Page 33 of Feed Your Fiends

Gant

A breeze drifts in from the open balcony, rustling the papers on the coffee table and blowing one against Aria’s leg. She plucks it off and begins to read, and I let her.

I thought I’d share the news of my new sibling with Dove first, but time, along with my sanity, is slipping through my fingers.

“Your mother’s letters are sweet,” she says finally when she’s read through at least three more.

“What does my name sound like to you?” I ask quietly.

“Gant? Strong. Dark. Pointed. Just like you.”

“But it doesn’t sound royal, does it?Princely?”

“I know that isn’t a genuine question. So why are you asking me to confirm what you already know?” She shuffles the letters in her lap. “Maybe she changed her mind. Maybe Wilhelm, Henry, or Louie the IV weren’t the vibe when she finally laid eyes on you.”

“She said she fell into them. My pools of spring.”

“That’s sweet.”

“Sweet?” I grit. That dark energy is back, reinvigorating me all over again. “Look at me,” I bark, ripping the lamp off the end table and shining it into my face.

She finally spares me a glance, her big blue-green eyes identical to her step-brother’s, still too shiny from tears hours before.

She said Etienne’s gone. Where?

“Do my eyes look likespringsto you? Like baths?”

Aria sits up straighter, finally drawing the dots. “If they were filled with ink, maybe.”

I grab her hand and place it in my hair.

“She said my hair was auric. Does it look like I was ever blond to you?”

“Most kids don’t stay blond,” she says, her eyebrows knitting with worry. With the impossibility of it all. “But to go from blonde to jet black… Not chestnut or some other shade of brown…” Her fingers tumble from my hair to my cheek.

“My hair’s always been black. Just like my eyes. Just like my father’s. It was never wheat, or auric, or the same colour of the sand on that fucking beach we dipped our toes into. I never reminded her of a beach. How could I when I look just like my father she despises?”

Aria’s lips part. “Gant…”

“None of these letters are about me.Not. A. Single. Fucking. One.”

I pull away from the slight warmth of her fingers. I want to stay cold and get back to a state of pure numbness.

“I swore that Jaime was a worthless cunt. I swore that my mother was different.”

“Your mother was different. You told me Jaime hasn’t even visited Elle at the hospital.”

“Not that she’ll get the chance now. Elle’s gone, but you already know that. You were on the visitor list with Stassi.”

“I left before them. I guess they’re together.”

“They’re obviously together.”

“So call Zedd.”

Zedd’s Stassi’s twin. It’s a good bet he’d know where she was given his overprotective brother trait, but Stassi’s been hiding secrets from him, namely where she was last summer. If she won't share her holiday plans and weight loss methods, she’ll undoubtedly hide Elle from him and, by extension, me.

No, I’ll have to hunt Elle down myself.

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