The Rush (The Siren Series) - By Rachel Higginson Page 0,119

pinned me to my chair, daring me to deny anything. The wicked queen to her daughter’s Snow White looks, she had all the beauty Evaleen and Sloane did except she was aging and she knew it. The wrinkles in her laugh line and looser skin had turned her cruel and greedy.

“He hasn’t asked me formally, yet,” I clarified even though I knew it would cost my mother. “He just mentioned it at dinner once.” I tore my eyes from Thalia’s triumphant stare and noticed the sky had gone completely dark outside. We had been here for hours and there were still hours to get through yet.

“He intends to take her,” my mother spelled out with force. “We’ve had several conversations about her.”

“Won’t that leave you without a legacy?” Echo asked and the note of laughter rang out in the room. These women were so catty; I could feel the few bites I allowed myself for dinner threaten to reappear.

“I have Honor,” Ava returned serenely.

“And if Smith always keeps her? If she is never allowed out of that house?” Thalia scoffed. “What then?”

“Honor will be my legacy; there is no question about that. Nix wants Ivy enough that he will make sure I get Honor,” Ava promised self-confidently.

A jolting shiver washed down my back and I was sure I would be sick for a few moments. Eventually the racking nausea slowed and I looked up in time to watch my mother smirk at her supposed best friends. “Honor will never go with you,” I spat in a hushed tone before I even registered the words were being said.

Oops.

My mother’s scathing glare swept towards me and I summoned every ounce of courage I possessed to sit up straight and stare her in the eyes. A collective intake of breath could be heard around the room and then everything was silent while my mother’s rage grew until I could feel it pouring off her in waves.

“What a strong spirit you have, Ivy,” Thalia broke the charged silence with the backhanded compliment. “No wonder Nix wants to add you to his collection.”

Strangled laughter erupted in Ava and her restrained fury turned her eyes wild. “My daughter? Strong spirit?” more crazed laughter. “You forget that this is the same child that needed to be sent away after her breakup. One broken heart and she’s a mental case! Nix is saving us all from the disaster she brings with her. She is a tragedy waiting to happen. No, Ivy has always been too weak for this world, too weak for anything of worth.”

“Weak?” I choked on the word; it felt vile and repulsive in my mouth. I had survived this long, made it this far with her and with him and she was calling me weak! I felt the presence enter the room behind me and pause in the doorway, but I was too emotionally involved to stop myself now. “No, not weak. I have a soul. That may be a weakness to you, but it is not to me. I have common decency, some f-ing standards and you call that weak! Of course I don’t fit in; I’m trying to be a good person, to be better than this life you force me to live.”

I jumped at the sound of the next voice, even though instinct warned me he would be there.

“It’s not about being a good person, Ivy,” Nix calmly soothed from behind me. I felt his voice grow more placating as he walked into the dining room. Every head swiveled around with mouth agape to stare at him. He was picture perfect in his pressed suit and shiny shoes, but his tie was absent and the top button of his white oxford was undone. He fiddled with one of his cufflinks and then continued, “You should be concerned about my expectations for you, my desire for you. You’re mother’s right, the rest is weakness, not anything else. And definitely a waste of time.”

“What isn’t a waste of time, Nix?” I asked with more contempt than I felt. Not that I didn’t feel hatred but it was being severely overshadowed by fear at the moment.

“Money, Ivy. Money is never a waste of time.” His hands rested on the top of my high-back chair and I straightened out my spine just to keep from shrinking beneath his powerful presence.

“Oh, that’s right. Because money makes the world go round, right Nix?” I held his gaze bravely. As desperately as I wanted to look away from his