Chapter 6 The Truth About My Mother

QUINN'S POV

The bolt slid back before the sun was even fully up, and my whole body went stiff before I'd even seen who it was.

I'd learned that much in eighteen years. Footsteps that came too early never brought anything good.

I sat up on the edge of the bed, knees still sore from scrubbing the day before, and waited, my back straight, my hands folded in my lap the way I'd trained myself to hold them.

It was Silas.

No folder this time. Just him, stepping in and shutting the door behind him like he had all the time in the world, which I supposed he did.

I hadn't slept.

Every time I shut my eyes I saw that drawing again, the woman with my face and someone else's name.

"You didn't sleep," he said.

"Neither did you, by the look of it."

It came out before I thought about it. In Ashgrove you didn't talk back, didn't hand people things they hadn't asked for.

But I was tired of being looked at like a locked door somebody wanted to pick open, and something about how calm he was made me want to shake that calm loose.

He blinked, just barely, like I'd caught him off guard. Then he crossed to the same chair as yesterday and sat, resting his hands on his knee.

"I want you to tell me about your mother."

"I already told you. I don't remember her."

"I didn't ask if you remembered her." His voice never changed, not once. "I asked you to tell me about her. Those aren't the same question."

I kept my face still. That much I was good at. In Ashgrove, the moment someone saw what you were protecting, they took it and used it against you. Garrick did it with his hands. Mara did it with her mouth, over and over, until the words stopped landing and it was the silence before them that made my skin crawl.

I wasn't handing Silas the one thing I had left just because he'd asked politely.

"Why do you even care?" I said. "You'd already decided what I was before I got here."

"I decided nothing. My brothers did. I watched."

"And now you're watching me."

"Yes."

At least he said it plain. Kade and Breck showed you exactly what they felt, one way or another, a fist, a sentence, a slammed door.

Silas didn't show me anything, and somehow that made him harder to sit across from, not easier.

"Ask Breck why he hates me so much," I said. "Go on. Ask him what I ever did to him before I even opened my mouth in that courtyard."

Silas tilted his head slightly. "I know why Breck hates you. It has nothing to do with you at all. It has to do with someone he lost a long time ago, and how much it looked, for one bad night, like history was about to repeat itself."

That stopped me. I hadn't expected an answer. I hadn't expected him to give me anything at all, and for a second I didn't know what to do with it.

"What does that mean?"

"It means you're not the only one in this fortress carrying something you don't talk about," Silas said. "Now. About your mother."

I almost laughed. Almost. "You're good at this."

"At what?"

"Turning everything back around so it always ends with me answering and you not."

Something shifted in his face. Not quite a smile. Closer to respect, if I had to guess, though I didn't trust myself to read him right. Nobody in this fortress had earned that kind of trust yet.

"Fair," he said. "I'll ask you something easier, then. What did the servants call your mother, when they thought no one was listening?"

"Nothing. They never said her name in front of me. Ever. Not once in eighteen years."

"That's not nothing," Silas said quietly. "That's a household that was told to forget someone existed. People don't forget things like that on their own. Somebody made sure of it."

I didn't answer that. My throat had gone tight and I didn't trust what would come out if I opened my mouth again.

He let it go quiet after that. I braced for him to push the way Breck did, filling the room with noise until I gave him something just to make it stop. He didn't. He just let the silence sit there, and it was worse than shouting.

"There was a name in the file," he said eventually. "Not a title. An actual name. Half of it was ruined by water damage. I spent most of the night trying to make out the rest of it and couldn't."

Something in my stomach dropped. "What name?"

"I was hoping you'd tell me."

"I can't."

"Can't. Or won't."

"Does it matter?" It came out sharper than I meant. "Either way you're not getting it."

He looked at me for a long moment.

"You're not hiding a secret," he said. "You're protecting yourself. Those aren't the same thing, whatever it feels like from where you're sitting."

I didn't answer that one. I didn't trust my voice.

He stood, straightened his coat, and for a second I thought he'd say something else. He didn't. Just gave a small nod, like he was putting the conversation away for later, and turned for the door.

"I'll come back," he said. Not a threat. Just something that was going to happen whether I wanted it to or not.

He pulled the door open.

And stopped.

Nell was standing right outside it, hand raised like she'd been about to knock. Her face went white the second she saw who'd answered instead of a guard.

For a second neither of them moved. Silas looked down at her, an old servant standing in a tower corridor she had no business being in. Nell looked back up at him, and I watched her try to smooth her face into something ordinary. A beat too late. I'd already seen what was underneath it.

She wasn't just startled. She was scared the way you get scared when you've been carrying something heavy for a long time and you think, for one terrible second, that it's about to fall out of your hands before you're ready to let it go.

"Can I help you," Silas said. It wasn't really a question, and it wasn't friendly either, the kind of calm that made you want to answer honestly even when you knew better.

Nell's mouth opened then closed.

Her eyes flicked past him to me, just once, quick and desperate, like she was trying to send a message she didn't have time to say out loud.

"I was bringing the girl her morning water," Nell said finally, holding up an empty hand like she'd forgotten she wasn't carrying anything at all.

Silas didn't move out of the doorway. He looked at her empty hands. Then at her face. Then, slowly, back at me.

"At this hour," he said. "Without a jug."

"I forgot it downstairs," Nell said quickly. Too quickly. "I can go back for it."

"You're not one of the tower servants," Silas said. "I've seen you in the kitchens. What are you doing up here?"

"I heard the new girl needed help settling in," Nell said. "I thought I'd offer."

It was a bad lie and we both knew it.

Nell had never once offered to help settle anybody in eighteen years of working for the Ashbys, not because she was unkind, but because offering help to the wrong person at the wrong time got you noticed, and getting noticed in that house had never done anybody any favors.

Silas didn't call her on it. He just kept looking at her, the same patient, unreadable look he'd been giving me for the last ten minutes, like he had all the time in the world to wait for the truth to fall out of somebody on its own.

"Go on, then," he said finally. "Fetch her water."

Nell nodded fast, ducking her head, and hurried past him into the room without looking at me.

Silas watched her go, then looked back at me one more time, something working behind his eyes that I couldn't read.

"I'll come back," he said again, to both of us this time, and stepped out into the corridor.

The door shut. The bolt slid home.

Nell didn't move until we both heard his footsteps fade all the way down the stone stairs. Then she crossed the room fast, grabbed both my hands in hers, and knelt in front of me on the cold floor, her whole body shaking.

"Quinn," she whispered. "I have to tell you something, and I don't have much time before someone notices I'm gone."

"Nell, what's wrong? You're shaking."

"Your mother," Nell said, and her voice cracked clean in half on the word. "Everything Garrick told you about her. Everything this whole house ever told you. None of it was true. Not one word of it."

My heart slammed once, hard, against my ribs.

"Then what is true?"

Nell opened her mouth to answer.

And somewhere down the corridor, heavy boots started climbing the tower stairs.