Page 9 of Ignition Rites

“You’ve been quiet all week,” he says.

“I’m always quiet.”

“You’re always loud. Loud is your quiet.” Something close to a smile moves through his face and doesn’t quite land. “What is it?”

I sit in the chair across from him without being asked. He lets it slide, which tells me more than anything he could’ve said out loud. The leather’s cold under me, and somewhere behind him a clock ticks loud enough to fill the silence I’m leaving there on purpose.

“Alistair’s stepdaughter,” I say. “Lo.”

His glass turns a quarter inch beneath his fingers. “What about her?”

“She doesn’t know what she’s walked into.”

“No,” he agrees, easy, like I’ve said something as obvious as the weather outside the window. “She doesn’t.”

“Doesn’t that bother you?”

He looks at me long enough that I watch him actually weigh the answer instead of reaching for one already assembled, which is rarer from him than almost anything else he does.

“Everything about this situation bothers me,” he says finally. “I’ve made my peace with being useless about most of it.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only one I have today.” He turns the glass another quarter inch, a habit I’ve never once seen him break, like the desk itself needs managing as much as anything on it. “Why are you asking me and not Ash?”

“Because Ash would tell me to leave it alone.”

“And you think I won’t?”

“I think you’re the only person in this family who’s ever told me the truth, even when you make me pay for it.”

His hand stops on the glass.

“Careful,” he says quietly. “That’s not a small thing to say to me.”

I lean back in the chair. “Then I’ll pay for it.”

He watches me a moment longer before his shoulders loosen enough to touch the back of his own chair. “You want to protect her,” he says, and it isn’t a question.

“If you think you can’t do anything, what chance do I have?”

“That’s never stopped you from anything in your life.” He almost smiles, and this time it nearly reaches his eyes. “You decided you liked her the second you saw her, and nothing will stop you. That’s just who you are.”

I don’t have a defense for that, mostly because it’s true.

“She’s going to find out eventually,” I say. “What this family actually is. Better she hears it from somebody who isn’t trying to convince her it’s normal.”

Dominic studies me, and something passes behind his eyes that looks almost like grief, old and worn smooth from handling.

“Be careful what you tell her,” he says. “Not because you’d be wrong. Because being right, in this house, has terrible consequences, and I’d rather you learn that the easy way than finding out for yourself.”

“Is that what happened to you? To Mom?”

He doesn’t answer. He lifts the glass instead, finally drinks, and I watch his throat move once before he sets it back down exactly where it was.

That’s answer enough, and I leave before he can change his mind about anything he’s already given me.

I find Lo in the garden the next afternoon, sitting on the low stone wall near the roses, phone forgotten in her lap, shoes kicked off into the grass like she’s daring anyone to argue about it. The sun’s low enough to throw everything gold and long-shadowed, and there’s a bee working the same climbing rose over and over like it hasn’t figured out the flower’s already given up everything it has.