Page 110 of Burn Bright (Cobalt Empire #1)

BEN COBALT

W ednesdays are for my family. For the Cobalt Empire.

It’s my first Wednesday Night Dinner since I’ve returned, since I’ve named the monster in my head, and apprehension hasn’t struck me.

I’m not jittery or rattled yet because A.) I’m not hiding anything anymore and B.) I’m doing my absolute best not to think about the house burning down and C.) the focus is more so on Audrey tonight.

We’re not in the dining room yet.

Our youngest sister has requested a sibling photo, and as soon as we arrive, she corrals all of us into the library—one that’d be the envy of most bookworms. With floor-to-ceiling dark wooden bookcases, fancy crown molding, several built-in ladders, a roaring fireplace, and candle-lit chandelier.

The moody academic atmosphere is as familiar as it is unfamiliar because I rarely spent time in here growing up. I found it gloomy.

Now, as light rain taps the windowpane and fire crackles against real logs, I find it calming.

“What happened to the club chairs?” Tom asks.

“I had the furniture rearranged for our picture.” Audrey motions to a midnight blue Chesterfield sofa. “Sit, please. Charlie preferably in the middle. Merci infiniment.” Thank you infinitely.

He’s clearly annoyed, but I snap a glare at him, hoping he remembers the ride here. My brothers and I carpooled to Philly in a limo-style SUV so we were facing each other the whole way. Audrey had already informed us about the photo and told everyone to wear blue.

Charlie, ever the nonconformist, did not conform to a dress code this time. He climbed into the car wearing black tailored slacks and a black suit jacket—no shirt underneath. I can’t remember who mentioned Audrey first on the drive, just that we talked about her the entire two hours.

“She’s unaffected, dude,” Tom told Beckett, who had questioned how Audrey had been faring since the fentanyl overdose. “You would actually think she popped a Tylenol that night.”

Beckett made an uncertain face. “It might be an act.”

“Yeah, I don’t believe it had no effect on her either,” I said. “I can’t see how nothing changes from this.”

“Of course you couldn’t,” Charlie pointed out.

Which pissed off Eliot, surprisingly. He typically stays neutral or makes excuses for Charlie. Instead, he glowered. “You go all the way to Alaska to bring back our youngest brother just to nettle him.”

“I’m okay, Eliot,” I told him.

“He’s okay, Eliot,” Charlie said mockingly. “Look, I brought him back so he could tell you he’s fine.” He forced a tight smile.

Eliot let it go, only because Tom cut in, “I’m telling you all, Audrey Virginia isn’t dwelling. She said, and I quote, ‘Nothing can destroy me. I’m a Cobalt.’”

Beckett rubbed his eyes.

I shook my head harder. “She wants to be unaffected, Tom. It doesn’t mean she is.

She was terrified that night, and on top of it all, I left because what happened to her sent me over.

Now she’s suddenly taken up scrapbooking?

” It’s why she wants a posed group photo.

To immortalize memories of us together. “So is she just telling us she’s fine?

Or is she pretending to be fine to stay strong for me? ”

“Maybe I want her to be fine,” Tom shrugged. “I don’t want that night to stick with her or change her. Do you?”

“No,” I said. “If that night could have zero impact on her, that’s what I’d take, but that seems unrealistic.”

Charlie slid an arm on the seat behind Beckett. “Or nothing can pierce her ten-inch armor.”

“You believe she’s invulnerable? Honestly?” I asked him seriously.

“Only one way to find out,” Charlie said.

I glared. “Do not fuck with her, Charlie.”

“What’s better?” he retorted. “We all play into her act and pretend she’s an unfeeling automaton and indestructible?”

“Would you seriously rather unearth trauma that she might be burying?”

He considered it.

“Unfucking believable,” I muttered, then shot a look at Beckett.

He told Charlie, “I doubt she’ll do something as reckless. It has to be in the back of her head what could’ve happened.”

“And if it’s not?” Charlie questioned him. “We were lucky this time.”

“Killing her confidence isn’t the way to go, brother,” Eliot said. “I’m with Ben. We reinforce she’s fine.”

“Ditto,” Tom nodded.

Beckett agreed, and it took all two hours to finally get Charlie to promise not to launch a grenade on our sister tonight. Promises from Charlie are decently well-kept—but only with family. Outside of blood, he will break any made in a heartbeat.

Now that we’re all in the library, Charlie follows our sister’s direction and sits in the center of the Chesterfield sofa. “And you want me in the middle because…?” he asks her.

“So you can’t easily ditch the photo before it’s been taken.” She raises her chin. “I’ve outsmarted you.”

“Hardly.”

“To be seen.” She waves the rest of us at the couch. “Take your places wherever you see fit. Thatcher, for you.” She passes her phone to our brother-in-law so he can snap the pic. Even if this is for her scrapbook, we’re all aware the chances she posts this on social media are high.

None of us really mind since it’s for her.

So we gather around the sofa. Audrey squishes in on the right side of Charlie but makes enough room for Jane to be next to her.

Then Beckett fills the last sofa seat to the left of Charlie.

Behind them, Eliot stands and stretches his arms across the back of the furniture like he’s fucking Dracula hovering over everyone.

It makes me laugh as I drop down to the floor. Leaning against the couch in front of my little sister, I rest my arm on my bent knee.

Tom sits on the ground and flicks open a lighter. “On three, take the pic, Thatcher Alessio,” he instructs. “On two, we all say Cobalts never die .”

