Page 51 of This Ravenous Fate
A smile lit Elise’s face while Layla looked up at her. In that moment, Elise wanted to risk everything for Layla to truly understand the depth of her feelings. It was just one look, but it made Elise’s world move. She felt it in the following silence and saw it despite the room’s dim lighting.
Now, Elise pushed against the tender knots dotting her brain, but they only tightened. Her mind, forbidden to cave, made a prison for Elise’s own feelings. She inhaled. On her exhale, Elise began to play. This time, she leaned into the newly raised emotions. Grace poured into her mind like warmed honey. Slowly, the tangles unraveled. Her mind mapped itself out before her, music painting a vivid backdrop of her feelings.
Each note was a gentle awakening from a long slumber. Her fingers stretched and curled with the music, inviting the swell of vulnerability to fill her previously hollow crevices. In this room, music was the sole eye of her perception, the window cracked just enough to let her glimpse at the delicate dissection of her heart and mind.
The song carried Elise like a breath of fresh air back into her body. She finished it, fingers trembling slightly against the damp keys as the final notes faded around her. Tears coated her cheeks. Her mind felt gloriously cleared with no more blocks forcing her to look inward.
Layla was gone from her thoughts, her only presence existing in the now silent song.
Elise closed the piano.
***
When Elise was younger, her father had a habit of drinking black coffee at midnight. Now, she glowered at her father’s closed door as the maid, Helen, knocked on it, holding a steaming mug of the stuff. Elise could smell it the second it started brewing. The scent filled the house, curling around every corner and diving into every crevice it could find. Elise wrinkled her nose.
She sat up in the sitting room across from his study, moving pieces across a chessboard while she listened for him to come out. An hour had already passed, during which Sterling had bade her goodnight.
The study door finally cracked open.
“Please take it up to my bedroom, Helen. Thank you.”
The knight piece fell from Elise’s hand while she looked up. Helen hurried down the hall with the coffee in her hands. Then Mr. Saint emerged. Elise righted the chess piece and straightened up in her seat. “Father,” she said solemnly.
Her father chuckled. “Allow me to be the first victim of this new defense you’re working out.” He pointed to the chessboard and sat in the chair opposite hers.
“Are you sure? You aren’t tired?” Elise asked.
“Elise,” he said flatly. She noticed the least expected emotion residing in his eyes: guilt. “Give me a chance. You’ve been waiting up all night for me. I should be taking more time to spend with you, and I’m sorry I haven’t. Work has just been so busy.”
Elise nodded quickly. “I understand, Father. That’s why I assumed you would want to go to bed. Not play chess. I’m not even good.” She laughed, and it was soft enough to make him smile.
“I love watching you learn,” her father said. “All right, then. I’m black. You’re white.”
***
It was nearly three o’clock in the morning by the time her father went to bed and Elise could sneak into his study. He beat her badly in two games, which Elise had not minded at first. But then he went into critiques, telling her how sloppy her defenses were and how it could all be a grand metaphor for her job as heiress.
“You lack self-awareness, my pearl. I don’t want you to get hurt because you assume those around you are playing this game of life as safely as you are.” His voice had been so soft as he spoke, like a proper father giving her advice and guiding her into an important stage of her life.
Then he had taken her queen.
Elise closed the study door behind her and turned to face the massive room. She caught the whiff of roses first, a sickeningly sweet scent that overwhelmed her senses.
She started at her father’s desk, rummaging through drawers, shifting papers about. Most of the letters she found that were addressed to Mr. Wayne were already sealed. There was no way for her to open them without making it obvious they had been tampered with. Elise set those aside and continued to search the room. By the fireplace sat two plush armchairs. A crystal glass half full of red wine rested on one of the chair’s side tables, a worn notebook planner on the other.
Elise picked it up and flipped to the most recent pages:
DELIVERY WITH VEX
VENUE MAINTENANCE
SUIT FITTING
She ran her fingers over the rough pen marks of her father’s handwriting. He must have been upset; the gouges of the pen nearly ripped the page. Almost every page was full, details scrawled even in the margins. Until she found a mostly blank page for the first of October.
All it said was ‘BUSY,’ with an X crossed over the whole page.
Elise shut the planner and put it back where she found it. Whatever her father was planning was big enough to warrant plans weeks in advance. Yet Mr. Saint, the man who carefully ensured timeliness and organization, had not told his family a single thing.
