Page 13 of Twisting Beauty

“I liked the girl who knew her place.”

“You lost your docile little shadow.” Her eyes caught the candlelight, glittering and sharp. “How will you cope?”

“I’m coping fine.”

She lifted her wineglass in a small, mocking toast, her gaze moving over me with deliberate amusement. “Yeah. You look totally fine.”

The stem of my glass was on the verge of cracking. I became aware of this gradually, the way the crystal was pressing back against my fingers, the whiteness of my knuckles.

I glanced up and caught my own reflection in the mirror across the room. My hair had been pushed back at some point without my noticing, my jaw set hard enough to ache, my eyes too sharp and too fixed on the woman across the table.

I looked unhinged.

I released the glass, set my hands flat on the table, smoothed my hair back with two careful movements, and let out a breath through my nose while I rebuilt the expression Alistair required of me.

“I’m grand,” I said, and my voice came out steady.

Alistair’s gaze moved between us, weighing us both. He set his fork down with the precision of a man who had not missed a single thing and was deciding what to do about it.

“You’re both acting strange.”

Neither of us answered.

His attention settled on her again, moving over her with that same deliberate quality.

“Something is different,” he said, more to himself than to either of us. “I can’t quite place it.”

Then the corner of his mouth shifted. On another man it might have been a smile. On him it was a calculation.

“But different can be… useful.”

The word useful landed in my chest like something sharp. I knew that word. I knew what it meant when he used it.

I pressed my fork into my lamb and said nothing.

He reached for his wineglass and lifted it toward the candlelight, crystal catching the flame. “To family reunions.”

I lifted my glass and drank.

Across the table, her eyes found mine over her rim, steady and giving nothing away.

So, Alistair hadn’t arranged her return. One of our enemies had made a move without his knowledge, placed this chess piece inside our house, inside our family, and assumed nobody would look too closely at the wolf in sheep’s clothing who had walked through our front door.

They’d miscalculated.

And she was going to find out how dangerous a Lasair could be when we were wronged.

5

LIATH

Rua’s memories had given me fragments of Alistair Lasair, the shape of him in a doorway, the sound of his voice carrying through walls. But borrowed memory did nothing to prepare me for the real thing at close range.

He was immaculate. Silver at his temples, suit pressed to a knife-edge, hands that looked like they’d never done anything as undignified as labor. He sat at the head of the table like a king. Everything about him was controlled, the set of his shoulders, the placement of his hands, the way his eyes moved around the room and landed on things rather than people.

He was also, I was certain, the most dangerous person I had ever sat down to dinner with.

The cold moved down my spine and I pulled Rua around me like a coat, squared my shoulders, and smiled at nothing in particular.