Page 44 of This Ravenous Fate
Elise draped her robe over her body and opened the door.
Sterling stood in the doorway, his brow creased with worry. He noticed the bullets on the floor and the incessant twitching of Elise’s hands. “Sit,” he said firmly, pushing her into her vanity seat.
Her reflection in the mirror was a haunting image she refused to face. Instead, she watched Sterling sit before her and take her hands into his. It had been ages since she had had a compulsive episode this bad. And Elise hated the frenzied state they left her in almost as much as she hated people seeing her in it.
“I’m okay,” Elise whimpered.
“Is your number still seven?” he asked.
Just the mention of it had Elise counting in her head again. But Sterling’s hand tightened on her and he shook his head, cursing under his breath. The longer Elise forced her attention to him, the quieter the numbers became in her own mind.
“Just talk me through what you’re feeling. What else happened at the club?” Sterling asked.
Elise didn’t want to tell him about the close brush she had had with Layla. She certainly didn’t want to tell him about how she had considered letting Layla bite her. Sterling had more anger toward Layla than Elise might have herself. He had been the one to pull Layla off Elise five years ago, and he was the first one to tend to Elise’s wounds. The fear that shook his hands and darkened his eyes that night never quite left him. Elise still saw echoes of it when she looked at him now, especially with Layla back in their lives.
“I underestimated the responsibility involved in being the heir,” Elise said quietly. “When I was in France, my biggest worry was whether my music was good enough. Now, I come home and there are reapers coming for my throat—none of them quite as aggressively as my father…” she trailed off when Sterling’s expression hardened. Already, Elise was regretting having shared so much. Sterling’s tentative suspicion created a sinking feeling in her chest.
Elise tried to steady her voice, but her nerves remained evident in her trembling hands. “How do you deal with him?”
Sterling pressed his palms over her knuckles, willing them to still. “I’m used to it. Besides, the pressure of Mr. Saint demanding perfection cannot be worse than having no one at all. Being a partof a family involves making sacrifices. I’m willing to do whatever if it means I get to stay here.”
Guilt began to set in. She was foolish to take her family’s presence for granted. Especially in front of Sterling. The Saints were all he had. Elise took a deep breath. “I don’t feel like I’m doing anything right. Ever. My father picks up on that. Sometimes… I feel like he doesn’t even like me.”
The room seemed to still as those words spilled out of her. Elise broke their eye contact and looked down at her lap. Then Sterling’s hands were cupping her face and he was tilting her gaze back up to his. The heat from his palms spread through her cheeks, soothing the cold tracks the tears had left and warming the emptiness in her chest. “That is not possible, Elise. You are the loveliest person I know. Your father would be a fool to not love you. Your father is not a fool, is he?” Sterling asked.
A tender smile appeared on Elise’s lips. “No. He isn’t.”
“It’s difficult to not love you. Impossible, actually.” Sterling pulled her into his chest.
Warmth spread through Elise. “Are you working tonight?” she asked.
Sterling shook his head. “No. I’m all yours.”
***
Later, Elise sat in her favorite spot in the library balcony, Sterling beside her. They shared a box of chocolate-covered strawberrieswhile half-listening to her father and Stephen Wayne talking below.
The library loft had been a kind of hideout over the years. Elise remembered climbing the ladder with Layla, where they would pick random books for each other and take turns trying to pronounce the longest words they could find. It never lasted too long because the dust between the pages would irritate Layla’s allergies, and before they even made it through a full chapter, she would be sneezing and rubbing her eyes until they were red.
Elise bit back a smile as she sucked a spot of chocolate off her finger. “How much do you know about Stephen Wayne?” she asked, keeping her voice low.
Sterling shrugged. “Nothing besides the glorified opinions Thalia had of him. I think there’s more to him than he lets on. Most politicians these days put on a show they know people will love, but it’s never truly real,” Sterling said. The corner of his lips twitched. “Also, he’sso cocky.”
Laughing softly, Elise nudged him with her shoulder. “You don’t like him, do you?”
“I mean, what does he want with us so badly? Everything we have he could get himself. He reminds me of my mother’s brother.” Sterling grimaced. “Of course I can never say that around your father, but the fact still stands.”
Elise covered his hand with hers. “You never mention your uncle. Do you want to talk about it now?”
Sterling’s shoulders tensed. His hand curled into a fist beneath hers and he looked away. “That bastard is not my uncle,” he muttered.And with that, the conversation ended. Elise understood. He had become an orphan in the most horrific way possible and still lived with a lineage that went back to the violently intolerant South, where he had watched his father die.
Elise leaned back on her hands, letting the muffled conversation from below wash over her. While she watched her father and Mr. Wayne clink their glasses together and talk over some whiskey, the unsettling sensation piqued in her.
“I’m terribly sorry about the mess at the club,” she heard her father say. “I will be sure to get to the bottom of it.”
Elise’s shoulders tensed, but she reached for another strawberry.
“I miss helping Josi write letters to you up here,” Sterling said. “You know we made a goal to get through all the books on this shelf by the end of the year.” He ran his finger over the lowest shelf behind him.