I smile at Tom, but I laugh so hard when things go naturally awry within one, two, three.

Eliot steals the cat ears off Jane’s head.

Audrey shrieks, “Charlie!” because he puts a palm in front of Beckett’s face, hiding our brother from the camera—while also flipping off the lens with his other hand.

Tom sticks out his tongue near the flame of a lighter, and I have to be mid-laugh in the photo, staring at my family I love with all my fucking heart.

“We must take another,” Audrey decrees.

“Mommy!” Maeve suddenly picks herself off the floor near Thatcher’s ankles, then waddles with her tiny arms outstretched to Jane. “Mommy!”

She’s walking for the first time.

“Oui, Maeve. Look at you go!” Jane beams.

We all cheer her on, and Thatcher films the milestone on Audrey’s phone. When Maeve reaches Jane victoriously, we jump up and applaud like our niece just won first place in a spelling bee. Even Charlie claps. The baby giggles so vibrantly.

Then Charlie makes a quick exit.

“Wait!” Audrey calls out, distraught. She retrieves her phone to check the photo. “No, Ben.” She rushes over to me. “Look. I’m blinking . My eyes aren’t even open.”

In the several pictures Thatcher captured, Audrey has her eyes shut in every single one. “It’s just candid,” I say. “I’m not even staring at the camera.”

“You’re laughing, though. You look…” She smiles more fondly, her eyes going glassy before they lighten. “You look really happy.”

“I am,” I smile at her. “Let’s take some selfies for your scrapbook.”

That cheers her up. Eliot also stays behind to take more photos for Audrey, and we squeeze together on the couch. When she’s ready to head to the dining room, she hugs me extra tight, which does make me think she’s not all okay, but I know I’ll be here for her when she needs me.

I tell her that.

“And I’ll always be here for you too,” she nods.

I nod back, seeing maybe I’m not the person she will be vulnerable with if she’s too concerned about my well-being.

But I can’t wear false armor. I am what I am.

Sometimes, I’m fragile enough to hurt easily.

Sometimes, I’m strong enough to bear it.

Sometimes, I’m just mad. And I burn and burn and burn.

When it’s just me and Eliot left in the library, side by side on the sofa, I tell him, “I asked Harriet to move in with us this afternoon.”

At the end of our date, we agreed if she doesn’t get into the Honors House, it’s the best plan B. I’d love to live with her, but I hate it’s at the cost of her losing a great opportunity. Mixed emotions are real.

Eliot grins. “So you’re staying for good?”

“I’m staying for good,” I nod to him.

“Not on the pull-out, brother. You and Harriet can have my room.”

I grimace at the idea of displacing him.

Maybe I can learn to live with shaking up his world, what I feared when I first moved in, but I still don’t love taking too much.

“I could—” I cut myself off before I offer sharing a room with him or Tom, which I would prefer, but I can’t do that to Harriet.

If she does move in, then she deserves her own bedroom—at least one only shared with me.

“Any chance of knocking out a wall?” I smile, knowing it’s a longshot.

“For you, I would’ve knocked them all down already if I could.”

“I believe it.” I gaze up at the never-ending rows of books. “I want to leave all this torment behind, all the terrible things that’s etched fear into me, but it seems so… so hard.” I lock eyes with my most unburdened brother. “‘What’s past is prologue.’” He knows this is from The Tempest.

“Only if you let it be.” Eliot squeezes my shoulder. “And if we’re living in a Shakespearean tale, your story won’t be the tragedy, little brother. We won’t let it go dark.”

The potent sentiment carries me into the dining room. I take my seat near the seitan. Dad comes to my end of the table again, but this time, I’m not on edge.

“Opening remarks have commenced,” Mom says as she lowers in her chair.

I’m about to reach for my goblet, preparing for Eliot to bang a foot against the table. Then I solidify—because Beckett moves first. This…never happens. He stacks his bowl onto his dishes, shifts the silverware aside, and then with so much grace, he steps onto his chair. Then the table.

Beckett is standing on the table. Air knocks out of my lungs as his commanding eyes drop to mine, a smile inside them. “Ensemble.”

Together.

Audrey is quick to hop up on the table next. Her gaze falls keenly to me. “Ensemble.”

I scoot back as emotion barrels into my chest. This isn’t just the rallying cry of my family. This is a word spoken to me when I was a little kid. When I packed my bag to run away from home because I felt like I didn’t belong. They each, one by one, stood on the table and reminded me I always did.

Now we’re grown.

And I watch as Eliot climbs onto the surface, clattering the dishware and tipping over goblets. Towering as a grin glitters his eyes. “Ensemble.”

Then Tom flicks a lighter closed as he rises beside Eliot. He looks only at me. Nods to me. “Ensemble.”

Jane lifts her tulle skirt as she goes from chair to table. Spinning to stare down my end. To face me as her lips lift and her breezy voice fills my ears. “Ensemble.”

Charlie is the last of my siblings seated. Just like when we were kids, he’s the last to stand.

He snuffs a cigarette on his plate, then puts one foot on the chair, one on the table. Because he turns back around. And extends a hand to me. “Ensemble.” Together.

My eyes sting, and there is no question, no hesitation, no reluctance inside me. I grab my oldest brother’s hand—the brother I might always disagree with but will always love—and I rise with him.

“Toujours,” I promise. Always. My smile ignites my whole soul on fire. “Ensemble.”