Finnian's words, a delicate cocktail of insolence and truth, hung in the air between them. Lonely. Like so many of the ladies in this house. It was a dart, expertly aimed, and it struck a nerve deep within the tangled, rotten web of his family's secrets.
Caelan looked at the boy—the beautiful, morally gray, resentful creature his sister had created and he had caged—and saw not a pet, but a player. Finnian was not merely a source of blood; he was a repository of whispers, a confidant in a house where loneliness was a currency and secrets were a weapon.
Caelan's first instinct was to compel the truth from him, to rip the knowledge of Celestria's visit from the boy's mind with the brute force of his will. But he restrained himself. That was a tool of the unsubtle, a butcher's blade. And besides, he realized with a flicker of grim appreciation, this particular secret might prove useful later. A piece to be kept in reserve.
