18. Chapter 18
Chapter eighteen
Lux didn’t want to go home. Riselda’s inevitable presence later that night or the following morning only solidified her decision. She didn’t tell Shaw this plan, however.
They didn’t speak much on the carriage ride to his apartment, each occupied by their own worries, own theories, and own schemes. But when the door opened, when he descended the step, when he turned his gaze back to her, she watched the shadows in his eyes fade beneath the moonlight. She never thought she would see him without them, and yet the emotion staring back at her puzzled her, for his clearly whirled with confusion.
“Will you be all right?”
She laughed mildly, shaking her head. “I don’t have a choice.” When the conflicting emotions in his eyes only deepened, she continued, “Thank you for your help tonight.”
He sighed. “I only wish we’d had more time.” She nodded her agreement. “And I truly am sorry. For the kiss.”
Shoulders stiffening, she retreated against the cushioned seat. “It was nothing. No need to apologize.”
He mimicked her earlier laugh. “Right. Well, goodnight.”
“Goodnight.”
The door clicked closed, and she sagged into the seat. It was so far from nothing, she couldn’t believe the lie had managed to leave her lips without wounding her. Her eyes fluttered closed, her breaths returning to normal. The carriage jerked forward. She couldn’t recall the last time she felt even a semblance of what Shaw sent bounding through her as his lips touched hers. Lux twitched, her brow furrowing.
She couldn’t recall. She couldn’t remember.
Because she had forced herself to forget.
The boards nailed to the windows protruded at odd angles, faded and warped. The ones covering the door were much the same, aside from the jagged bits—a reminder that more than one unwelcome visitor had forced their entry. Lux’s blood chilled, her heart skipping and irregular, spots dancing in her vision.
She needed to unlock her knees. She needed to step forward.
But her body wouldn’t obey.
Her breath puffed cool clouds into the surrounding air, her skin prickling with cold, and yet she still stared at the scratched and faded door.
Her door. Her parents’ door. Go in.
Go in. Go in. Go in.
She hadn’t. Not since that night. Not since she’d found them lying in warm, wet pools of blood, their hands entwined as tightly in death as their hearts had been in life. How she had loved them. How she missed them still.
Tears pricked at her eyes only to be whisked away by the wind. And finally, finally , her knees released. Lux stepped forward, arm outstretched, panic rising in her chest and threatening to carve out her consciousness entirely. She forced it back.
The doorknob was cold; it burned her palm. She turned it quickly before she could think better of it, and with a push, the door creaked inward. More darkness.
She really should have chosen to do this in the daylight.
Ducking beneath the lone intact board running slanted across the top of the frame, Lux stepped into her home—and into her memories.
The door had been unmarked that night; closed without sign of forced entry. She had opened it softly. She had been so tired. The other children knew of her bizarre fascination with death. As a child, herself, she hadn’t thought to keep it secret. She was thrilled over her newly discovered brilliance, having only been realized the day of her aunt’s sudden disappearance. When she’d first touched The Risen .
Her parents were so proud of her. Why couldn’t anyone else be? Why did people suddenly shy away from her? Whisper behind age-lined hands?
Such thoughts had occupied her mind, until nothing occupied it at all.
The world had muted and faded behind that door. No sounds, no smells, no colors. Save for the sound of shrieking cries, the smell of tangy iron, and the color of deepest red.
The first of her footfalls sent dust swirling about her ankles, and the memory faded.
There were no stairs in this house. Lux stepped through the shadows of the entryway, shoving the walls away from her on either side. They ceased their collapse around her mind and straightened, replacing their looming presence instead with her father’s laugh and her mother’s touch. She choked.
She knew if she were to keep going, if she were to turn the corner, the glimpse of the now-bare kitchen would give way to a rectangular room. One that once held a sofa just large enough for the three of them. One that held their bodies in death.
“First the forest. Now this house.” Lux rubbed clammy hands over her face, pushing hair from her eyes. “I must be some sort of masochist.”
The darkest part of her soul whispered, sickly sweet: You deserve it.
Hands shaking, she tried to shove them into the nonexistent pockets of her skirt. She frowned, wrapping them around her middle instead. Moonlight shone through the few cracks of the window ahead, highlighting her path in derisive, pale shimmers, and Lux had little choice but to obey it. She refused to let herself run away now.
The kitchen met her first, the cupboards open and hanging at odd angles, displaying bare shelves. The table and chairs must have been stolen long ago, as dust coated the floor without any sign of disturbance. Lux’s lips parted against the pulling sensation flooding her body, digging into her feet, turning her.
That room.
That sofa.
Her body, her mind—they were no longer under her control. She tipped forward, staggering before it. Why must it still be here? Why must she still be? Surely, she should have been taken along with them.
Lux fell to her knees.
The walls, the floors, they had long been washed clean, but the dried stains, splashed across the fabric, glittered with a silver sheen in the darkness. A cruel trick of the moon itself, never wishing to spare her from a moment’s truth.
Her mother’s voice rose from memories. Forgotten words uttered softly into her ear every night. The days spun faster and faster, her mother aging before her eyes over the short eight years she was at her side. Lux braced her hands on the fabric, and that became her undoing. Her fingers dug deep, scrabbling for air. For warmth. For light.
Shine bright, Lucena.
The sobs wracking her body, the cries echoing around her, didn’t sound like her own. The tears streaming down her cheeks felt foreign. They burned like acid. An old window cracked against the cold, and then shattered entirely.
The frigid, night air whipped in, triumphant, clawing at her skin. The clouds descended. They blocked even the moonlight from her now, but she could still feel it, watchful behind the veil.
“I’m so cold. ” She could see it: her soul, blackened and shriveled, a pit from spoiled fruit. Lux collapsed, her fingers slipping. What a horrible thing: to discover yourself rotted. “I should have known better. I should have been better.”
Panic. It returned with renewed ferocity. It knew it would win this time, and it shrieked with a terrible pleasure. Lux couldn’t breathe any longer, her cries choking her, her tears drowning her.
“ I. Can’t. Remember. ”
And when it seized her consciousness with a clawed, shadowed grip, her lashes fluttered closed in aching relief.