Page 4 of The Beginning (Covert Moon, #1)

It irritated me that even now, after all this time and all the distance I'd tried to put between us, I could still feel the pang of that rejection.

It was something so petty, really—a party scheduled on the wrong day—but it lodged itself under my skin like a splinter.

There it was, a thorn burrowed so deep it would take more than the passing of time to remove it.

Calyx, ever the peacemaker, always tried to smooth things over between Mother and me.

She'd make excuses, offer alternative explanations, and try to find ways to soften the sharp edges of our family's dysfunction.

But we both knew there wasn't much that could be done to make up for our mother. Some wounds ran too deep for band-aids.

"Say you'll come," she said, and I could hear the hope in her voice, tinged with something that might have been desperation.

"I don't know," I persisted, though I was already weakening.

The thought of spending my birthday alone in my apartment, avoiding the dreams and pretending everything was fine, suddenly seemed more depressing than facing the chaos at home.

"You know how she gets when she's hosting.

" I sighed loudly for my sister's benefit, making sure she understood the magnitude of what she was asking.

Mother was unpleasant on every occasion—that was simply her default state—but when she had an audience, especially an important political audience, she could be absolutely unbearable.

Her already sharp tongue would become razor-edged, her criticism more cutting, her expectations impossibly high.

Everyone in the house would feel the pressure to be perfect, to avoid any mistake that might reflect poorly on her carefully crafted image.

Calyx didn't attempt to dispute the facts.

She couldn't—she lived there too, witnessed the same cold treatment, saw the same calculated cruelty.

Our family was what it was, and pretending otherwise wouldn't change anything.

She did try to work around it, though, which was so typically Calyx.

Always looking for solutions, always trying to make the best of bad situations.

"But I baked you a cake, Marigold! Please?" Her voice took on that wheedling tone she'd perfected as a child, the one that had gotten her out of trouble and into my good graces more times than I could count.

I could hear her pout through the phone, could picture her lower lip jutting out just slightly, her dark eyes wide with appeal. It was a look that had worked on me since she was tiny, and she knew it.

It wasn't like I had other plans. Sad, I know, but that was the reality of my social life.

Most of the friends I'd had in school had drifted away after graduation, moving on to colleges or careers that took them far from our small city while I used the guise of a gap year to just take a break and find myself.

The few who'd stayed were either intimidated by my family name or uninterested in the complications that came with being close to a Blaine.

But of all nights, tonight was a night I really didn't want to be alone, but I really didn't want to see Mother, didn't want to risk having my birthday completely ruined by whatever cutting remark she might make.

"Are you sure you don't want to come here?

You and the cake?" I asked, grasping for alternatives.

"My neighbors are back in town. I think I saw Brandon this morning. .."

I teased her with the mention of my neighbor's younger brother, who was undeniably attractive in that wholesome, all-American way that should have appealed to teenage girls everywhere.

He was the kind of boy mothers approved of—polite, well-mannered, with a bright future ahead of him and nothing whatsoever to do with the magical world.

It was an old tease between us, especially now that Calyx had a boyfriend, although given what I knew of her current romantic situation, I wished she would take interest in the very boring, very safe, very normal Brandon instead.

It was Calyx's turn to sigh, and I could hear the weight of it through the phone.

"No. Seriously, Marigold. You should be home to celebrate.

With me." She paused, and I could almost hear her thinking, searching for the right words to heap more guilt onto the pile she was already building.

"You know, Mother's not the only person who lives here. "

The words hit their mark, as she'd known they would.

Calyx had always been good at finding my weak spots, though she used that skill to bring me closer rather than to wound me.

She was right, of course. The house wasn't just Mother's domain—it was my family home, the place where I'd grown up, where I should feel welcomed and loved.

I didn't know how to explain to my sister that nothing about the Blaine Mansion on Holly Street said home to me anymore. Maybe it never really had, or maybe those feelings had been slowly eroded over the years by a thousand small rejections and casual cruelties.

She'd never understand. She couldn't. Not really.

My sister's experience in our family was the opposite of mine in just about every way where our parents were concerned.

The contrast was so stark it was almost comical, if it hadn't been so painful.

Calyx was the special one, their prize, the daughter they used to proudly display at public events and brag about to their friends.

I was tolerated at best, treated like an unfortunate obligation that had to be endured rather than celebrated.

Calyx was showered with attention—her achievements celebrated, her opinions solicited, her presence welcomed in family discussions.

I was treated like part of the scenery, acknowledged only when absolutely necessary and dismissed as quickly as possible.

I realized how that sounded, believe me.

I wasn't trying to be a sour-grapes-loving, pity-party-throwing martyr-fool.

It was simply the truth, as observable and undeniable as the color of the sky.

While Calyx knew all of this, had witnessed it firsthand and understood my reality intellectually, she didn't live it.

How could she? She moved through our family's world wrapped in their approval and affection, while I navigated the same spaces feeling like an intruder who might be asked to leave at any moment.

It hadn't always been that way. I had clear memories of being happy for many years, of feeling like a real part of the family rather than an unwelcome addition.

There had been birthday parties and family vacations, moments when my parents seemed proud of me, times when Mother's smile had been genuine rather than dutiful.

There were even scattered memories of times when my mother and father had laughed together, like normal people did—real laughter that filled rooms and made everyone around them feel lighter.

But that was in the before-times, as I'd come to think of them.

When my dad didn't just fade into the background and try not to be seen, when he still had opinions and voiced them, when he hadn't yet learned that disappearing was safer than to risk drawing Mother's ire.

When my Aunt Beatrice was still alive.

I do think Calyx was always the favorite—even in my earliest memories, there was something special about the way our parents looked at her, spoke to her, included her in things.

But the favoritism had been subtle then, overshadowed by what seemed like genuine affection for both of us.

Something had changed after my Aunt Beatrice died eight years ago, and that's when I noticed an escalation in the tensions, a sharpening of the divide between Calyx and me in our parents' eyes.

That's when Mother became icy toward me in ways that went beyond normal parental frustration.

The coldness became deliberate, calculated.

Her anger toward me seemed to grow more pointed, and maybe even worse than anger—sometimes I caught her looking at me with something that looked dangerously close to apathy, as if I'd become so irrelevant she couldn't even be bothered to dislike me anymore.

It always seemed weird to me that anything with Mother had been affected by Aunt Beatrice's death, because all the evidence suggested that she and her sister had never been close at all.

In fact, they'd seemed to barely tolerate each other during family gatherings, their conversations polite but strained, their interactions carefully managed to avoid conflict.

Growing up, my family had gone to see Aunt Beatrice regularly—every few weeks, even though looking back, it was clearly obligation on my mother’s part.

As kids, Calyx and I had spent lots of time at her house without our parents, and those visits were some of my happiest childhood memories.

Aunt Beatrice had been warm and welcoming in ways our own home never quite managed, full of stories and laughter and the kind of unconditional acceptance that made you feel valued just for being yourself.

But even then, it had been clear that my mother didn't enjoy those visits.

She'd sit stiffly in Aunt Beatrice's living room, checking her watch and making pointed comments about the time, the weather, Aunt Beatrice herself, eager to cut the visits short and get home.

There had been an undercurrent of tension between the sisters that I'd been too young to understand but old enough to sense.

All of that was ancient history now. Aunt Beatrice was gone, and whatever secrets or tensions had existed between her and Mother had been buried with her. Even though it seemed Mother’s ire definitely remained.

And now with me coming of age, I'd already noticed an increase in my power over the past few months—spells that used to require effort now came easily, my magic had more intensity, more precision, effects that lasted longer and felt more substantial.