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He takes it and waves it around before bonking me on the head with it and then giggling like a lunatic when I grimace.
Ah kids.
Truly though, Ezra brings so much joy to my life. I’m glad that even though what happened to me was horrible, and that I had to leave with nowhere to turn, I ended up with safe and welcoming friends who not only care about me but care deeply for my son.
He’s so radiant and joyful, even though he looks just like his father. I miss him. I still love Ris , even though I had to leave.
Ezra distracts me from my thoughts though when he wriggles to get down so he can play with Maeve and Hazel. I let him down just as Annalise comes out the back.
“Hey handsome!” she wriggles her fingers at him and starts telling me all about how good he was for Miss Lucy.
I can’t imagine life getting much better than this, honestly.
14
RIS
My dressing room door is already open as I slink offstage. Not a good sign. I have no energy for Rhovier and her endless demands. I hardly have enough energy to lift one foot after the other or to hand my ilya to the stage crew.
But it isn’t Rhovier lurking in my dressing room—it’s the owner.
Definitely not a good sign.
Benshobe Ghildumal turns his menacing gaze towards me as I shuffle inside the room. It’s nothing personal. He always looks menacing. Broad shouldered, with a scar across his cheek from what he says was a childhood indiscretion and a badly healed broken nose that he never mentions at all, Ghildumal looks more like the type to run a criminal organization. Not a music club and theatre.
“Can I get you another glass of wine?”
Ah, there’s my simpering sister. Sniveling before elves she thinks are above her, roaring down rage at those she thinks beneath her. Usually, I just feel pity for her. She wouldn’t be like this if she had any talent of her own. If our family hadn’t berated her for it for so long, as if it was her fault.
At this moment I’m so sick of her I could scream.
Fortunately, so is Ghildumal. He dismisses her with no more than a flick of his hand and then leans back in my chair as I stand in front of him.
“You’re drawing quite the crowd,” he says.
I’m not interested in bland compliments, especially when I haven’t done a thing to deserve them. I know my performance tonight was limpid and uninspired. Shit,Ialmost fell asleep around the seventh song.
“I’ve had a few good nights.”
“I wouldn’t saygood.” Ghildumal’s criticism stings, but it shouldn’t. He might look like some sort of hit man, but he knows music. When he first hired me, he asked me to sing one song, hired me on the spot, and then spent the rest of the evening plying me with good liquor and talking my ear off about music theory and the history of the jinrayaha. He loves music.
And what I’ve been giving them lately isn’t music. It’s just heartbreak. I don’t have anything left to give.
“Look, kid. You know you’re talented. There are people out there who would pay to hear you read the drinks menu to them. But tonight you had people walking out mid-set. Did you even notice?”
I nod my head, lying. I didn’t notice a thing.
He sighs heavily. “Are you sure? I don’t think I saw you look out at the crowd more than once.”
That would be when I first came on stage, checking to see if Sienna had magically appeared in the crowd.
“You used to mix it up. A little joy, remember that? Some songs people can dance to? People don’t want to cry all night.” He delicately sips the wine, which looks almost obscene in his giant, scarred hands. “Even when they’re depressed as fuck. Look, I don’t want to overstep, but maybe you should stick around and listen to some of the other sets sometime.”
I nod again, lying again.
All I want to do is go home.
“Has something changed recently?” he asks reluctantly. “Do you need to…talk…or…”
