Every family has its demons, but the Skylar's craft a new meaning for the phrase.
Before the murder, Clara's greatest worry was scaring off the gold-digging gentlemen drooling over her father's business. Now, with the family plummeting covertly int...
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My heart jumped as the door swung open, and mother came charging in, face like a brewing storm cloud. I shoved the stake back into place before addressing her.
"Mother." "Where have you been?" "I walked to Jed's this morning. Since then, I have been in the library." "I have been looking for you all afternoon." Not very well, if she missed the damned library. "It is only—" "Five." My eyes bulged. "Five?" "And you missed your appointment."
I blinked, tilting my head, completely lost.
Then my face fell in my hands. The conversation with mother that morning had been sharp, and had left my mind swifter than it had entered it.
"Sebastian," I mumbled. I meant to visit him at three, mother chaperoning. "Oh, now you remember. His father's furious and has already called every single one of us incompetent." Because the behaviour of one impacted the others. I was a fool. "I completely forgot, mother. I am sorry." "Words do nothing for these people. Action, however, does. Sebastian will be coming here tomorrow instead to assist in a business meeting with your father. Afterwards, you will speak with him. Luckily, he is far more tolerant than his father and is insistent to see you. You must have made an impression." I tugged my brows together. I was no more than polite to him. "I did?" She looked me up and down. "Somehow. Now come on. Supper's ready."
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Supper consisted of the usual cooked meat and boiled vegetables, so I did not know what it was that sent my mind into such an overactive state while I slept.
I dreamt of a city. Nothing like London, I realised, but far more beautiful. Cleaner. Serene. It's walls ivory stone, stacking high on an island surrounded by crystal waters and cloudless cerulean skies, peaking into a palace of marble, white diamond and glass. It was so real I heard the singing of the gulls and the crushing of the waves, felt the heat on my skin and tasted the citrus from folding fields of orange trees reaching towards the salted cliffs.
Dreams were often thought to have some deeper meaning. At least the most imaginative scholars thought that. But nothing significant ever appeared to happen in my own no matter how wild or creatively conjured they were. The place was entirely foreign to me, completely fictional, though I fell in love with both the scenery and the euphoria of freedom that came with it.
