Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 99700 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 499(@200wpm)___ 399(@250wpm)___ 332(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99700 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 499(@200wpm)___ 399(@250wpm)___ 332(@300wpm)
“Is there a problem?” Ambrosia asked, brows lifting, the picture of innocence, like she genuinely couldn’t understand what she’d done wrong.
Maybe that was the case. The last Pandora heard, Ambrosia lived in a castle in Scotland, far removed from society as a whole.
“No, no, of course not,” Ophelia said, gesturing toward an empty seat. “Would you care to join us?”
“I would like to speak to my grand—”
“To Pandora,” Ophelia butted in. “Of course. Of course. Pandora,” she added, her tone tight.
“I’ll be right back,” Pandora told Victor, then gave Lucy big eyes so she knew to keep an eye on things, before following her great-great-grandmother out of the dining room and into the sitting room.
“News got to me that you are to be married,” Ambrosia said as soon as they were alone.
“Yes. I’m engaged.”
“To a mortal.”
“Yes, the one you glamoured,” Pandora said, unable to keep the anger from seeping into her words.
“Does he know what we are? What you are?”
“No.”
“Then what is the problem with a little glamour?”
“It’s wrong,” Pandora told her.
“Why?”
“Because it’s … It’s like brainwashing.”
“Yes, that is the point of a glamour. To wash the brain of things we don’t want the mortals to know.”
“There’s no need for it. We’ve been managing just fine without needing to glamour Victor or his family. That’s not how I want to go into this marriage.”
“But with lies about your very nature is fine?” Ambrosia asked.
That wasn’t a bad point, Pandora had to admit. No matter how she didn’t like being reminded of that truth.
“It’s different. I’m not messing with his memory,” Pandora said. “He looked drunk after.”
“Perhaps my glamour is stronger than I realized. I have only ever used it on my familiar.”
“You have a familiar?” Pandora asked, not having heard of anyone else in her family having one. Generally, they didn’t want humans in their homes, in their lives, which was why some were struggling to accept the fact that Pandora wanted one in her home, life, bed, heart.
“Yes, of course.”
“So, you don’t hate humans?”
“Why would I hate my life source?” Ambrosia asked, frowning.
“So you don’t disapprove of my relationship with Victor?”
“Well, I have to admit it is quite … unconventional. But I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the company of a mortal man. Their egos tend not to be as overwhelming as a man who has had centuries to become intolerably arrogant.”
“But?” Pandora asked.
“However,” Ambrosia said. “The point being you would have centuries with one of our kind.”
Pandora couldn’t tell her that she only planned to have a year with him, no matter how much that thought made her heart hurt. “I understand that.”
“Is everything all right in here?” Lucian asked, lurking in the doorway, clearly wanting to protect his daughter, but also wanting to show the appropriate amount of respect for his great-grandmother.
“You have raised an interesting daughter,” Ambrosia said, and Pandora wasn’t entirely sure that was a compliment.
Lucian seemed to pick up on the same thing his daughter did, because his brows raised.
“Pandora, can you give us a few minutes?” he asked.
She didn’t ask why.
She was happy to get the heck out of there. Better to let her father handle it. She had enough on her plate.
With that in mind, she hurried back into the dining room, hoping there were no fires that needed putting out.
Only to find Victor missing.
“Where’s Victor?” she asked Dante.
“Oh, I think he was going for more wine,” Dante said, clearly distracted by trying to keep an ear on the conversation between Uncle Reginald and Robert. It seemed as if Ravenna and Lucy were speaking to Mary.
Everything seemed all right.
Until Pandora noticed another empty chair at the table.
Bellatrix’s one.
There was no logical explanation for the way panic surged through her system – for the bone-deep certainty that something had gone wrong.
No, not just wrong.
Horribly wrong.
Unable to shake the feeling, she made her way along the chair backs, making a beeline for the kitchen, not sure what she was going to find, but knowing she needed to find Victor.
She moved into the kitchen, but found it empty.
There were several bottles of wine gathered on the island, the corkscrew still sticking out of the top of one. As if whoever was uncorking it had got ten distracted by something.
Or someone.
“Why are you marrying Pandora?” Bellatrix’s voice carried to Pandora during a slight lull in conversation in the dining room.
“I … like her,” Victor answered, voice slow and thick.
Were they in the pantry?
Pandora rushed over in that direction, but paused as her hand went for the doorknob.
Yes, eavesdropping was wrong.
But so was cornering Pandora’s fiancé when she wasn’t around.
“Fine,” Bellatrix said, sounding frustrated. “But there’s something else you’re not saying. What are you two keeping from everyone?”
“It’s a secret,” Victor said in that same slow, slurred voice. Like he was drunk.
No.
Like he’d done with Ambrosia.