Page 30

Dimara slaps her fork down on her plate and glares at me. “What have you done?”

I’m sorry, I try to say, but the words come out as a crack. This is their home. I know how much that means. The two bites of food I did eat reappear in my throat. I wish I could put Knox at ease and promise that Yagrin would never do anything to jeopardize their location. But I don’t know where Octos’s mask ends and Yagrin’s begins. There’s no way to know how much of the person I trusted the last few months was real. I push my plate away.

“May I be excused?”

“No. You need to eat.” Because who knows the next time I will be able to eat this well…Knox doesn’t have to say. I look for her eyes, but she won’t meet mine. Guilt tugs at me like an anchor.

“Who are you really?” Dimara has a fistful of tablecloth. Rein’s lip quivers and her hand strokes her swollen belly. Everyone stares in my direction.

“I’m exactly who I said I was: Quell. I fled from House of Marionne. It was the other guy who lied.”

“Your friend.”

Someone sucks their teeth. Another tsks.

“How long have you been here, Dimara?” I ask, refusing to take the bait. Arguing will accomplish nothing.

“I was born here. Like most of us.”

My next bite halts at my mouth. I’d envisioned Dimara finding her way here like Yagrin had.

“You didn’t flee from a House.” I’d assumed this was a welcome safe space for anyone fleeing from the Order. But the way Dimara looks at me makes me shift in my seat, and I realize they function like a tight-knit family here. Outsiders must not be welcome…which means Knox and Willam made an exception for me. I meet Knox’s eyes, trying to think of something to say, when Dimara slams her knife into the table.

“I could smell it on you, you know?” Her top lip curls. “Magic. I tried to warn you.”

Knox clears her throat, and Dimara fills her mouth with a hunk of bread. “Finish in silence.”

Other than the twins’ hacking coughs at the end of the table, the tension in the room for the rest of the meal is sharper than our dinner knives. My brain won’t stop whirring through questions about my mother and wondering what I should do next.

“Knox, may we speak alone now?”

She tugs at her necklace. “Clean up and meet me in the mudroom.”

I open the door to the mudroom and Knox joins me inside.

“How do you know my mother?”

She pauses to close the door before rolling closer to me.

“Are you going to be okay, child?”

“I will. My mother?”

“Everyone knows about the prodigal daughter of Darragh Marionne.”

“You made it sound like you knew her.”

She pulls at the end of one of her white locs. “She used to live here. Both of you did.” Before I realize it, Knox has grabbed a pack of matches from a shelf and strikes one.

I jump back, my heart stuttering at the sight of even a small flame.

“Still scared.” Knox blows out the match and flicks the whole thing in a bucket of water.

“I don’t remember.”

“You wouldn’t. You were very small. And it wasn’t for long.”

“What happened to Willam?”