Page 146 of Queen of Nothing

I have no intention of padding my story.

“What are you still doing here?” I ask, dull, and throw him a withering look.

Oliver answers, “Father is coming. I told you that.”

“Are you here to shout at me with him?”

A familiar duet.

But my brother shakes his head with a sigh. “There’s so much you don’t understand, Liv. I wish… I wish there was another way…”

“There is. Don’t shout at me. Don’t blame me for my krum blood.”

Oliver startles.

His face shutters and his eyes flash.

That flaring gaze swerves to me, and he stares at me with a blend of horror and confusion on his face. “Krum—?”

The door blasts open.

I cringe into the pillow, shoulders tucking inwards, as though I can escape the loud strike of the door against the wall, the tremble of the bedchamber.

But I can’t.

I lift my gaze, my chin pressing into the feathery pillow, and watch as Father storms around the chaise.

Oliver pushes off the desk.

Before Father’s purpling face can explode in front of me, Oliver holds up his hand and says, “He tested her blood.”

Father hesitates.

His dark purpling face falters—and he freezes.

At the corner of the coffee table, mouth parted, a shout lingering in his throat, he just… stops.

Oliver steals the moment of hesitation, “He cut her hand and tested it himself on the balcony.”

Father’s lashes flutter.

The ugly, angry purple of his face starts to settle. It turns crimson, then pink, and his mouth closes, firm, into a tight line that’s stroked across his face.

A breath utters out of him.

And he falls his weight back onto one foot.

The fresh leather of his shoe creaks in the silence.

And it is silence.

Thick and suffocating.

The fire crackles. It pops. It flickers.

And the three of us exist in a tension that swells through the bedchamber air, thicker than the heat of the flames.

Father’s face twists.