Mythos (The Descendants, #1)
Page 5
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As she looked at Osiris from the side, Itzy found she could still see the old arrogance she remembered in him. It was woven into the straightness of his back, the lifted chin, the way he stared directly at the coffin when everyone else was trying desperately to look absolutely anywhere else. From afar, at least, everything about him was severity and coolness.
Or was it shock?
‘Is that him?’ asked Devon. They sat in a pew second from the front, on the other side of the church. Devon had taken the aisle seat, to shield her friend from the stares she was getting from some of the other guests, as though she were some b-list celebrity they were considering taking tasteless photos of and sending in to a cheap tabloid.
‘Yes,’ Itzy answered her friend.
Devon wrinkled her nose. ‘What got stuck up his -’
‘Friends,’ a priest said, now standing before them at a podium and breaking off the Mozart composition that had been playing - a favourite of Stephen Loveguard’s. ‘Family. Let us begin.’
Itzy tried to concentrate on the priest’s words, but again they floated in her vision and refused to assemble themselves into sentences that made sense. She caught fragments, and they made her dizzy to hear them.
‘Above all else, he was a family man.’
In fact, Itzy added in her head, he liked family so much, he had two.
‘He had deep belief.’
That he could get away with whatever he wanted.
‘But he was a troubled soul.’
Aren’t we all?
It occurred to her that it was amazing Stephen was having a church funeral at all, bearing in mind he’d taken his own life. Maybe no one had told the priest.
Finally, after what felt like an interminable length of time, Devon squeezed her hand, letting her know the first part of the service was over.