Page 112 of Queen of Nothing

Mother’s complexion should keep a warm hue to it, a lovely rich tone.

But all the warmth has been washed out, and there’s a deep ashy undertone to her cheek as she turns her dark, inky stare on Father.

She starts, “Hamish—”

His eyes flash.

“I will not be argued with,” he snaps, and even though it’s directed at Mother, I flinch. “Olivia will be confined to her bedchamber for as long as I command it, and if that is the rest of her natural life, so be it.”

There was a time I would have wept.

There was a time I would have cried and pleaded and blubbered.

Now, I just huff something tired.

Mother turns a sharp look on me.

I’m unaffected.

Amelia arches a brow.

I’m unapologetic.

I know now, in this moment, it won’t be easy slipping back into this life.

I have distracted myself with thoughts of how time has changed those around me. How it changed Oliver, Dray, my father, my mother—

But I didn’t give enough thought to how time has changed me.

Mother turns to face Father—to face off with him. “My daughter has been away from home for too long. She is finally returned, and I will be having dinner with her.”

Father’s jaw tenses so tight that his teeth should be creaking in his mouth. His lips curl, parting, ready to retort, and I don’t think his words will be kind.

Before he can utter a word, the clack of a cane strikes the stone steps, and it’s a sound that whips through me.

I know that sound.

I fear that sound.

I slide a stiff, scared look to the willowy figure standing in the doorway.

Grandmother Ethel.

The breath pushes out of me at the sight of her.

I hear her glove creak as she flexes her grip on the golden lion-headed knob of the cane—a new cane with a new adornment.

Her gaze is steady on me through the dim light of the courtyard, but she speaks to the group as a whole—

“A late dinner has been prepared for the party. The entire party,” she adds, with a side-look at my father—a look that has his jaw rolling. “Now let us fuss over the return of the black sheep like civilised people… over a meal in the dining hall.”

That settles it.

That ends the spat between Mother and Father.

But Mother still stabs him with a sharp look, one that is filled with a hatred, an unspoken loathing that chills my insides.

That…