Of Water and Madness Read Online Free PDF Page A

glad to see them both smiling for once.”
    “You mean he wasn’t always so stuffy?” Liam joked, though his father was completely serious.
    “No, he had humor once and he used to smile. Granted, he’s never been good with expressing his emotions, but I wouldn’t call him stuffy. But Serendipity changed him, and her influence over Rhiannon was, in my eyes, very much like a poison.”
    “But none of you intervened to try and stop it?” Liam asked, though he knew in his heart that nothing like that was ever easy.
    “There wasn’t much we could do. With the feud that formed between Rohan and Brock, we Dryads were divided. Clynn and I tried to hold things together for a time, but even we became disillusioned. Rohan made it expressly clear to us that we were not to interfere with his marriage to Serendipity, so we stayed back. I had no idea just how bad it would scar their child.” Lucian downed the rest of his champagne bitterly and let out a heavy sigh.
    Liam reached for a glass himself and sipped, lost in thought. “Well, it’s over now, at least. Rhia and Rohan are both better, and I could care less what happens to that cold, frigid bitch.”
    To his surprise, his father laughed.
    “My sentiments exactly.”
    Liam smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes as he looked over to his mother again, his little sister Cilla sitting with her. How long had his own family been divided by his mother’s insistence to keep a safe, emotional distance from both him and his father? She committed herself to her duty as a Muse, and played the part of wife and mother, but clearly she was nothing but aloof.
    As if she could sense he was thinking about her, she looked up and met his eyes. It was cool, clear green into his rich blue, and he felt his lips curve into a smirk as he raised his glass to her in acknowledgement. She smiled back, bowing her head slightly, before turning back to Serendipity. Beside her, Cilla glanced over to look at Liam as well, only to blush and turn away.
    They had, to his deep regret, never been close. Blythe was much more of a sister to him than his own flesh and blood, and that fact saddened him. But Cilla had never embraced his brotherly advances, had never seemed to want much to do with him, and so he had given up. Though he knew that if she ever asked him for anything, he wouldn’t hesitate to help her. She was his sister, after all, and he enjoyed helping people too much to not want to help her if she needed him. And his mother…well, she was kind, that much he knew. And she was soft spoken, lovely, and coolly distant without appearing cold like Serendipity. But it was still there, this emotional detachment toward everyone and everything. Sure, she could kiss and make it look loving, but he doubted whether there was really much sentiment behind such actions.
    But his father had married her, so he must have seen something there worth taking. He’d never really asked him that question before, why he had married Clarity, but given the current circumstances now was probably not a good time.
    Pushing the thought away, he turned back to his father, who had quietly begun to read again.
    “You know, Jax looks like he could use a real drink…why don’t you go take Blythe off his hands and I’ll take him to our stash of booze in the parlor?” Liam suggested, grinning at the prospect. Maybe it’d be a good idea to snag Rian as well.
    “I guess I could stretch out the old limbs for a bit.” Lucian grunted as he got to his feet, smiling as he patted his son on the back. “You never could dance as well as me, boyo.”
    “That’s okay, I can still kick your ass at checkers.”
    His father laughed as the two of them headed over to where Blythe, Jax, Capri and Rian were all sitting.
    Both Jax and Rian looked more than a little bored, while the girls were chattering away about dresses. Content in his role as liberator, Liam leaned in between the two men, a hand on each of their shoulders while his