Page 75 of Gilded Wicked Mirrors
Ever the Playboy Prince.
Giselle dropped through the window gracefully as if scaling walls and sneaking through palaces were second nature to her.
Giselle arched an eyebrow as if to say,but you hate him?
Quinn shrugged and silently responded;I do. I think I do. Yes, yes, I hate him very much.
Oh, broken fucking mirrors, she was so confused.
“In case either of you are curious, I gathered about fifteen fingerprints, and I finally figured out where I’d seen this key before.” Giselle held up said key like a prize.
Twenty-Six
“Ishould have known the moment I saw the key,” Giselle said. “It unlocks the vaults at Russet Row.”
Russet Row—the houses above the Russet casino that were owned entirely by Les Fantômes gang. A place where danger lurked, and midnight monsters ruled. Not monsters like Emrys. No, these wore pinstriped suits and smelled of mirror magic.
Of course, Giselle knew about the key. She grew up at Russet Row for the first ten years of her life, until her aristocratic mother got bored and decided she’d try her hand at parenting. It was unsuccessful, seeing that her daughter ran away to the Viridian six years later.
“Then perhaps tomorrow we can put your skills at breaking and entering to the test?” Quinn rocked on her feet, avoiding the prince’s caressing gaze. “But right now, I need to speak to my uncle.”
“He’s in the cigar room.” Emrys’s lips curled into a lazy smile.
Five minutes later, Quinn was met with eccentric fury. First, it was pointed at Emrys for deliberately disobeying Uncle Matias’s earlier decree, and then the anger was inflicted upon her—for sneaking onto the golden gondolas, trespassing on Castle Hill property, but worst of all, eavesdropping on the Blood Council. All egregious acts in her uncle’s estimation.
However, only one of the accusations was true but her uncle didn’t care much for accuracy, which was intolerably infuriating. Precision was always next to godliness. It was Uncle Matias’s motto, for fuck’s sake.
Utterly hypocritical.
Usually, facing his ire made her cower. Quinn hated so much to be in trouble. But after all the lies and deaths and everything that happened, she’d had enough, and her blood churned with fury too. Her uncle lied to her. He sheltered her and withheld the one thing she needed. Answers.Quinn’s wrath didn’t end with him. Constance lied too, and Emrys was cruel.
He’d made her feel things, he’d touched her, seduced her, kissed her, and then made her feel like a common rag one uses to satiate a need before tossing it away.
Quinn snorted. “That’s rich coming from you, Uncle. You’re angry at me for sneaking around and trying to find answers when all you have ever done is sneak around and lie? Were you ever going to tell me the truth?”
“No.” His expression was cold and unmoving. Quiet and forbidding. His fury was never loud. Instead, it was subtle and small like a single thorn on a rose or a porcupine’s needle. But that made it more terrifying. But even in his stillness, the vein in his forehead slightly feathered. “You never needed to know.”
Quinn fingernails bit her palms. “I never needed to know that vampires might have killed my parents and are after me?”
“Oh, don’t be dramatic, Quinnevere.” He tapped his thigh with his pinky finger, followed by his index, followed by his middle, then his pointer and thumb. He repeated the patternthree times. It was his grounding technique to keep him from getting too emotional. “No vampire would bother with you.”
A massive lie. A vampire had invited her to the palace and . . . kissed her. What he’d done with his hands would certainly qualify as a bother.
Her cheeks warmed, and she tried to cover up her embarrassment by turning away.
What in all the mirrors was happening to her?
Eventually, she answered, her voice a bit hoarse. “Jane warned me about the Blood Mirrors and my possible danger the night she died. I am pretty sure that would count as a bother.” She deliberately left out the threatening note. “You should’ve told me everything. I shouldn’t have to learn that I performed an autopsy on my cousin from a passing comment from an arrogant ass.”
Uncle Matias started tapping again and turned to Emrys who was standing in the doorway, silhouetted by the glimmering light behind him. He looked like a god. “You told her Jane was her cousin?”
“I told her something like that.” Emrys’s answer was short and pointed.
“Quinnevere and the Ashelle family are none of your business.” Matias’s voice was a deep pit filled with poisonous snakes.
An equally deadly smile brushed across the prince’s lips. “I do believe the Ashelle family is entirely my business. As I recall, Callan personally asked me to protect his daughter if anything happened to him. Not you.”
Quinn’s heart lurched, and her breaths became unsteady. She didn’t know what to do with that information, or what it possibly meant.
