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When I stiffen, she grins and makes a tsk-tsking sound with her teeth. “Fine, I’ll stop now. But Iseeit, Deimos. I saw it on Callie’s birthday, just watching you at the dinner table.”
“I’m dying to be clued into whatever this is.”
She sighs. “Calmness.”
“Context?”
“Inyou,engonós. This girl brings a calm toyou.”
Well, that’s utter and complete horseshit. But even I’m not monstrous enough to say that to my own grandmother’s face.
“Well, I’ll factor that into my report for Columbia once she’s done.”
For a moment, Ya-ya says nothing.
“You know, your grandfather had it, too.”
I frown. “Had what?”
“The darkness that lives in you.”
I blink in surprise. “There’s no way in the world that’s true.”
There’s not. My Papou was one of the nicest, kindest, most genuinely warm-hearted humans I’ve ever known.
“Yes, because I lived with the man for fifty years. What could I possibly know about him?”
I smile wryly.
“Hedid, Deimos. When he wanted to.”
“We’re seriously talking about the same Papou? Perpetually happy-go-lucky, always-smiling Papou?”
She lifts the corners of her mouth, nodding to me. “Sometimes we smile through the pain. He had it, though. Same as I see in you. Your father had far too much of it. And Atlas…” She shakes her head sadly. “Also too much.”
We say nothing for a minute. We just sip our tea in the chilly fall breeze, looking out over the changing leaves on the trees of Central Park.
“She’s seen darkness too, you know.”
I stiffen a little before I glance at her curiously. “Who—”
“Oh, let’s stop playing this clueless Deimos game, shall we? I don’t enjoy it.” She winks at me. “We both know I mean Dahlia.”
I arch a brow. Ya-ya smirks.
“Please,engonós. As if I don’t know all aboutanybodywho spends time with my family. I know about Ms. Roy’s connections to the Cross family, and of her sad parentage.” She frowns, nodding slowly as she looks into her mug. “But there’s something else, too. Another darkness that still hangs over her, though I don’t know what it is.”
I do.
It’sme.
The shadow hanging over Dahlia isme, and what she saw that night at Knightsblood that she wasn’t ever meant to, darkening her past like a stain and now haunting her present like a recurring bad dream.
And maybe she’d finally found a way to forget, and to move on from that darkness. But I’ve gone and ripped her right back into it, claws outstretched, and teeth bared. Ya-ya smiles as she reaches across the table and rests her hand on mine.
“Something that might help,engonós. Something your grandfather used to say.” She clears her throat and turns to look into the wind. “If we hide who we are, we remain in the darkness.”
Well, that explains that, then. Because I’ve hidden who and what I am my entire life.
