Page 139 of Winterveil

“Well,” his father said, “your mother was distraught.”

Stomach hollowing again, Julian nodded. The rest of the plane ride passed in silence.

It was midnight by the time they arrived in Back Bay. Darkness lay over the city. The air was heavy. Wind howled as Julian emerged from the car, rustling the trees that lined the street with an eerie, almost supernatural sound.

His father brushed past him to open the door. With a hum and a click it swung open, bathing Julian in a warm, familiar light.

Relief overwhelmed him as he stepped through the threshold. He breathed in the scent of polished mahogany and listened to the crackle of the fireplace in the parlor. And then his mother was rushing toward him, crushing him into an embrace.

Julian collapsed against her, burying his head in the crook of her neck. She smelled like Chanel and Chardonnay.

His mother pressed her face to his chest and, wordlessly, she sobbed. He didn’t realize he was crying, too, until he tasted salt on his tongue.

After a long moment she pulled away, reaching up to clasp his face. He felt her wedding band graze his cheekbone.

“You’re home,” she whispered. “You’re home.”

He swallowed. “I’m home.”

There was a shuffling sound. Julian looked over and saw Olivia standing in the doorway to the parlor, wearing pajamas patterned with ballet slippers. Her eyes were pink and puffy.

“Are you back?” she asked in a small voice.

Julian nodded.

“For good?”

He nodded again.

She crossed the room, bare feet pattering on the floor, and threw her arms around his waist. He went still, shocked by the physical contact. Olivia hadn’t hugged him in months. After the kids at her school began circulating the videos of his arrest, she had insisted that he had ruined her life.

Chest aching, Julian hugged her back. The three of them huddled in the foyer while his father looked on from a distance, expression unreadable.

Julian’s bedroom had been left untouched in his absence. His lacrosse stick was leaning against the wall and his debate team trophies were gleaming on the shelves. A fine layer of dust coated every surface. His mother had not even allowed the housekeeper in to clean.

Julian walked around the room as if in a trance. He riffled through the papers on his desk, half-finished bill proposals and drafts of speeches. His fingers ghosted over the Polaroids pinned to the corkboard. A blurry shot of him and Landon at summer camp, shirtless, their bare chests glistening with lake water. Him accompanying Christabel to the debutante ball. Aurelian wading into the ocean at Martha’s Vineyard, his back turned, silhouetted against the sunset.

A tightness formed in Julian’s throat and he turned away.

In the alcove, his chessboard was still unfolded on the table, pieces arranged in their starting positions. It was a vintage set that had belonged to several generations of uncles and grandfathers.

Julian picked up the black queen and turned it over in his hand. He thought of his and Klaudia’s chess match, interrupted in the middle game. But she’d had him pinned.

He dropped the piece quickly and turned off the alcove light. He swallowed the pills his mother had given him and lay down, welcoming the relief of oblivion.

Julian woke slowly and groggily the next morning, as if hungover. As he stood, his heart thumped with a residual, entirely somatic terror. He had grown so used to having his life either directly or implicitly threatened that it was a shock to his system to be able to rise of his own accord, to a soft carpet under his feet, to bask a moment in the warm yellow sunlight.

When he had shaken off the prickling dread, he went to the bathroom. The first thing he did was dig through the drawers for his contact lenses and solution. With no small amount of relief, he slipped off his glasses and put in his contacts instead. He hadn’t been allowed to bring them to Valeran, one of the many small indignities he’d suffered during his time there.

Julian blinked. The world clarified, but his eyes stung. He’d been wearing his glasses for so long that he had forgotten the slightly irritating sensation of having his contacts in.

He would have to adjust to that, too.

Once he had dressed, in a pale blue button-down and khaki pants, Julian ducked back into the bathroom and regarded himself in the mirror. Here was a version of Julian Joyce-Young III that he recognized. Well-outfitted and well-groomed, leaner and narrower in the shoulders than he would’ve liked, but still polished. His exterior was faultless.

It was something beneath the surface that felt wrong. Not just the residual fear that Valeran had instilled, not just grief for his brother—it was something more fundamental and base. It shifted in him, like a dark shape under ice.

Julian switched the bathroom light off.