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“Worse,” I retort.
Olive laughs, at us. The sound fills the breakfast room like color spilled across a white floor. Her laughter is not merely a sound, it is an event. This rare astronomical occurrence, something men should record in ledgers and base new calendars upon. Her laughter fades when she notices all three of us staring. “What?”
“Nothing,” Edward remarks.
Lazarus leans back, “I am merely grateful to be alive during such an historic moment.”
“I can correct that,” she says, lifting a knife.
“There she is.” I smile into my coffee as a warmth spreads over the room. Not the false warmth of crowded parties or gaslit theaters, it is something uglier. Much more true, the warmth of broken things piled close enough together to stop from freezing. I should distrust it and a small part of me does, another part of me wants to crawl inside it and lock the door. That thought startles me, so I set my cup down. The porcelain clicks too loudly against the saucer. Edward’s gaze flicks to me. Always watching. Always bracing for impact.
“I am fine,” I say before he can ask.
“I did not ask,” Edward states.
“You intended to.” His expression softens at my words in a way I cannot bear.
“Alcott.”
“No.” I stand. “Do not do that.”
“Do what?”
I narrow my gaze. “Look at me as though my bones are made of glass.”
His jaw tightens. A familiar tension enters the room. Brother-shaped. Lazarus breaks it by dramatically dropping the stolen fig back onto Olive’s plate. “There. I have returned the fruit. Let the record show I am capable of growth.”
Olive looks at the fig, then at him, sneering. “You bit it.”
“I panicked,” Laz exclaims.
Edward exhales through his nose and the tension loosens. I sit again because standing suddenly feels theatrical in a way Lazarus would admire, and I refuse to give him the satisfaction. Across the table, he smiles at me. Not mocking. Unexpected, like during our coitus yesterday. I study him with more care than before. The curve of his mouth, the shadow beneath his eyes, and the scar near his knuckle. The loose, careless posture that is never quite as careless as it appears.
Lazarus Graves is beautiful in a way that suggests ruin learned to dance. I struggle internally and dislike the thought immediately, mostly because it is accurate. His gaze catches mine.
A strange quiet opens between us, as though some part of me recognizes him. Not from memory, no. From damage, hunger, from some darker chamber of myself that has been listening longer than I realized. My fingers twitch and a pressure blooms behind my eyes. Brief. Sharp. Familiar. No. Not now. I glance down at the table and my hand rests near a butter knife. For one second, the silver reflects a face that is almost mine.
Almost.
A smile moves across my reflection, though I am not smiling. The room blurs. Then returns slightly. Olive is speaking to Edward. Edward is answering. Lazarus is still watching me, his head tilts slightly, as though he heard a door open somewhere inside me. My pulse slows, as I flex my fingers beneath the table. All is well, or close enough to well that I can pretend. I reach for my coffee and it has gone cold. How long was I staring? A minute? Longer?
“Alcott?” Lazarus says quietly. There is no jest in it now. That unsettles me more than the flicker in the knife.
“Yes?” I answer.
His eyes search mine. “Are you with us?”
A simple question. Absurdly simple and yet it lands with such force, I nearly laugh. Am I with them? With Olive, who has returned laughter to Edward’s mouth and color to rooms that have no right to it? With Edward, whose smile I would kill to preserve? With Lazarus, whose gaze feels like a hand reaching toward a locked part of me no one has dared approach?
With this strange little constellation of damaged people who have somehow arranged themselves into something dangerously close to belonging?
I take a slow breath, then smile.
“Regrettably,” I say, “yes.”
Lazarus’s grin returns and the room warms again, but beneath my skin, something has not settled. Something watches, and it waits. Something smiles with my mouth when I am not paying attention. I lift my coffee and pretend I do not feel it. For now, the morning belongs to us.
27. Understanding Teaches, Where to Cut - Darkness
