Page 42 of At the Mercy of Midnight
“Mother!”
“No!”
They both protested at the same time, Amelia’s voice shrill with mortification.
Veralind sighed as though losing her patience, tapping her fingers against the table. She lifted her spoon with a deliberate precision. “Fine then. What has you crawling back here, dear son, into my home after so long?”
“Is it not his home, too, Veralind?” Amelia said.
Silas looked to her, finding Amelia with a cold glare of her own, for once not directed at him.
His mother tutted, fixing her with an unimpressed stare. “Silas has his own home, far away from here, so as to avoid me at every possible moment. And you will not address me so informally inmyhome.”
A sharp feeling stabbed in his abdomen.Anger.
He didn’t know how, but he knew the feeling was not his own. It was different, sharper, more concentrated.
Silas whipped his head around, finding a blush creeping into Amelia’s cheeks, a familiar anger tightening her features. Her lips parted, and he shot his hand out, gripping at her thigh beneath the table.
Amelia flinched, knee jerking under his tight grip. Her eyes found his and he silently warned her. Indecision passed over her face, but he pressed his fingers in tighter. She breathed in slowly, swallowed, and faced forwards without a word.
He slid his hand away slowly, turning to face his mother with a sharp, fortifying exhale. “Mother—”
“Have you heard?” she said conversationally, like she hadn’t just admonished a guest in her house. “The noticeboards this morning warned of a strange anomaly near the borders. It seems the Rift has expanded its territory by several metres in the past few days alone. The border patrols are quite concerned.”
He shifted uneasily.
She arched a manicured eyebrow. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that?”
An irritated sigh left him. “We’re not here to discuss that, but we wanted to ask you…about pair bonding.”
The spoon froze halfway to her lips.
For an extended moment, the only sound in the room was the crackling fire and the wind whistling against the darkened windowpanes.
Slowly, Veralind set her spoon down, folding her hands over each other atop the table. She pierced him with the same blue eyes he had inherited from her. “Is that so?”
“Yes,” Silas said plainly. “We want to ask what you know, and if the bond can be disabled?”
Veralind glanced between them, eyes narrowing. Her chest rose and fell quicker, beginning to breathe unsteadily. He felt a coil of unease.
“Why?” she hissed. “You have never been interested in my research before.”
“I joined Winslow and her team in the Rift this week,” he said, not missing the way darkness crept into her eyes, “and we made a discovery. However, that discovery has seemed to forge a bond between us that we would like to sever.”
Veralind inhaled sharply before reaching for a handsome goblet, swallowing the contents quickly, and setting it back down roughly. She glared at Silas. “Do you have any idea what you’re asking?”
He felt his patience thinning. “Mother, if you know something—”
“We wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important,” Amelia implored.
“Important?” Veralind said, voice softer but no less sharp as she set her gaze on Amelia. “If you have forged a true pair bond, you have triggered something more important than you could possibly fathom.”
Amelia leaned forwards on the table, impatience rolling off her. “Youknowsomething about how to break it, but you’ll refuse to tell us out of spite, won’t you?”
Veralind’s expression darkened quickly. A pale, ringed hand slammed against the table, the sharp cracking sound echoing around them. Something ominous and cold curled into the air.
Silas shifted uncomfortably. “If you tell us what you know, we’ll explain how it happened,” he said, an appeal to her scientific curiosity.
