Flick tried to see the best in everything. If that couldn’t be done, she was sad or indifferent. Never angry. Or rather, never this angry. This was rage. She’d spent the entire night tossing and turning in her room at Spindrift. She couldn’t forge a signet ring or a document or even a doctor’s note without being treated like a dirty criminal, but her mother could do this?
There was a voice in the back of Flick’s head that said Lady Linden might not know. The EJC was large, and there could be any number of supervisors looking to make extra profit on the side. But louder than that voice was the certainty that her mother did know.
And that was how Flick found herself standing in front of the Linden Estate on Admiral Grove in the early hours of the next day. The trees were going bare, their leaves lightly carpeting the cobblestones in gold. Amid that rustle and dry tumble, Flick thought she heard another sound: the whisper of small footsteps, the crunch of a shoe across leaves.
When she whirled around to look, no one was there.
“Chester?” she called. “Felix?”
No one replied.
“Stop looking for excuses,” she chided herself, and marched up to the basil-green door of the estate, ignoring the quiver of her fingers when she rapped with the iron knocker. It looked stately before, but now it reminded Flick of the horns of a devil.
The door swung open and immediately closed again, leaving only a sliver of space through which Flick could see a brown eye surrounded by full lashes. Her Mother only hired the prettiest.
“Miss Felicity,” the young maid stammered out.
Flick held herself together. Act like you belong. “I need to see my mother.”
The maid paused at her tone, and Flick peeked inside. Nothing seemed any different than when she’d lived there. “I … I … of course, miss. It’s just that I don’t know if—”
“Now,” Flick enunciated.
“Yes. Of—of course,” said the maid, brown hair bobbing with her nod. “She’s in her office.”
Flick took several deep breaths and dipped her hands into the pockets of her periwinkle wool coat to grip her lighter. Then she tugged her beret tight over her curls and stepped inside her house, hurrying up the winding stairs.
She threw open the door to her mother’s study without a knock.
“Felicity!”
Her mother’s surprise was punctuated by her pen rolling to a stop against a stack of books. Lady Linden stared at Flick from behind her oak desk, her remarkable cerulean eyes filled with shock. She was dressed in a gown she typically reserved for business—a fathomless shade of blue with fitted sleeves that flared from the elbows and lace that folded at her throat. It made her look regal and commanding.
“What … what are you doing here?” Lady Linden asked. Was it the light streaming in through the shuttered windows behind her, or did she appear annoyed? Her daughter, who had been arrested and supposedly was now rotting in a cell, had returned, and she had the audacity to look vexed?
Flick straightened her beret. She was so caught up in her anger and wanting to confront her mother that she hadn’t thought about what to say.
It’s important to note the difference between fuel and dictate.
She wasn’t being dictated by her rage. It wasn’t all-encompassing. She missed the cedarwood scent of her mother’s office. She missed having tea and biscuits every evening in front of the wide windows facing the garden. She missed the sharp, sophisticated lines of her mother’s gowns.
The harsh crease across her mother’s brow softened.
“Why did you do it?” Flick asked.
“I loved you, Felicity, but you did this to yourself,” she said with a resigned sigh.
Loved. Was that in the past tense? She didn’t hear it over the thundering in her ears.
But there was something to be said about children and their knack for knowing. Flick knew her mother’s love had been real. What she hadn’t known was that parents could stop loving their children and tire of them the way someone tired of a pair of shoes.
It didn’t matter how much wrong Flick had done. It didn’t matter that she’d made mistakes spurred by her mother’s growing distaste for her. No matter what, Flick was her daughter. She clutched her lighter as if etched somewhere in the brass was the reason why she had gone from her mother’s little spark to a stranger.
But this wasn’t about Flick.
“I’m talking about what you’ve done,” Flick said, and it took everything in her not to recoil at the anger twisting her mother’s face because of her tone. “Oh, I need to be more specific, don’t I?”
Her mother’s neat blond bun was dull, and new wrinkles were carved into her skin. Was it because she’d been worried about Flick, or did she know the Ram’s ledger had gone missing and that word of her involvement could spread?
“You will not speak to—how did you get out of prison?”
“I was never in it, Mother,” Flick snapped. “Which you might have known if you’d come to check on me.”
Lady Linden looked like she’d been slapped, but Flick wasn’t finished.
“How could you partake in something so evil? How could you treat vampires like any other cargo on your ships?”
Her mother froze, but recovered quickly. She rose, towering over her. Flick used to feel safe in her shadow. Now, she felt a quiver of fear.
Fear. That was why she’d rarely experienced anger. She’d never been allowed to—she was always afraid to. Afraid to speak out, to feel anything but gratitude and appreciation and happiness. It was funny how she’d spent over a week with Arthie and Jin, running the streets and breaking into the Athereum of all places, and the fear she’d experienced then was entirely different.
Exhilarating. It had felt like living.
“Where did you hear of this?” her mother asked. There was no remorse on her face, no shame. Only cold assessment. This was business to her, nothing else. A transaction.
Flick cracked a sad, sad laugh. “And to think I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt. To think I was ready to do anything for your forgiveness.”
She was ready to steal that ledger from under Arthie’s nose, risking Spindrift, risking her alliances, risking Jin. Just to give her mother the front page of every paper in White Roaring, in Ettenia even.
Just for her mother to love her again.
“Answer the question, girl,” Lady Linden snapped.
“Or what?” Flick asked, a bit of Arthie creeping into her voice. “You’ll confine me to my room? No, I think I’ll take my leave, Mother.”
Flick turned to leave. She knew her mother would ring for help, but Flick had learned a thing or two from Jin. She’d disconnected the wire on her way in.
“That won’t be necessary,” Flick said, as Lady Linden reached for the cord. “I know the way out. This is my house, after all.”
She had a few extra seconds to spare, which was more than enough time to leave her brass lighter on her mother’s desk and close the door behind her.