His Stepsister His Secret

POV: Esther "Two bags," the driver said, glancing at the trunk like he expected more. "That's everything?" "That's everything," I said. Mom touched my arm before I could climb out of the car. "Esther. Breathe." "I'm breathing." "You're doing the thing with your jaw." I made myself stop clenching it and stepped out onto gravel so clean it looked raked by hand. The Voss estate sat at the end of the driveway like something built to be photographed, not lived in. Stone the color of old bone. Windows tall enough to swallow a person whole. I counted them without meaning to. Front entrance, side door near the garage, a low wall on the east end that a person could vault if they had to. Mom saw me doing it. I watched her face fall for half a second before she smoothed it over. "You don't have to do that here," she said quietly. "Do what?" "You know what." I didn't answer, because we both knew that if I said count exits, it would turn into a conversation neither of us wanted to have on a gravel driveway in front of strangers. A woman in a gray uniform opened the front door before we reached it. She didn't smile. "Mrs. Voss is expecting you in the east parlor," she said, already turning, already walking, like the walking itself was the point and we were just supposed to keep up. The inside of the house smelled like lemon polish and money. Everything gleamed. A staircase curved up into shadow, wide enough for four people to walk shoulder to shoulder. A man in a suit passed us in the hallway and looked straight through me, the way people look through a lamp or a side table, something that belongs to the room but isn't part of it. "Friendly place," I muttered. "Esther." "What? I'm being polite. I said it quietly." Mom's mouth twitched, almost a smile, gone fast. That was the most real thing that had happened since we got out of the car. Dinner was worse. The dining room had a table long enough to seat fourteen, and somehow it still felt crowded with six of us in it. David sat at the head, warm in that practiced, camera-ready way stepfathers in movies were warm. He asked me about school. I gave him three sentences. He nodded like three sentences was a generous gift. "And this is my son," he said, gesturing to the far end of the table. "Archer." I looked up. He wasn't looking at me. He wasn't looking at anyone. He had a way of sitting that made the chair look like it belonged to him and everyone else was borrowing space in his room. Golden hair, cut sharp. A jaw that didn't move much when he talked, like talking cost him something. He wore boredom the way other people wore a coat, deliberate, buttoned all the way up. "Archer," David said again, a little edge under the warmth now. "Say hello." Archer's eyes came up. Found mine. Held for exactly one second longer than a stranger's eyes should hold anything. "Hi," he said. That was it. One word. Then he went back to his plate like I'd already stopped existing. I felt my face heat, which annoyed me, because I didn't care what some rich stranger thought of me. I told myself that twice before I believed it even a little. "He's not usually like this," David said, apologetic, the way people apologize for weather. "Long week." "It's fine," I said, because it was easier than the truth, which was that I preferred it. Invisible was safe. Invisible was the whole plan. The rest of dinner blurred into small talk I didn't have to participate in much. Mom laughed at something David said, a real laugh, and I held onto the sound of it like proof this had been worth it. She hadn't laughed like that in years. By the time I got up to my new room, my head was pounding and my throat was dry as paper. I didn't want to ring for staff, didn't want anyone doing anything for me, so I went looking for water myself. The hallway outside my room split two ways, and I picked wrong. Marble under my bare feet, cold enough to sting. Portraits lined the walls, stern faces in old frames, none of them looking at me kindly. I turned a corner expecting a kitchen and found a dead end instead, a narrow servant's stair curling down into dark. "Lost?" I spun so fast I nearly lost my footing. Archer stood a few feet away, no jacket now, sleeves pushed up, like whatever performance he'd worn at dinner had been peeled off somewhere between the dining room and here. Up close he was taller than I'd clocked. Up close his eyes weren't bored at all. "Looking for water," I said. "Guess I took a wrong turn." "Kitchen's the other way." "Great. Thanks." I moved to pass him. He didn't move to let me. "You should go back to your room," he said. Quiet. Almost gentle, if gentle could sound like a warning. "I will. After I find water." "Esther." My name in his mouth stopped me cold. I hadn't told him my name at dinner. Nobody had, not directly, not while he was listening, or so I'd thought. "How do you—" He reached out before I finished the sentence, and wrapped his fingers loosely around my wrist. Not hard. Not rough. His thumb found the inside of my wrist and pressed there, right over the pulse, like he needed to check that something was true and couldn't trust his own eyes to tell him. His breathing changed. Shallow, then ragged, like he was fighting something down and losing. "What are you doing," I whispered, and I didn't pull away, though some old, careful part of me screamed that I should. He wasn't looking at my face anymore. He was looking at where his fingers touched my skin like it had betrayed him. Whatever was in his eyes wasn't hunger. I'd braced for hunger, for the kind of look men gave when they wanted something from you and didn't care what it cost you to give it. This was different. This looked like dread. Like grief before anything had even been lost. He leaned in, close enough that his breath stirred the hair by my ear, and when he spoke, the word came out broken, like it had been dragged up from somewhere he'd spent years trying to bury it. "Mate." Then his eyes met mine, one last time, the way you'd look at a wound you just realized your own hands had made. And before I could ask him what that word meant, before I could even fully understand what had just happened between us in that dark hallway, he let go of my wrist and disappeared around the corner, leaving me standing there alone, heart hammering, with no answers at all.