“Hey, don’t forget about mom’s birth–” Ember glanced up at me, doing a double take. “Woah,” she said, placing her book aside. “What crawled up your butt and died?”

“Excuse me?”

She lifted her hand from the book's leather binding, “You look even crankier than usual,” she explained as if it were nearly impossible to be crankier than usual. Her finger poked between my eyebrows, pressing against the furrowed skin.

The chair's solid wood pressed against my back as I recoiled, crossing my arms across my chest defensively. “I was waiting patiently for you to finish!”

Ember raised an eyebrow, her ponytail slipping behind her shoulder as she reclined back into her chair. “Yes. It was very unlike you.”

“I’m the patient one,” I protested, thinking specifically of her recent decision to raid my house.

Ember scoffed. “If you say so.” She smiled daggers, “Remember that time you mistakenly–”

“That never happened.” If I said it enough times, perhaps that truth would become reality.

“And yet, it did.”

“No, it didn’t.”

“It did.”

“Not.”

“Did.”

“Not.”

“You wouldn’t have answered so quickly if it hadn’t,” she said smugly.

“I would if you brought it up frequently.” She’d brought my response on herself by bringing it up every time the word ‘patience,’ and I was in the same sentence.

The scent of coffee flew into my face as she wafted a hand between us, brushing away the topic. “Anyway, what’s wrong with you today?”

“Nothing,” I said in measured tones.

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah-huh.”

“It’s fine.”

“I totally believe you.” Insincerity radiated from her know-it-all tone. She knew how to get under my skin like no other person.

My blood boiled beneath my skin in a faint echo of last night. “I won, so it’s not a problem!”

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“You? Won?” she leaned forward again, inspecting my face momentarily before shifting back. “Doesn’t look like it,” she said with mock sympathy.

At the sight of her sitting there with her legs and arms crossed smugly and a haughty expression on her face, I felt any remaining self-restraint snap completely. A searing pain shot through my hand as I exploded, smacking a psalm against the hardwood of the table and glaring up at her. “Ember, I told you it was fine!”

The table rattled against the windowsill, echoing in the dead silence that followed my explosion. My goal of wiping that smug look off Ember’s face was met, but at the cost of the expression that replaced it. Her face went white, her hands dropping into her lap as she ducked her head down submissively.

It was the very gesture I often used against our father when he was in one of his moods. All the fight drained from my limbs. A gaping, aching emptiness took its place.

Summoned by the commotion, the witch Ava poked her head out from the kitchen. “Hayden? Ember? Everything alright out there?”

My hand flew away, landing hard enough to bruise in my lap. “We’re fine.”

I was just tired. I wasn’t my father. I wasn’t.

Ava slipped from her dusty apron, her black heels clicking rapidly against the floor. She paused at the side of our table, and I picked out the missed splotches of flower and dust that dotted her leafy orange skirt as I waited for her to say something.

“Your arguments don’t usually end with Hayden nearly breaking the table in half,” she said, her voice bordering on scolding.

Ashamed, I curled my fingers in my lap.

Both women looked at me expectantly. Haltingly, I explained the situation with Cove as vaguely as possible, leaving out any mention of magic or any direct reference to his relation to Ava. Still, I couldn’t help but observe Ava’s expressions as I spoke, analyzing each one carefully for the slightest hint that she remembered more than it seemed.

Either she was a good actor or hadn’t regained her memories.

Ember sighed as I wrapped up the summary of Cove and I’s argument. “You’re such a hypocrite,” she said with a groan.

“I don’t let my fear of becoming like our father run my life,” I pointed out, thinking of how Cove’s rash thinking had gotten us all captured and nearly killed.

Ember’s scornful expression showed just what she thought of that statement. “Right. And you only drink wine because you prefer the taste of wine and not because it’s the one alcohol dad doesn’t drink.”

“I drink other types of alcohol.” It wasn’t a total lie, but only to myself would I admit I avoided them when possible. The scent of whisky, in particular, stirred up memories I preferred not to remember.

“You’re frustrated because you feel guilty,” Ava interjected, her voice deceptively soothing. “You know what you did was wrong.” She gave me an encouraging smile. “All you have to do is apologize.”

Her ‘help’ in this situation was rich, considering she was the entire problem in the first place.

Ember folded with the corner of her book, running her fingers across the pages. “Take it from me; you can be a bit of a jerk. Imagine how he probably feels right now.”

She said it as though she weren’t just as bad, if not worse.

The major problem with her suggestion was I didn’t have to imagine anything–I saw the damage my words had done with my own two eyes, and it had made my victory hollow and worthless. Neither of them had done anything to help with the dark cloud hanging above me. If anything, their comments and ‘suggestions’ made me feel worse, and I didn’t know if I could take another ‘helpful’ suggestion.

“I’ll figure it out,” I said dismissively. And that, as they say, was that.