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Cassian.”
    Severin’s gaze rests on me. I feel myself shrinking inwardly. But I don’t show it. I force myself to hold his stare, pretending he doesn’t make feel weak and shaky inside, that I don’t deserve censure.
    Severin waves Cassian to the door. “Wait for me outside.”
    Cassian sends me a lingering look and then departs.
    Mom moves more fully into the room, her thin arms crossed over her chest. She’s lost weight. I wonder how I could have missed this. She always had curves before.
    Severin looks at her coldly. “I would like to have a word with Jacinda.”
    “Then you’ll have to do it in front of me.”
    Severin’s lip curls up over his bone-white teeth. “You’ve already proven yourself a mother of dubious parenting, Zara. No need to behave as though you care for your daughter now.”
    A stricken look flashes over my mother’s face before she manages to mask it, but the paleness is still there, making her eyes stand out like giant gleaming pools.
    Since Dad was killed, Tamra and I are all she has. Every decision she makes is in our best interest . . . in what she thinks is our best interest. She might have made a few mistakes, but I never doubt her love for me.
    A quick simmer froths to life at my core. “Don’t talk to my mother that way,” I warn.
    Severin looks back at me, down at me, as though I were something soiled at his feet. “Have a care, Jacinda. You are pardoned for your offenses. A fact you can thank Cassian for. I’d just as soon see you punished—” He looks at Mom again. “And you banished.”
    “Don’t do me any favors,” I snap, unable to strike the proper chord of penitence with Severin.
    “Jacinda,” Mom says in a low voice, grasping my arm with cool fingers.
    Severin’s features harden. “Heed me well. You’re on thin ice, Jacinda. I expect perfect behavior from you from now on. . . .” His voice trails, the threat deliberate, implicit. I practically hear him say, Or else we’ll clip your wings .
    I refuse to show that he affects me—that the threat works, sending a bolt of fear through me that makes my skin tighten and the heat shiver beneath my flesh, a writhing serpent seeking release.
    “She won’t be any trouble,” Mom says in a voice I’ve never heard her use. She sounds almost beaten.
    Severin’s mouth curls in a smug smile. “Maybe this time you’ll do a better job of keeping her in line.” With a crisp nod, he leaves, his tread a thudding retreat from our home.
    A home that no longer feels like home. Just a house that is not ours anymore. Not if Severin can march inside and issue commands and threats as if it were his right to do so.
    For the first time I ask myself whether this is what the pride has become—or whether it has always been this way?

Chapter 5
    F or a moment, we stand in silence, and then Mom settles down on my bed with a weariness that stabs at my heart. It’s been too long since she last manifested— years . She’s starting to feel her age.
    She picks up the tattered bear Dad gave me on my seventh birthday from the tangle of sheets and pillows. I’d forgotten it when we left in such haste, and now I’m glad I left it. Glad that something loved and familiar is waiting for me here.
    Mom plucks at one matted ear with a muted sigh. There’s such defeat in the sound. In the sudden slump to her shoulders. Is this it then? Has she given up?
    At last she speaks, and her voice is as hollow and flat as her eyes. “I want you safe, Jacinda. I don’t want you hurt.”
    I nod. “I know.”
    “And right now I’m starting to think I might be the one causing you the most suffering.”
    I shake my head fiercely, not liking this new, defeated version of my mother. She’s someone I don’t know. Don’t want to know. With everything else changing, I need her to remain constant. “No. That’s not true.”
    “I’ve shoved and pushed you every which way whether you liked it or not—all with the goal of protecting you.” She