“I am not creating anything,” I reply evenly. “They came because they felt it.”
“And what happens when they look to you over us,” Atticus asks quietly.
I meet his gaze.
“Then perhaps you stop thinking in terms of over.”
Silence follows.
They do not argue further.
On the seventh night Lucian requests to speak again.
Axel refuses at first, but something in the steady pulse beneath my ribs urges me downward, and I descend into the dungeon alone while the twins remain close enough to intervene.
Lucian watches me approach with an expression that no longer holds mockery.
“You are settling into it,” he says quietly.
“Say what you called me here to say,” I reply.
He studies me for a long moment.
“You were wrong about Cindy.”
The name slices through me.
My mother.
“What about her,” I
