The hum of voices in the room fell away, as did his upbeat facade. Romeo’s eyes crisscrossed and blurred, his vision replaced by words. His thoughts grew louder and harsher, replaying the same words over and over, like a faulty Vegas slot machine.
Dad is dead… Dad is dead… Dad is dead… Dad is dead…
Romeo hadn’t noticed he’d been pressing his knitting needles together so harshly until he felt the pinprick stinging of his fingers.
He broke out of his grief-laden trance to find fresh red blood, the same color as his tea, trickling from his fingertips and pooling around his palms.
12:33P.M.—THE BUTTON MANOR
Fola was pacing the foyer.
This was important to note because Folaneverpaced.
She was always the calm sibling, the one with the iron-clad plan, the one who was unshakable even in the face of great peril. But right now, she wasdefinitelyshaken.
She’d decided that she needed distance from the chaos of the packed drawing room, where, from a quick head count she’d done, exactly eighty-nine guests were crammed. This did not include herself, her siblings, or the staff (both the Manor staff and the yacht staff), and while eighty-nine seemed like such a small mathematical value in theory, it felt like hundreds when placed in the context of her home. Her home whose walls were caving and closing in on her, making the space less and less the more anxious she felt. Instead of focusing on the sheer number of people in here, Fola wandered the limited area of the foyer in deep sustained contemplation, something that was hard to do given the fact that she kept bumping into the chairs and tables that were stacked together in order to hold them all in place here like prisoners.
It all felt like bad feng shui. The physical manifestation of their cursed weekend.
Despite having sensed,knowneven, that something awful would happen last night, Fola could never have guessed that it would be something as twisted asthis. Her father wasn’t young by any means, but he wasn’t ancient either.
Based on the average life expectancy in the United States—75.9 years for the average man, 87.3 years for men of her father’s good fortune—and seeing as herdad is… was in his early seventies, she had projected that he would live another solid fifteen years or so.She’d hoped he’d surpass the average life expectancy altogether, hoped he’d surpass all human scientific capabilities and somehow live forever.
And that’s where she went wrong. Naivelyhopingfor anything in the first place.
She stilled her trembling fingers, wrapping them around the cold metal of her thermos as she continued her uncharacteristic pacing, torturing herself with thoughts about whether there was some mathematical equation in the laws of physics that could have prevented any of this.
She knew that this was just wishful thinking though, and wishful thinking was of course akin to hope. But she couldn’t help herself. Couldn’t help going over her steps, desperately retracing the spindle of time,hopingthat on this occasion she might unravel a golden thread like Rumpelstiltskin.Hopingthat somehow this fruitless backpedaling through the events of the last twenty-four hours would, for once, prove to be useful. In doing what, exactly? She wasn’t sure. It wasn’t like she could resurrect her dad; she knew that.
She knew death was an inevitable state of permanence that once done could not be undone. She knew her father was gone forever. She knew.She knew.And yet—
Fola bumped into a solid figure, her open thermos of lukewarm coffee slipping out of her grip and splashing across the white cashmere exterior of the person in front of her.
“Shit! I’m so sorry!” a voice from above said.
Fola’s eyes widened in horror as she took in the stain that would definitely be impossible to remove, and then the face of her victim.
A boy. And not just any boy. The son of her father’s sworn enemy, who was now staring down at her, his blue-gray eyes wide like a deer trapped in headlights. Though Fola didn’t know him well, he looked just like his father. The only thing she could remember about him, other than the fact that hewas Mr. Philips’s offspring, was that the boy had the strangest name… like Thanos… or Thunderbird or some such.
“Are you… okay?” he asked her, staring at Fola with a concerned expression.
Fola raised an eyebrow, ignoring the slow terror building in her chest. “I’m fine,” she said. “I feel like I should be askingyouif you’re okay. I can arrange for your clothes to be dry-cleaned or replaced right away—”
“No, no! It’s okay, it’s just a cardigan.” The boy was looking at her with this sad and almostpityingexpression. Like heknew. But that wasn’t possible. No one knew that her father was dead. No one but them.
His eyes moved from her face to her fingers, which were now shaking as they gripped her half-emptied thermos. “Are you sure you’re good?” he asked, and Fola found herself frowning in annoyance.
She was clearly a hot mess and he could clearly see that, so why ask? Why ask unhelpful questions at all? She did not understand people’s reasoning. “I’m fine,Theodore. You don’t have to pretend to care about me.”
“It’s Thorin,” he corrected, looking apologetic for having to do so.
She refrained from rolling her eyes.What a truly ridiculous name, she thought.
“Okay, Thorin. I’m sorry for ruining your cardigan. Again, I can and will replace it, just send a bill to the house. If there is nothing else you need from me, I suggest you continue with your day and I with mine, and hopefully we can all be done with this soon,” she said, and then gave him a curt nod and moved to walk away to some other place where she could pace in peace.
But before she could get far, she heard his voice once again. “Fola, wait. There was actually something I wanted to ask,” Thorin said, and she heaved a sigh, before swiveling back on her heel and giving him an impatient look.
“Yes?”
