Page 42 of Reign

Emma shakes her head without looking at me. I notice the trembling of her hand as it hovers over her dinner, her silverware held uselessly in her grip. She hasn’t eaten a bite, but I refuse to hold myself to blame.

“I believe you accomplished all those on her the last day of exams,” Tempest pipes in, then mutters, “and she, you.”

I nail him with a glare, which he ignores.

“Should we invite her to our New Years’ party, then?” Sabine asks.

My gaze flies to hers. She smiles coldly. “Perhaps she’s willing to accept her position now that she’s been … thoroughly convinced.”

I take a breath. A cleansing one. A damned centering one. “I doubt she’d have any desire.”

“Mm.” Sabine murmurs as she brings her wine to her lips. “Too bad. She’d make such a breathtaking Virtuous princess, if only she’d accept our rules.”

The tablecloth wrinkles in my death grip. I can’t bit down on the instinct enough to quip, “like Emma was?”

“Son,” Father spits, the same time Emma’s head whips toward me and she begs, “Chase, don’t—”

The temptation to lay out all Sabine’s done and how far she’s gone—killing Ivy—while dart-boarding a butter knife to her forehead is so strong it’s almost irresistible, but I hold myself back.

“Emma made her choice.” A vein pulses in my father’s forehead. “She decided to forsake her duty as a Virtue princess and betray us by collecting secrets to sell to the highest bidder. Though I doubt we need to rehash this, do we, Emma?”

Emma’s jaw locks. She literally can’t speak, and my own teeth gnash at the thought of what I’ve done to her, making her sit here and endure this when she’s already become a ghost of her former self.

“Are you really so dense, Father?” I ask.

I stare at him a long time in the tense, frozen silence.

No, my father is a lot of things, but he’s not clueless. If he was aware of Sabine’s auctioning of Emma, of the reasons she was trapped in a fire of her own making, then he damn well knows what Sabine did to Ivy. The question is whether he understands that Ivy was a spontaneous Plan B, and that his son and only heir was the A-game.

I break our stare, turning back to the steak. Tempest mutters his approval of my backing down, and Emma’s shoulders sag in relief. Satisfied with my cease and desist, Father asks Sabine how she’s enjoying her dinner. She answers that it’s delicious.

Idly spinning my fork, I ask, “How far do you think your future wife’s willing to go to keep her reign over the Virtues? Besides just marrying you, I mean.”

I expect dishes to scatter. Wineglasses topple over as Father hurls himself from his seat, his rage smashing against the table.

Icy derision meets me over the crystal centerpiece. “Are you quite finished, son?”

I smile. “Not in the least.”

Tempest throws his napkin on his unfinished dinner with an aggravated, “Shit.”

“Do you know what this woman has been through these past few months? This is her first Christmas without her daughters.” My father speaks in a silky monotone. If he had a bone to pick his teeth with, he would. “One of which, had she not died tragically, was your soulmate. A wonderful girl, murdered not three months ago, and here you are, shaming her name and humiliating yourself, simply out of jealousy.”

“Jealousy?” I sputter but collect myself before my jaw unhinges.

Father folds his hand over his fiancée’s. “Sabine is to be my future wife, and she is to have the same respect you gave to Marilee, if not more. This woman has gone through hell, and I refuse to sit here and allow you to disparage her further.”

“A hell of her own making,” I quip.

“Daniel, it’s all right,” Sabine says as Father peels his lips back mid-snarl. “He’s not wrong. Addisyn murdered Piper. It’s awful, and I don’t think I’ll ever recover from the thought that my girls could’ve come to that point unless I did something to push them in that direction. A mother’s guilt knows no bounds.” Sabine raises her demure eyes to me. “I will live with that for the rest of my life. But I plan to change and help the girls I still can, my Virtues, attain the values and positive futures that I can only look back on as an unrealized dream for my daughters.”

“Is your simpering supposed to affect me?” I ask her, honestly curious, then turn to my father. “Her daughter was killed by her other daughter, Father.” I snort. “And if that’s not proof enough of her fucked-up mothering, the way she treats her Virtues is by far the worst. Look what she’s done to Emma—”

Emma gasps.

“Get out.”

If ice could’ve taken over the walls and cracked into jagged fractures, it would’ve had the same effect as Father’s voice.

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