“I understand.”
“Reschedule the appointment, too. I have a prior commitment.”
“Fine, I’ll change your appointment to five o’clock this evening. A car will pick you up in front of the house. For what it is worth, I am sorry. This is what happens when you are born with responsibility and duty and talent.”
The chairwoman tinged the last few words with a sad half-smile.
Lila could not help but think that part of her mother in that moment was fourteen years old again, still at breakfast, told that she would begin running an empire as soon as she finished her meal.
Chapter 3
Lila sat at her desk, her gaze focused on the silver coat of arms nailed above her couch. When her computer beeped, she logged into WolfNet as her sister, something she’d only ever done to protect the interests of the family. Perhaps curiosity had pushed her into the hack this time, coupled with the implications to her future. Or perhaps she only worried that Senator Dubois’s condition might strike another senator.
A man like Dubois did not go sterile for no reason.
Scrolling through Jewel’s inbox, she found half a dozen messages from several sets of doctors. She pulled Dubois’s medical records from the emails and saved them to an empty star drive, taking care to redact the senator’s name from the information. The records did not seem altered in any way, but Lila couldn’t help but wonder again at Dubois’s predicament. Doctors had only diagnosed a handful of senators with fertility problems since they’d begun testing the interns, and they could trace every case to illness, injury, or age.
As far as she knew, Dubois had not caught any illness, nor fallen to an injury.
Alex brought a kettle of tea. She questioned Lila with every glance, every bow of her head, every raised brow, but Lila was not ready to explain what had occurred in the morning room. The pair had known each other for a long time. Alex knew when to back away.
She left Lila to her thoughts.
Lila was glad for it. After she visit
ed the clinic, rumors would spread. She just needed a chance to get used to the idea before that happened.
Would she really do this? Would she really abandon her career and take up one she had no interest in? Would she really have a child?
Her family needed her, didn’t they? Thousands of Randolphs throughout Saxony waited for her to carry on her mother’s reign.
She wanted to remain part of the family, didn’t she?
Perhaps this was the only way to deserve them, after what she’d done at the warehouse.
Perhaps accepting her mother’s demand would stop the dreams.
Lila put the thought out of her mind. She pulled the star drive from her desktop and thrust it into her coat pocket. Snatching up her teacup and kettle, she padded toward her sister’s chamber next door, her boots muffled by a pastel rug near the entrance. A struggling fire lit the dim room, little more than embers glowing among ash.
Jewel’s room always suffocated her. Her sister had chosen the paintings carefully from her most brilliant works, each one spared the accolades of its neighbor by perfect spacing. She’d imbued most with happy flourishes of blues, greens, and purples. Above the bed, a nude young woman wrapped herself around a bedpost, coyly waiting for her lover. Near the dresser, two young men in short breeches and nothing else grasped one another during a wrestling match, a match for fun rather than competition. Jewel had placed sadness in the corners. A bone-thin cat ran through the crumbling ruins of a castle, hidden by ivy. Above the fire, two demons wrapped around each side of a woman, pressing against her thighs and hips, whispering in her ears.
Lila didn’t know what to make of that one. Jewel had asked her to sit for it the day she turned eighteen and officially abdicated as prime. Lila hadn’t known what the painting would look like until her sister had finished. Though intended as a gift, Lila could not hang it. It unsettled her too much.
She wondered what Jewel would paint now, if she knew all that she’d done.
Perhaps the demons would have her face this time.
Her mother had not escaped her sister’s work, either. Paintings hung in several New Bristol galleries with her face. The only comment she had made upon seeing them was that they did not contain enough red.
But Jewel never painted with the color, no matter the size of the commission.
The rest of the room was lux, elegant, and far more sophisticated than Lila’s would ever be. Whereas Lila had abandoned her room to the care of a minimalist designer, Jewel had sent hers away and designed her room unaided. A canopied bed dominated the back, large enough for a ménage à trois or ménage à ten. Gossamer silk poured down the bedposts like the trailing wisp of a fairy’s hem. Heavy tapestries hung over the windows to keep away the light. The other side of the space held two white love seats and a matching plush chair, forming a faux-parlor. Pale white dressers and tables made of spruce dotted the room. Several pedestals held small marble sculptures, twisted into the shapes of fantastical creatures.
Lila stood at the door awkwardly as though she was unworthy to enter the bedroom. When her gaze flicked to the lumps in bed, lumps that had not stirred at her entrance, she gritted her teeth and pushed inside.
Jewel’s couch scraped against the floor as Lila plopped down.
She poured a cup of tea and sipped impatiently. Jewel did not wake early at the best of times. If she had stayed up all night, perhaps she had decided to take off work for the entire day and sleep in.