Chapter 40: Last Hurrah

One wouldn’t expect, with the sort of stoicism Aster’s mother usually displayed, that she would throw a great party.

Going by looks alone, Aster was sure the unknowing eye would expect her parties to be dull and stuffy, full of dull and stuffy people eating bland and boring food, talking about dull, stuffy and bland and boring topics while minstrels played as softly as they could. And if he’d not known his mother any better, he would fully believe that too.

But he’d grown up here. And he knew better than that.

Over the years, his mother’s house had seen some of the wildest parties in the Southerlands. Well—he hadn’t been to many parties outside his own house, but he had to imagine they were contenders, at the very least. Despite his decade-long battle with the depression his grief left him in, any party at the Silvercrest Manor was a bright spot in the darkest decade in Aster’s life.