“Last I saw, they were still in Austin.”
Shut up!I think to myself, but even as I force my mouth shut, Landon keeps fucking talking.
“Oh, wow. So you lived there before? Why are you estranged?”
I sigh, taking a bite of my turkey sandwich to give myself a moment to think. Giving him this information isn’t smart—it reveals weakness.
But… if I gave himsomethingto chew on, maybe I could pry intohislife?
“They aren’t good people,” I confess after swallowing. “Simple as that.”
Landon scoffs. “And you’re so much better?”
My eyes sharpen, narrowing in on him before he even finishes his sentence.
Landon’s own eyes widen, his shoulders stiffening at whatever he’s reading from my expression.
“Never mind,” he whispers. “I didn’t mean… sorry.”
“What about you?” I interrupt quickly. “Close with your family?”
Landon relaxes, fiddling with his food as he nods. “Yeah, close enough. My older sister can be annoying, but I personally think she’s just bitter that she didn’t inherit the gift.”
He’s talking about coercion, and it makes me even more curious to hear.
“Are you the only one who has it?” I ask.
In my family, it was my mother who inherited illusion, and both my brother and I were born with it too. I wasn’t previously aware that a sibling could be skipped.
“No,” Landon says shortly, taking a bite of his sandwich and then speaking around it. “Just me and my uncle.”
His uncle!
But instead of asking about him, what leaves my mouth is, “Don’t speak with your mouth full.”
My chastising and obsessive need to boss him around doesn’t hinder him this time, though. Landon plows right through what I said, speaking as he swallows thickly.
I watch his throat work.
“Scarlet has other gifts, though,” he tells me. “Not magical ones, but important nonetheless. For example, she’s been working for our father since she turned twenty and has really thrived in her role. She’s very good at making my parents proud.”
“And you’re not?” I shouldn’t ask—I don’t carethatmuch. But I sort of want to know, and even if the topic is becoming a bit too personal for me, it really is valuable information when it comes to breaking him.
“I’m…” Landon stares off into the distance again, his expression growing melancholy and a tad bit scared. “I don’t really give them a chance to be proud. To know me the way they know her.”
Last night returns to me: how he said that no one truly knows him, so no one truly cares. I… I don’t understand that. He’s so vibrant and outgoing, able to snatch up whoever he pleases. How can it be that he’s also hidden beneath so much clear sorrow?
Why is no one bothering to help him?
I can’t ask. I’m too nervous, too scared of what his response will make me feel.
“What about your uncle? Do you makehimproud?” I need to steer the conversation back to what I need: information.
“No,” Landon admits quietly. “But I will.”
“You will?”
He turns a blinding smile onto me, one that momentarily stops any thoughts from circling my brain. But then I register the way his eyes tilt down, still so weighed beneath whatever it is he’s feeling.
