Page 2 of The Courting of Bristol Keats
Harper nudged closer. “Do you think it’s possible—”
“No,” Bristol said, too harshly, and hoped Harper didn’t notice. A single sharp word from her could instill all kinds of worry in Harper. “No,” she said again, this time with practiced boredom, reluctant to meet her sister’s gaze. A disappointed breath hissed through Harper’s teeth. She was the brainiest of the sisters, her nose always in a book, but she was also the most softhearted and hopeful of the three. She still believed in happy endings, and, some days, that terrified Bristol. It wasn’t something Bristol could deliver. Harper took after their father in almost every way, from his warm brown skin to his straight black hair. She also had his big dark eyes rimmed with thick lashes that could disarm anyone. Their mother had been fond of saying that his eyes cast a spell over her from the day they met. Harper’s eyes had a different kind of power over Bristol—they made her wish she could set everything right for her, that she could undo all the wounds of the last year.
Secretly she shared Harper’s curiosity. Didn’t everyone wonder about who and where they came from? It was a question that never went away. Their father’s origins were a mystery. Ever since Bristol could remember, she and her sisters had ventured every possible guess. But his answer had always been the same:I don’t know. Her mother’s past was just as enigmatic, but unlike Bristol’s father, she simply refused to talk about her family other than to say they were rotten. If pressed about whatrottenmeant, she left the room. Something about it was too painful for her to discuss, and their father would shake his head, silently signaling the sisters to drop it.
But dropping the subject didn’t make the questions vanish. Even now, when she passed someone with warm brown skin and beautiful dark eyes like her father’s, she wondered, could they be a cousin or uncle? Likewise, when she passed someone with pale skin and shimmering copper hair like her mother’s, she wondered, could they be one of those rotten relatives?
Cat took after their mother, with the same green eyes and hair the color of a summer poppy—and then there was Bristol. With medium brown hair and height, she didn’t look like either of her parents.
Maybe that was why the ancestry question still poked at her. Even her eyes were a color somewhere between the two of them—hazel—a catchall name for a color that couldn’t decide what it was. Greenish? Brownish? Goldish? It was as annoyingly noncommittal as her parents were about their pasts.
Instead of fading away as memories should, her parents’ origins pricked her thoughts more often these days. Maybe it was the psych course she was taking at Bowskeep Community. Something her professor said burrowed into her head, and she couldn’t shake it out again:Our past is a shadow that follows us. For better or worse, it shapes us, and sometimes it controls us.
That was what it was like. A shadow tracing her footsteps. Just when she pushed the past out of her mind, a shitty letter like the one in her hands would arrive, stirring up old questions again. Who were the faceless monsters that had made her parents run? Did she look like any of them?
“Bri?” Harper waited for her decision.
Bristol crumpled the letter into a ball and threw it onto her already overflowing trash can. It tumbled to the floor, and Angus, their ferret, scurried over to sniff and investigate. He loved to shred paper, and snuck out the door with it.
“It’s only a scam, just like the others,” she said, but Harper’s eyes still drilled into her, dark clouds heavy with questions. Bristol grabbed her hoodie from her bedpost. “Gotta run, Harp. Today’s going to be crazy. Sal will kill me if I’m late.” She rushed out the bedroom door.
“But they’re not asking for something,” Harper argued from the landing as Bristol hurried down the stairs. “They only want togiveus something.”
“Something that comes with a catch,” Bristol called back.
A catch they couldn’t afford.
People who lied about who they really were always had an angle, something they were working that, in the end, would cost you more than you could afford. And the Keats sisters had already lost too much.
CHAPTER 2
Agust of air blistered across the floor, a thousand stinging nettles warming Eris’s skin. The counselor’s long silver hair billowed behind him, caught in the tempest. Seconds later, heavy boots echoed off mirror-smooth black floors.
Tyghan was back. He rounded the corner and met the counselor’s gaze.
The young man’s face was laced with a fine spray of blood and his black wind-tangled hair was caked with mud.
“It didn’t go well,” Eris ventured.
“Glad your observational skills remain sharp.” Tyghan continued down the hallway. “My suite.”
“After you’re cleaned up, we can—”
“Now.”
Eris followed without comment. He understood the stress the young man was under. He hadn’t seen him rest in months.
Once in his suite, Tyghan stripped, flinging his clothes to the floor, then walked into the shower basin. He cupped his hands, catching water streaming from the golden spout, and splashed his face but flinched when the water hit his back.
Eris eyed the swollen slashes across Tyghan’s shoulder. Blood trickled in rivulets down his muscled back and thighs. “Shall I summon a physician?”
Tyghan didn’t respond, only focused on removing the blood that spattered his face. “Two of ours are dead,” he finally said. “Or worse. We couldn’t retrieve the bodies.” He was methodical as he described the encounter that turned into an ambush. “Three months. That’s all we have left—”
“Three months is still—”
“Notenough.” Tyghan’s reply cut the air like a cleaver. “I’ve spent fourteen years in training. So have my officers. The rest of our ranks, at least five. Three months is laughable.”
Eris answered quietly. “It’s all we have. We’ll make it enough.”
