Page 59 of Bitter Burn
Anguish pats my shoulder. “I promise not to hold your little crush on Maxen Colchester against you forever.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
A thoughtful pause. “But you’re not the only one who likes a green-eyed hero. Isabella Beroul seems quite taken with Tristan, doesn’t she?”
“You’ve heard what happened at Armorica, I’m guessing. I think a little hero worship is probably inevitable. I’m sure he was gallant and kind from the moment he arrived in Montreal, and then he went and saved her life. All while having the nerve to look like an illustration from a book of fairy tales. It’s very unfair of him.”
“Isolde has noticed Isabella.”
I snort and take a drink. “Yes, I’d say so.”
“So you are jealous of Tristan and Isolde. Isolde is jealous of Isabella. Isabella is probably jealous of you and Isolde, and Tristan is presumably too preoccupied with grief to realize he’s snared in a web crawling with three different spiders. But at any rate, it might be useful.”
“Ah. Isabella’s feelings, you mean.” I consider this. “It would be messy to put her infatuation on display.”
“If Isabella and Tristan are going to be at the club, it might be on display anyway. Why not at least use it to your advantage?”
And with that, she lifts her wineglass and leaves. My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I answer it while staring at the messy love triangle unfolding in my sister’s living room. A love triangle that is absolutely pointless because two of those triangle points belong to me.
“Trevena,” I answer.
“I’ve got a location for Cara Sims,” replies Lox. “I’m texting you the link to my report now. As for this Regina Springer, I can’t find anything that points to a connection with Cashel or any other cardinal. She’s unmarried, no kids, owns a mechanic’s shop in Albany. She’s sick—lung cancer—but they’ve been able to keep it at bay for five or six years. The only potential wrinkle I can see is that her sister ran away from home when they were teenagers, and it was long enough ago that I can’t find anything else about her. The sister probably landed somewhere and started over with a new name. The seventies were a simpler time.”
“Indeed,” I say. “So no connection with the Vatican? Or anyone higher up in the Church?”
“Nothing that I can see. Regina seems to be wholly uninterested in any organized religion at all and spends every Sunday in her shop. I couldn’t even find baptismal records for her or for anyone in her family.”
I scratch at my forehead with the thumb of the hand holding my drink. “Okay. Any progress with the Revelata Scientia images I sent over?”
“Since I don’t know what I’m looking for, I don’t know how you’d define ‘progress,’ but we found a handful of scanned versions online, so that should help us get to a workable translation at least. You’ve brought me weird shit before, but this is the first time I’ve ever felt like you’ve brought me homework.”
“Thanks, Lox.”
“I could say anytime, but I wouldn’t mean it. Bye now.”
She hangs up, and I lower my phone to tap on the link she sent over.
A moment later, I’m calling Goran at the club. “Are you busy? What about Nat? I have a small job for you two…”
Twenty-Three
Tristan
The night after my father’s funeral, Kayden and I set Isabella’s suitcases down in her and Hugo’s room at Lyonesse and close the door. I point the way forward for Kayden, who’s never been back to the residential section of the club, and steer us to the elevator at the end of the corridor.
It’s disorienting to be back, and this time with my world tilted on its axis. We walk past my apartment door, and I remember moving in last spring, dreading the interrogative calls from my father. I’d dreaded them right up until the moment he died, dreaded them enough that I’d dodged them until I moved into Armorica, and even then we’d still only talked twice.
I can recognize that something is missing from my grief—or maybe too many things are added onto it—so it’s a grief that’s too unwieldy and too light at the same time. It’s a badly balanced stack of cardboard boxes, and it feels like even if they tumbled and fell, nothing serious would be broken.
And yet I almost wish something would be broken, because it’s wrong how not-wrong I feel right now.
How do you grieve someone who made your life harder? Who barely knew you? Who put his duty above fatherhood and offloaded fatherhood the minute he could to the faculty at West Point? How do you carry your actual grief at the same time you carry your grief for the person they could have been?
“So,” Kayden starts with the casual ease I’ve grown used to from him. “Isolde Trevena. She’s….” He shakes his head. “If I’d ever wondered who could make Mark Trevena settle down, she answers my question.”
I don’t answer. My affair with Isolde is common knowledge, and while I know Kayden’s not fishing for a reaction, I’m not sure what I could say right now that wouldn’t betray more than I’d like.
“I know the two of you had a thing that caused some drama,” Kayden goes on, again with a sort of oblivious warmth that smooths over any potential awkwardness. “But do you know if she ever plays with anyone other than Mark?”
