Page 18 of Queen of Nothing

Now, it has a whole other layer to it.

Asta was trying to hurt Serena. To derail whatever scheme she had in play.

Pieces of a puzzle are all coming together in my head, and I see the truth for what it is.

None of them look out for each other, not the way I thought they did. And Asta and Serena might not be as close as I thought they were, as they should have been.

Even Dray and my brother…

They have always had a competitive, fucked up friendship. A poisoned brotherhood.

I just didn’t know it went that far.

Serena tucks the map into her coat pocket. And like my whole sense of reality isn’t falling to pieces, she goes on, “So Oliver brought me here, and I was the only person in the world again. For one weekend. He took me to this jewellers, a private one, bookings only, custom pieces, collectables, antiques…”

Her words trail off into a heavy breath.

She lifts her chin and squints through the faint light to the street sign at the corner, a frown knitting her shaped, dark eyebrows together.

Her mind works, plotting our location, but mine is stuck on the drama of the snakes.

How putrid they all are.

I don’t know why it consumes me to know all of this.

Maybe I thought my life would’ve been easier with them. But maybe, as it turns out, it would have been heartbreaking.

Serena starts down the street. “I figure we’ll get the best price there. The clientele is suited to what we have.”

I stagger to catch up with her brisk steps.

The weight of my ponytail sways behind me.

Her sense of direction is right this time, and after another thirty minutes of walking, we arrive at a door adorned with a brass handle and golden paint along the lining.

No windows or signs.

It looks entirely private.

But that’s not unusual for these sorts of jewellers. Collectors, to some, like Grandmother Ethel who has a fixation with collecting the crowns of dead monarchs.

Serena knocks, and her illusioned hand is liver-spotted and bruised in the faint streetlight.

Our illusions are of older women.

I lean against the brick wall, waiting, and it reminds me of ringing the servant bell in my bedchamber at Elcott, those annoying few minutes of waiting for Abigail to respond.

But there is no bell, no servants, and no Abigail.

It’s only me and Serena on a cold, dark street, and her knuckles rapping over and over on the old door.

It’s incessant.

She does not let up.

Her knuckles must be as sore as my face, my ribs, my back, by the time a tired voice croaks from the other side of the door—

“Who is it?”