Despite the warmth in her welcome, despite her compliments, there was still the unshakable awareness that this was Alexander’s mother. A woman of power, knowledge, legacy. A woman who had likely already formed a thousand opinions about me in the short time she’d been looking my way.
I wished—oh, how I wished—that Alexander would walk back through that door and spare me. At least his presence was familiar, grounding. Without him, I felt like a child left alone in front of a teacher who already knew I hadn’t done my homework.
Was she aware of why we had come? She didn’t look like it. She hadn’t given me that piercing, otherworldly stare that screamed she already knew I was sick, already knew what lived in me or what cursed me. I had almost expected her to take one look at me and launch str
