him. Makes him feel like he’s not being taken seriously. “It’s a boundary, and I know that’s your version of noise. I’ll play the part and fuck off to Sheffolk, smile for the cameras and lie when they ask why I’ve been reassigned.”
Now I look at him, and my voice drops. “But hear me clearly: this rot you’ve cultivated will not touch my mother. Not her peace, her reputation, or her crown. If I hear so much as a breath that sullies her name, there’ll be no exile distant enough to protect you.That, Father, is your threat.”
His lips part like he might speak, but he doesn’t. I have the urge to praise him in that same mocking tone he used on me as a boy. When I behaved ‘normally’. He watches me the way a king would watch a threat, too distant to be of real danger, yet look away long enough and it could be on your doorstep. There’s nothing to say, because anything that leaves his mouth now would be an admission.
He’d be handing me the victory.
Right into these fidgety hands he’s always hated.
“Your mistress would still be a secret if you left me at uni,” I add quietly. “If you’d let me finish my degree, perhaps Philosophy would’ve taught me mercy. But no, you had to pull me so I could be useful to the throne. Tell me, am I useful now, Father?”
My father’s brow shivers as he tries to comprehend the gravity of my threat. “You’d betray your own blood for a petty act of vengeance? In the end, you wouldn’t matter if you weren’t my son. If you didn’t carry the name Atherbourne. You wouldn’texist, Eric.”
“Oh, but I’d exist regardless. Descartes figured it out centuries ago. Strip me of my name and title, and I remain a thinking thing. Which is all I’d ever need to oppose men like you.”
I stride past him without a backward glance, without even a thank you for the drink and less than pleasant company. The door opens, and Anthony is still there. Of course he is. I let my eyes drag over him.
Then I nod once towards the seats. “Your master’s bleeding. Be a good boy and go lick his wounds.”
