She hadn’t even cried. Even when Lucas was told and he was weeping in her arms, she didn’t shed a tear. Her breakdown hadn’t come until later, at the funeral, and the only reason Harper knew it happened was because she’d been looking for a private place to have a cry of her own when she’d found Patricia bawling her eyes out.
“A lot of things happened that shouldn’t,” Patricia said, leafing through the papers. “If this only affected me, I would have let them take whatever they wanted. But they came after Lucas. They’re not getting away with that.”
She glanced at Evie, smiling. “Even though he isn’t missing much right now.”
Evie smiled, too, and brushed Lucas’ thick curls out of his face. He was curled up under a blanket, eyes closed and head resting in her lap.
Harper wasn’t the only one dealing with an empty apartment. Since Natalya was the only Regent in town, she needed to focus on governing, and Evie didn’t want to distract her from her duties.
Here, she was at ease. Happy. And unlike usual, her eyes hadn’t gone to Harper’s neck once.
Harper’s phone vibrated against the coffee table. She grabbed it before the sound was even done, lips moving as she read through the notification.
Tension formed in her stomach. She tossed the phone back onto the table.
“Seems like the date went well. Nell is staying at Casey’s tonight.”
Evie’s smile fell, and Patricia’s brows furrowed.
“Really?” Patricia said. “That’s… fast.”
Harper began a tally in her head as she counted the fucking snowflakes.
“Yeah. Fast.”
“Maybe it’s a good sign,” Evie said. “They probably just hit it off. If it’s been over a year, I can’t say I’m surprised. I don’t remember Nell ever being single for that long.”
Patricia’s frown faded, and she returned her attention to the stack of papers in her lap, but Harper couldn’t summon the same ease. Oranyease. And her having a bad feeling about Nell’s dating habits wasn’t to blame, either.
It had been a week. A week since Maya had shown up at the Lotus. Since she had left the city to play guard dog against a group of killer cops. A long, sleepless, agonizing week where the only contact they’d had was a one-sided text thread. One Maya added to every day, and which Harper hadn’t responded to at all.
And why should she? Those messages were just there as a courtesy. She didn’t care if Harper read them, so Harper shouldn’t care about them. Or that the gap between the updates had grown.
That line of thinking never lasted longer than a few minutes. Not when she kept rereading the messages to the point of compulsion.
Not when she constantly had to stop herself from checking her phone for new texts.
“Everything okay, Harper?” Patricia said, brows furrowed again. Harper gritted her teeth.
“I’m great. Why wouldn’t I be great? Everything is just wonderful right now.”
That didn’t exactly soften Patricia’s stern expression. After a moment of staring, her gaze feeling like it was making burr holes in Harper’s skull, she put down the paperwork and turned towards Evie.
“It’s getting late. Mind getting Lucas to bed? I fear we’ll get into an argument if I try.”
Evie roused Lucas with a gentle shake. He grumbled sleepily, the noise turning into a yawn.
Whenever Evie was around, he had been glued to her side. She’d raised him almost as much as his parents, and loved doing it, too. Harper had always assumed she would end up with a gaggle of children of her own someday.
But kids and greater fiends didn’t mix. Though children were immune to most fiendish powers until they reached maturity, demons still affected them. Rather than feeling envy, anger, or any other emotion born of Sin, they just experienced innate terror instead.
Once Lucas and Evie were gone, Patricia’s frown deepened.
“Something’s wrong. Tell me.”
Harper crossed her arms. “Nothing’s wrong. I’m just tired.”
“Tired?”
