CHAPTER 2

“Perhaps the freedom of flying in the boundless sky is but a lonesome fall through nothingness.”

~Emily Patras

THIRTEEN YEARS Earlier

“Where were you?” Isadora called from the foot of the grand staircase, stilling her younger brother’s fleeting steps. She held onto resolute hope to get to the bottom of his recent rebellion.

Shirttail askew, Lucian turned with a penetrating scowl that, had she not been anticipating his defiance, would have taken her a step back. “You’re not my keeper, Isadora.”

Her heart stammered in her chest, his words cutting to the shabby roots running beneath their family tree like corroded veins. Tangled and rotted, an abandoned place since their mother had passed away eight years ago.

Daunting men had always overshadowed the little authority Isadora assumed, and her younger brother’s independence was rapidly dwarfing hers. But she was still his guardian, and as such, it was her sole duty to protect him—even from himself.

“Don’t walk away from me, Lucian.”

“Then say what you have to say so I can go to bed.”

Of all of the Patras children, Lucian was the most intrepid, but despite his innate audacity he was far from invincible. No amount of pain seemed to slow his instinct to rise. He loomed over and around anything that stood in his way, growing taller and faster than all the rest. And the bigger he grew the less he answered to anyone.

His shadow was sometimes a cold and lonely place in which to stand, but Isadora had survived worse and wasn’t about to be bulldozed by an eighteen year old boy. Holding her ground, she inwardly praised herself for maintaining a steady voice as she craned her neck to meet his scowl.

“It’s four in the morning, Lucian.”

“Then I still have a shot at getting some sleep.” Putting an abrupt stop to further scolding, he turned and continued up the stairs at a less skulking pace.

A chill filled the grand foyer as she locked her jaw, authoritative ground slipping out from under her.

“The rule was two o’clock,” she reminded. It was a generous curfew, a bargaining chip she hoped would end the exhausting pissing match they’d entered over his incessant need to push boundaries.

“Your rule,” he growled, disappearing down the long hall.

A nerve pinched close to her heart. Her own father had marched that same path, ignoring her words as her little voice once called to him, a quiet plea for the attention she’d thought she deserved. Lucian was literally following in their dad’s footsteps and the distance between them was growing so vast, she feared it would soon be impossible to bridge.

The tighter she tried to hold onto her younger brother the harder he resisted, but she couldn’t let go. She’d once been his equal, his ordinary sister, despite the five years that separated them. But when she became a legal adult and his caregiver their relationship changed. And now, as he entered adulthood, her role was transforming once again, into something undefined that filled her with an orphaned emptiness.

Her shoulders jerked as his bedroom door slammed. If she didn’t ease off they might never resolve their differences and find the closeness they once shared.

On cue, Antoinette’s door creaked open and Isadora straightened her posture, setting her features into the mask of a composed and secure woman —a façade at total odds with the uncertainty warring inside of her.

Antoinette’s slippered feet shushed over the oriental runner until her sprouting body came into view, eyes bright as an autumn moon with irises of a whiskey hue instead of the typical Patras black. Although Isadora would never know the true color of her sister’s eyes or anyone else’s, she could always tell a pretty set despite being color blind. Her little sister had bright, curious eyes that often shimmered with mischief.

After a rapid growth spurt, Toni was tall enough to be mistaken for a teen, but head-on she still held an honest show of innocence that faded with each passing day. She planted herself at the top of the stairs, delicate fuzz showing on her shins where her nightgown rode to just below her knobby knees. Wild chestnut curls spun in disarray around her pudgy cheeks pressed with sheet prints. She yawned with cub-like magnetism that softened Isa’s mood.

Toni was getting so big, already in double digits, and soon she, too, would be walking away. A sharp ache cinched Isadora’s heart. The problem with raising her siblings was that if she did the job well, they’d grow up to be independent and self-assured, with little need for her.

That was the goal, wasn’t it? She should be happy that both Lucian and Toni possessed the self-assured Patras charm she never quite mastered. The most Isadora could do was enjoy the present and try not to get too consumed with worry for the future.

Tightening the satin tie of her robe, she forced a smile. Switching off the light, she met her sister at the top steps and held out a hand. “Come on. It’s too early to get out of bed.”

“But I’m hungry. What time is it?”

“Not breakfast time.” And her sister was always hungry. The joys of feeding a growing child. “Back to bed.”

“Can I sleep with you?”

Toni talked in her sleep. She also turned like a propeller and kicked. But there was something sacred about being wanted by one sibling when the other wanted nothing to do with her. “Sure.”

Despite Toni’s hunger, she was half-asleep, and lurched down the hall toward a bedroom. Isadora pulled back the duvet and her sister clambered onto the mattress with the grace of a three-legged calf.

“Your bed’s so much comfier than mine,” she groaned into the pillows. As Isadora slid under the covers Toni curled into her side, too young to grasp things like personal space. “Is Lucian in trouble?”