Page 133 of Queen of Nothing

He answers, “Focus on your father and the tension of your return.”

I force a smile, one that isn’t in any way polite or kind. “Hard not to.”

Dray is unfazed. “You could easily focus on the joy in the parlour room. You could focus on our mothers in tears over your return, or even your grandmother’s relief. But you seem determined to dampen your own spirits.”

My frown is aimed down at the amber liquid sloshing in my glass.

Dray adds, “You are glad to be home, so why not allow yourself to feel that?”

“I don’t know how I feel.”

He is quiet, watching, as I down the scotch. It scalds all the way to my stomach.

But it’s pleasant.

The first real drink I’ve had in so long.

Dray pushes up from the arm of the couch and pours me a refill. “Tell me.”

I watch the liquid splash and wave against the glass walls of the tumbler. “Why would I tell you anything about how I feel?”

Dray pours his own next, and it’s a healthy amount.

“Who else do you have to speak to?” He leans on the side of the desk. “With Serena gone into obscurity, who’s confidence do you have?”

My mouth flattens into a bitter line.

I hide it behind the glass.

Because, even with Serena as my rogue companion for years, I didn’t have her confidence. Not really.

I could never tell her the layers of every feeling I had out there.

There was a disconnect between us.

If I was a full-fledged witch, I know now that Serena and I wouldn’t have been best friends. Friends, yes. Allies, definitely. But that same disconnect would have been wedged between us, because we are fundamentally different.

I roll the glass. “I feel…”

My whisper is weak, and it trails off.

But Dray is patient, and he waits.

I speak stronger, “I feel fractured. Like I’ve been someone else for so long that I forgot who I really am. And now she’s coming back because there’s space for her, but it’s two masks colliding, and they’re cracking. I feel like two different lives are crashing inside of me, and I’ve only existed as a second mother for so long—a nanny—and now I’m Olivia Craven again, and I don’t even know what that means.”

My throat thickens.

My breath shudders out of me, thick with restrained tears. But they aren’t restrained.

I taste them on my wet lips, I feel them on my cheeks and slipping down my throat.

And Dray sits there, on the edge of the desk, patient. “You feel relieved.”

He’s right.

But I hate that he is.

So I lift a dark, wet glower to him. “You know don’t know anything.”