Celeste.
The woman’s face looks pained as she pushes pin after pin into Moira’s curls.
Another pinch has her squeezing her eyes shut. “Yes, Mother,” she wheezes out.
“Good.” Eleanor stands. “Mind your manners tonight. You will address each suitor with politeness until your father and I decide to whom you’ll be betrothed.”
She adjusts the hem of her dress over her ample bosom as her daughter nods. Moira always wondered what it felt like to have such monstrosities attached to such a short frame.
And she wonders if her mother begrudges her, her youth. Her long limbs and supple skin. Her easy smile and rebellious nature.
Or whether she knows, deep down, that her daughter picks flowers to witness their elegant deaths.
Moira watches her leave the room, knowing that regardless of the reason, her mother had made a life of beating her into submission. Its foundation laid on every switch she ever brandished her skin with. Every pinch, every slap, every order, every command.
“Are you okay, dear?” Celeste whispers in Moira’s ear as she picks up another pin.
This is a whispering house, with its large echoing rooms and paper-thin walls.
Moira nods again and blinks the tears away.
Celeste would think they’re from sadness, or a reaction to her mother’s unforgiving fingers.
But they are not.
They’re from denying her right to scream. In this whispering house, there is no such thing.
To be named for the sun and have the most passionate of love affairs with shadows is something Sol’s mother didn’t have in mind when he came screaming into the world.
But he isn’t responsible for the hopes that died when his mother did. His own day of reckoning will come and when it does, there will be no fear gurgling at the base of his throat, willing him to yell and fight.
When death catches up to him, he’ll walk alongside his old friend.
He stops just at the edge of the tree line, knowing that although he can’t see his men, they’re out there, waiting for his signal.
The house before him looks like some sort of stone fort; what they say used to be some kind of castle. And for the secrets they keep inside, it’s no wonder the building is so heavily guarded. Secrets that could split the very foundation into pieces.
Secrets that are going to cost the MacQuarries dearly tonight.
He thinks back on the red young woman who’d somehow snuck out, free from her parents’ stringent hold.
Right into the arms of the beast.
She had no idea who he was.
And even though Sol took pleasure in collecting debts in the most primitive of ways, he hesitated, unable to take her. Unable to muddy her light with his dark.
He may have been named for the sun, but she looks as though she swallowed it.
Like the reason this place is so rainy and cold and full of misery is because the bitch of a girl stole the goodness for herself.
Maybe she wasn’t a girl. Perhaps a woman whose innocence took up residence in her parted lips and doe eyes.
Still.
She’d had the nerve to regard him with less than fear.
And Sol, well, he’d liked it.
Now, it makes him bare his teeth to the night, reminding himself that indulgence gets you killed. After all, it’s what got him here, ready to shed the blood of enemies he’d inherited; his only birthright.
His stiff fingers come to life as he shakes his hands free of the fists they’d absentmindedly been trapped in.
Multiple cars pull into the winding driveway of the residence below and Sol lets out a whistle before rolling his neck and making his way down the hill.
With every stilted step he takes, he ignores the pleasure sitting in his belly at the idea of seeing that little fucking sun demon again.
Men aren’t all that different from women. Moira deduces this as she watches them in their fine clothes, all but pushing one another to snag her attention.
She’s sure she’d been mistaken but can’t shake off the image of a man kicking his foot out to trip another before whisking her away with two glasses of champagne in his hands.
Moira’s eyes sparkle under the praise, the kind words, the constant wave of compliments that rest first on her ears, and then on her smile.
And all while she listens and nods, she wonders about the strange man who’d been lurking around the property earlier.
Was he still there? Who was he?
Was he the demon her brothers mentioned earlier?
She doesn’t know the answer to these questions, but what she does know is that she can never tell her parents about him. Their first questions would not be to inquire about the man, but ones full of rage over her short bouts of freedom.
“Excuse me,” Eleanor says, interrupting the man speaking to Moira.
Fear has Moira’s spine straightening as she wonders if her mother could tell she hadn’t been paying attention to his droning.
“A quick trip to the ladies’ room and I’ll have my lovely daughter back to you.” She flashes a smile, not waiting for his response, and leads Moira out by her elbow.
There’s no malice in her touch nor her smile, but people aren’t meant to witness what she does to Moira when they’re alone. Even the walls are too afraid to speak of what they’ve heard, echoing through this great space.
She leads Moira into the nearest bathroom, shutting the door quietly behind them before turning to her.
“We’ve chosen.” As she regards the young woman—her daughter—she adjusts her emerald gown, bringing Moira’s breasts higher and closer together.
Her breasts hadn’t come in heavy and swollen as her mother’s had. Their upturned pink nipples sat atop a mere handful of flesh, something that made her mother twist her lips every time she saw them free.
It made Moira want to cover herself.
“No more champagne. Your skin is too pink.” She steps back, her eyes squinting as she looks Moira up and down. “I knew we shouldn’t have let you indulge.”
“Who have you chosen?” Moira’s anxiousness is exhibited in the biting of her lip and the way she clasps her hands just in front of her.
There were no favorites of her own. But there were a few suitors that she knew she could not spend her days creating a life with.
“Brantley McKenna seems to be most ideal to your father. I ken he’s rather dull, but—”
“Mother, please, no,” Moira begs, her voice soft.
Brantley is fair and blond and fit, but his hands are cold and clammy. Moira would be able to overlook those dead hands of his, but she’d already felt them on her own hand, on her elbow, on her cheek…and pinching the flesh of her bottom.
Before she can envision what a life with him would look like, a crack of lightning pain has her holding her cheek. Her mother’s hand shakes after striking her face and Moira stares at it, wishing she could cut it off.
Watch the merlot spill from that severed place. Place a goblet under the wound and lick the life-giving liquid from my fingers and lips.
“Go upstairs and gather yourself before you come back to speak to Brantley,” Eleanor orders, adjusting her own gown.
Go upstairs and return once the mark on your face has gone because only a barbarian would damage their goods and expect to sell them at full value.
Moira storms away, unafraid of her mother’s reaction in a house full of people who require her to play hostess.