Page 4 of Queen of Nothing

I nodded, firm.

Dray yawned, “And we picked our lunch order.”

Amelia reached out and gave him a half-hearted smack. “Manners, Dray. Cover your mouth when you yawn.”

Unbothered, he rolled onto his side, like he was ready for a nap. Serena called them siestas, and I was fond of them, especially in the summer heat of the French Riviera.

“A little life,” Mother started, and looked over her shoulder at the shadow drawing closer—Father, carrying nothing but a glass of water, “is a life without travelling, without power, without sufficient education. It is insignificant and dull. It is simply small.” She turned her smile on me.

Oliver stretched over the edge of the daybed and mused, “The lives of krums are little.”

I frowned at him for a beat, my mind snagged on the education. Krums didn’t go to Bluestone.

So I asked, “I don’t want to go to the academy. Can I have a little life?”

Dray snorted behind me, and Oliver buried his smile in the crook of his elbow.

Father’s face was stone. He dropped onto the deckchair and raised his chin, as if to look down his nose at me.

Mother forced one of those tight smiles of hers, the kind that meant I said something wrong and she was about to give me the chance to correct it.

But I just really didn’t want to go to Bluestone.

I dreaded the day of leaving Mother and Father and Elcott Abbey.

I wanted to stay with my governess, not go to a boarding school in another country. And it was only weeks until Oliver and I were to be sent off with our luggage to stay at some strange, new place without our parents.

I heard the magic there was so strong, the mountain so high, the snow so thick, the winds so powerful, that the phonelines sometimes cut out. So what if I needed my parents, but I couldn’t call them?

I didn’t like that at all.

Mother leaned closer, slow, like a snake about to strike, and it clenched my insides.

“Then you will have to give back everything you have.” Her voice lowered into a dangerous whisper, forged in steel, and my fingers started to wring together on my lap. “You will have to give back all your toys. All your books. Everything pretty in your bedroom. Your animals. Your shoes and dresses. Your lovely home. And all the other homes. All the trips, the jet, the friends… the family.”

The blood left my head and a wave of dizziness pulsated in my brain.

I didn’t want to give up any of those things.

Out the corner of my eye, Oliver’s sneer was as obvious as paint dripping down him. He wore it proudly for me to see.

Father’s order was firm. “Don’t fidget, Olivia.”

My fingers froze on my lap.

Mother arched her preened, dark eyebrows. “Do you want to go home now and pack up everything?”

I shook my head.

It wasn’t enough.

“Don’t you want to leave all the beauty, all the luxury, all the gifts, all the friends, the love and support, the privilege you deserve… and go live in some little swallow of misery?”

Again, I shook my head.

Still, it wasn’t enough.

Mother’s hair glistened darker than ink—and her tone was a threat wrapped in faux-concern. “You changed your mind? You don’t want to be out there with them?”