Fair enough. I guess I’ll just have to wait to find out with everyone else.
He pauses in the hallway just before the dining room doors. No matter how many times we have done this, it still hits me in the chest that Gaven grants me this moment to brace myself. It’s a kindness my own parents have never offered.
“How’s your head?” he asks.
“It’s fine,” I say.
“If that changes?—”
“Just give you the look. I know.”
It’s not like he can actually get me out of a family event, but the few times I’ve had an attack in public, he’s caused enough of a diversion for me to sneak away.
He pushes the door open, and an overwhelming surge of magic in the room hits me like a blow. The room smells like beeswax candles and wine, but it looks like bright fireworks of magic bursting around the table. I close my eyes as we step inside. I can still see the auras behind my lids.
Every magical family in Lunameade in one room, the rainbow of their magic a bright swirl of color. This is what separates our family from all the others and what has kept us in power all this time.
Every guest at this dinner can wield magic, but only the Carrenwells can see it.
That means no one can try to use magic on us without us noticing, and it means that even if we meet a stranger, we’ll know immediately what kind of blessing they have and how to counteract it.
Blinking my eyes open, I take in the smiling faces and expensive clothes.
My mother’s dark violet gaze sweeps over me, and she purses her lips. That’s as close to approval as I’ll get. I’m sure there’s something displeasing about my appearance. There always is. It took years of desperate striving to learn, but I’ve abandoned the notion that I can possibly please her. There’s freedom in being a disappointment.
Gaven leads me past my usual spot toward the end of the head table,and my hackles rise. I dig my fingernails into his arm, but he doesn’t slow as he guides me past my sisters, Electra, Carianne, and Sophie. I expect him to stop at the chair beside Sophie. Instead, he leads me on past my brothers, Frederick and Thomas, to the seat beside my older brother Kellan and his wife Libby.
I smile and sit, placing the golden napkin in my lap.
Before I can ask, Kellan leans over and fills my glass with sparkling wine. “What did you do?” His tone is teasing, but I can see the hint of concern in his eyes at this sudden shift in the usual seating order.
He runs a hand over his jaw, the movement a disturbing echo of our father. Then, his lips tip up, and that smirk is just like mine and Aidia’s.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I whisper. “Clearly we’re celebrating.” I tilt my glass back and the fizzy liquid tingles over my tongue.
“Yeah, that’s what I’m worried about,” Kellan says, draining his glass. He cocks his head to the side, his lilac eyes scanning me for any hint of a lie.
Kellan is the only sibling besides Aidia that I have a relationship with. Before he took over as captain of the city watch at eighteen, he spent all of his free time with Aidia and me, and he did his best to protect us from our father’s wrath.
I turn to face him. “You mean, you don’t even know what this is about? Getting rusty in your old age?”
He refills his glass, looking at our parents and then back at me. “I’m serious.”
“So am I. I haven’t done anything.”
One of Kellan’s brows arches, disappearing beneath the dark hair falling over his forehead, the expression so startlingly like Aidia’s that it makes my chest hurt. “Perhaps the problem isn’t doing anything but doing anyone?”
I smirk. “Perhaps.”
I don’t like lying to him, but what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. It’s his job as captain of the city watch to spot any threats to city security or the magical families, so I’ve been meticulous at covering my tracks. He knows that I sneak out most nights, but he assumes I’ve been sleeping my way through the city, and that’s how I like it.
“How are Jack and Kate?” I ask, leaning over to grin at his wife.
“Trouble as always, just like their father,” Libby says.
If my niece and nephew were here, I could be entertained, but children are treated like a nuisance in our family—at least until they master their magical abilities.
Libby wrings her hands. “It’s good to see you out of mourning black and looking so well, Harlow. Red suits you better.”
