Page 10 of Beg the Night

I forked a healthy chunk of chicken, and when I’d finished chewing, I cleared my throat. “So, Father, any news on the war with the mystics?”

The air around us stilled, and Father gave me that look again—the look that told me to stop talking. He knew morethan he was letting on. He always did. I could see it in his eyes—in the heaviness that lingered there.

“You know better than to ask those questions at dinner, Athena.”

“But I?—”

Katherine kicked me beneath the table.

I reared back and glowered at her. “What the hell?—”

“No cursing at the dinner table!” Mother yelled.

“I’m just trying to ask Father about the war! We sit around pretending that everything’s fine, but we all know that’s not true!” I looked at my brother, my ally, and said, “You agree with me, right?”

Kylar’s face went blank, his focus averted.

“They’re going to find us eventually!” I argued.

The whole family was silent. Even Father waited for Kylar’s reply. But Kylar stared back at me, curly dark hair a mess and his soft brown eyes as kind as ever. Only now, there was another emotion lingering in his gaze. One that looked an awful lot like pity. “I think I’d prefer not talking about the war during dinner.”

“Yes!” Jasmine chimed in from beside me. “I agree with Kylar!”

Across the table, Katherine looked from Father to me like she was trying to determine who would break first. And when her eyes landed on me, they were filled with anger. “You really have to do this every time?” she asked.

“Do what?!”

“We have a nice life here. A peaceful life. I don’t see why you can’t be grateful for what Mother and Father have built for us and?—”

“Who the hell said I’m not grateful? I just wanted to have one damn conversation! My god! You act like the whole world is going to burn down if I even mention the Ministry!”

“That’s ENOUGH.” Father pounded the table with a fist, causing Mother’s dishes to shake.

I shut my mouth immediately.

But my anger could not be as easily contained.

I’d always had a temper, but this? The entire family ganging up on me this way? It was enough to send me spiraling.

Mother couldn’t look me in the eye. Jasmine put her hands in her lap and lowered her focus to her dinner plate. Nobody else cared. No, they were perfectly fine living in ignorance, fully unaware of the mystics and what was happening to the world around us. Hell, the Ministry could come knocking on our door tomorrow and we wouldn’t have a single ounce of warning because Father kept us hidden like this?—

“Athena.” Kylar’s soft voice interrupted my thoughts. “You need to calm down. Right now.”

The house started to shake, most likely originating from the anger in my own damn body.

Jasmine whimpered next to me, but my head was hot and my ears were ringing, making it impossible to make out her words. Everyone was staring at me like I was going to explode, like I was going to tear the whole place down like some?—

“ATHENA!”

A sharp poketo my shoulder jarred me from the dream. I’d been lost to my nightmare. It had felt so damn real. As if my family was still whole. Seeing their faces again…to hear their voices, was?—

The sharp poke continued, and I snapped my eyes open. It took me all of three seconds to remember where I’d fallen asleep.To recall how dangerous my situation was. I had been sleeping around a group of strange, starved, mystic men. I pushed myself to a seated position on the dungeon floor, hit with a rush of adrenaline.

But the figure hovering over me wasn’t a man. The blue eyes peering through the darkness belonged to a young woman who couldn’t have been more than nineteen.

“Oh good,” she said. “You’re alive.”

Her long hair was pulled into a loose braid down her back, and even in the darkness of the caves, I could see freckles scattered across her pale skin.

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