Unhallowed (Rath and Rune #1) - Jordan L. Hawk Page 0,37

of the bills and pulled it free from the envelope. “Look—the address being billed is different from the mailing address. This bill isn’t for the apartment. Kelly must have a second apartment, or even a house.”

Their eyes met across the bed. “The key O’Neil left for you,” Ves said. “I think I know what it goes to.”

Ves sat down on the edge of the bed in his rented room, unsure whether the evening at the Rath house made him want to laugh or cry.

He didn’t know how normal families worked. Or at least, normal compared to what he’d grown up with; ones with adults who didn’t expect their children to help them end the world.

Possibly everyone had simply been on good behavior in front of a stranger. But somehow, he didn’t think so. The children were well-behaved, but not perfect. They’d laughed and talked over one another, and quarreled, and raced about the house. Most astonishingly, none of them had seemed to fear the consequences.

Not to say they hadn’t obeyed when one of the adults chided them, but none of them had seemed truly afraid. No adult had raised a hand, or screamed invectives at them.

Again, perhaps they’d been putting on a show in front of a guest, and even now the girls were getting the strap for running down the stairs. But given their lack of flinches when Sebastian corrected them, the absence of dread in their eyes for what would come next when Ves made his farewells, he didn’t think so.

Their house hadn’t been the neatest, but it was warm, welcoming. And the entire Rath clan, including Captain Degas, had been unfailingly kind to one another.

They’d been kind to him.

He flopped back on the bed, staring at the ceiling without seeing it. There was the rub. They’d seen him as human and treated him as such. But if they knew the truth…

Would the older boy, Willie, have run at him with a knife, screaming that he had to be killed? Certainly Captain Degas would have reached for any weapon available to defend his unconventional family. And Sebastian…

For a moment, he’d half thought Sebastian was flirting with him. Thank the trees, the mirror in Sebastian’s room had been angled in such a way so as not to easily betray Ves to him. Though Ves had almost done that himself with the serving spoon.

Silver revealed his monstrous nature, one way or another. Either burning his skin on contact, or by showing far too much in the reflection of silver-backed mirrors.

But Sebastian hadn’t noticed. He’d been too focused on Ves himself, and then on the letters.

Beautiful Sebastian, who Ves was plotting to betray in almost precisely the same way as the absent O’Neil might have done. Oh, he didn’t mean to steal a book himself—but surely Fagerlie did. What else could there be worth finding in a library?

And then Ves would disappear without a trace, just as O’Neil had. Would Sebastian look for him? Or realize the truth, and curse Ves’s name?

Ves pressed his fingers into his eyes. Once he was cured, once Noct was cured, they’d be free to move among normal people without fear of discovery. They’d find other friends, other families. Maybe Noct would start a family of his own. Ves ought to look at tonight as a promise, a preview. Not a betrayal, exposing innocent children to his monstrous self, deceiving their parents and uncle into thinking he was just a normal man, rather than a thing created to destroy.

Gods. He wanted to scream until his lungs bled. He wanted to pick up one of the mirrors turned to the wall and smash it into tiny bits, then grind those into dust. More than anything, he wanted to leave behind this burden of constant hiding, of suppressing the truth, of putting on a mask every morning.

And if he wanted those things, how much more must Noct want them?

Ves let his hands fall to his side. If things had been different…but they weren’t.

Tomorrow, he’d go with Sebastian to the address from the electric bill. Find out whatever he could. Either clear his conscience, that O’Neil’s disappearance hadn’t in fact been engineered by Fagerlie one way or another, or else discover his worst fears were correct.

And if they were…then what?

His first duty had to be to Noct. Had to. His brother depended on him. Ves couldn’t let him down by backing out.

Even if he was beginning to wish he could.

Chapter 13

Ves left the boarding house before sunrise the next