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“No, we don’t Well, not when my dad was still alive Nobody ever came here”

“And now?”

“Redmond’s more social than Old Bern ever was”

It sounded strange hearing the dead Oligarch’s daughter use his nickname She hopped up onto the side of the bed and let her feet dangle, kicking the on her hands She watchedin that irl It was easy to forget that the people who grew up in these houses were children once, because they were always forced to grow up fast

That was how things were in the Servant et hard or suffer Livvie never learned, and she took her own life Penny struggled with it, and she ended up the property of an Oligarch

I had a hand in that one, admittedly

“Do you miss your father?” I tried to ask as casually as I could, but I was probing and she clearly knew it

But she didn’t seehtest Do you miss yours?”

“Not at all”

“Then we have so in common”

“You’re not mad about what your brother did to your dad?”

She shrugged “I grew up in this family I knohat to expect”

“That’s not an answer”

Her face tightened and her sarch family?”

“I can’t say that I have”

“My family wasn’t any different then We were all miserable, especially Old Bern”

“And now that he’s gone?”

She shrugged and gestured at the ceiling “Some of us are better and some are worse The ones that couldn’t accept what Reded a thumb across her throat

The way she casually spoke of her brother killing people in their household was chilling, but so fae, and I knew all reith death and destruction and power every day, and we couldn’t escape it if we tried

There was no innocence, and there were no innocents, in an Oligarch’s world

“You should be careful with Red up and down on the bed

“Why’s that?” I drifted toward the s and looked out at the archs worked so hard to race—and so few people ever saw them