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Then Ensley turns her face to me, darkness settling over her stony features, her jaw clenching just as her father’s does when he tries to contain his fury.
A shudder runs down my spine.
Memories flash in my mind. Daggers landing between my spread legs, being thrown across the room, the slap in the carriage.
I blink, shaking it off. But my body has already reacted to the invading thoughts, and Daein picks up on this instantly. His hand leaves my leg, moving to the small of my back and he inches closer to me—his stiff manner of comfort.
I let him.
No point in fighting it. It does nothing to soothe me, but also nothing to frighten me. So I leave it be, my gaze on Ensley’s stone-cold face.
Her upper lip curls. “That would be hard for you, wouldn’t it?”
My eyes shift back up to hers, detached and giving nothing away despite the twist in my chest. I know what’s coming, so I stay silent.
Still, she throws her daggered words at me. “You can’t bring yourself to socialise with anyone at a ball, of all things. And you expect to play tea with a prince’s wife? What will you do?” she adds, all snark. “Sit in silence, that blank stare of yours fixed on a piece of ordinary furniture?”
My shoulders sink along with my heart. It takes me a choppy breath before I can muster up a response. “I spoke with Ember.” A weak reply, I know, but it’s all I can think of to say.
Beside me, Daein’s anger builds. He hasn’t interjected yet, he’s so used to our spats, but I can almost smell the bitterness oozing from his rigid body.
“Ember,” Ensley scoffs. “A mere whore.” Her mouth twists into an ugly smile, one so very fae that it seizes up my insides into steel. “Guess you two have a lot in common,mother.”
“That’s enough!” Daein’s voice is a mere snap, but it booms throughout the carriage with enough force to make me cringe.
Ensley feels it too. Her hands grip the edge of the cushioned bench, nails tucked into the fabric, leaving little holes in their wake.
But she isn’t done.
Turning her clenched face towards him, she fights the urge to submit to his command and, ripping her nails from the cushion, points accusingly at me. “It’s her fault! It’s her fault that I’m the outcast in both lands. The Halfling with the weird mother.” Her wild stare whirls to land on me, like a spiral of wind hitting me straight in the gut. “My mother can’t even pretend to be like the other human wives in these lands. At least they pretend—at least they fit in as best as they can. You just … sit there! Sit there, staring at nothing, your eyes faraway. You might as well not even be here!”
My voice is as soft as a mouse’s feet padding on carpet, “I have no choice in attending these balls—”
“Not tobe hereat the balls,” she sneers. “I mean that there is no purpose for you to behere. Anywhere. At all—not anymore.”
That hollow spot in my chest throbs violently, a wave of nausea rolling over me the way that the waves roll over the shore.
And then it happens, and my face twists with the agony shredding my insides.
Daein leans forward in a flash, a mere swift movement too quick for my eyes to capture, and before I can even hear the strike, he’s leaning back, his face murderous.
Ensley cups her fast-bruising cheek, furious wet eyes still fixed on me.
I shut my own eyes, looking down at my lap, while I feel every bit of the sensation that a carving knife is removing my insides piece by piece.
Daein’s voice is a fistful of knives, “Your mother died bringing you to life. She sacrificed everything she had when she had little to give. I will not tolerate any disrespect of her.”
I swallow back a lump in my throat. Can feel the burn of Ensley’s watery stare on me, unwavering. But she says nothing. She’s silent, and so am I.
Daein controls the quiet.
The rest of the carriage ride is as lonely and empty as my hollow pain.
It throbs, throbs, throbs, so violently that I can feel the sensation pulsing in my ears. It calls for something, and I know what. Home.
But where is home?
It is not here. Not with them.
