15. Mourning Rooms
Mourning Rooms
Gabriel
G abriel’s calves burned from the climb up the external stairs to the apartment above Paystone’s Simples and Remedies—a parting gift from the stairs at Halebourne Hall combined with the sheer exhaustion of a day that had included two bloody battles, a bureaucratic heist, and a trek across the entire sprawl of Averdon and back again.
He was running on fumes and the manic, brittle high of survival. Paray Vellast was dead. The tax debt was paid. They had won the day.
If Bria didn’t end it by killing them.
Miles knocked on the green-painted door.
The door flew open before Miles could lower his hand.
Bria Swannover stood there, illuminated by the warm glow of the kitchen behind her.
She looked like she’d been falling apart for hours.
Her blonde curls had degraded into a frizzy halo.
Her face was blotchy, her apron twisted in white-knuckled hands.
Her eyes went immediately to Genna, supported between them, favoring her bruised ribs and looking like she’d gone ten rounds.
“Oh, Genna,” Bria breathed, the terror in her face cracking open. She reached out, pulling Genna from their grip. “You’re here. You’re—Genna, you look like hell.”
“I’m fine, love,” Genna said, though she winced as Bria tucked herself under her good arm. “Just a bit battered. A long night.”
“A bit?” Bria’s relief curdled instantly into fury. She turned her glare on Gabriel and Miles as she steered her wife toward the kitchen table. “Get in here. Do not think you’re leaving.”
Gabriel exchanged a look with Miles. Miles looked like a kicked puppy who had also just committed a homicide. Gabriel just shrugged. He’d faced down a Lord of the Realm tonight; he could handle a baker. Probably.
The kitchen was wonderfully cozy, smelling of yeast, herbs, and beeswax candles. Bria lowered Genna into a kitchen chair, then swung around, her finger leveled at Miles’s chest.
“You,” she hissed, her voice trembling, “you said you were in Averdon for paperwork.”
“It started as paperwork,” Miles said, his voice hoarse. He sank onto a stool near the counter. “The situation... evolved.”
“Evolved into my wife coming home covered in bruises?” Bria slammed a kettle onto the stove. “Sit down, Gabriel, before you fall down.”
Gabriel leaned against the counter instead, crossing his arms to hold himself together. “She was quite heroic, you know.”
“I don’t care about heroic,” Bria snapped, grabbing a heavy ceramic crock from a high shelf. “I care about alive.”
“Potentilla and Hymros bark, Bri,” Genna said from the table, her head resting in her hands. “The blue jar. And a pinch of dried Veilflower. I know it’s dear, but I need it tonight.”
Bria’s hands shook only slightly as she measured out the herbs. The comfort of the ritual seemed to help, though her glare could have peeled the paint off the cabinets.
“So,” Gabriel whispered, trying to diffuse the tension with the only tool he had left: irreverence. He nudged Miles’s back with his knee. “About those cinnamon rolls you promised me as part of the ‘return to Averdon’ success package.”
Miles closed his eyes, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Gabriel, please.” He looked up at Bria, his expression open and pained. “Bria, I am sorry. Truly. None of this—the assassins, the kidnapping, the...” He trailed off, wisely omitting the murder. “None of it was the plan.”
“That’s the point, isn’t it?” Bria poured boiling water over the herbs, the steam rising with a sharp, earthy scent. “It doesn’t matter if it’s Gabriel’s chaos or your plans, Miles. Somehow, it always ends with Genna bleeding.”
The silence that followed was heavy, broken only by the clink of a spoon against earthenware.
It stung because it was true. This was hardly the first time Genna had gotten into a fight on their behalf.
Although to be fair, the first time she had volunteered.
The buzz of victory dimmed, replaced by the sour aftertaste of liability.
Bria carried the mug to the table. Genna wrapped her hands around it, closing her eyes.
She whispered a word—something guttural and old—and the steam shifted color, turning a faint, glowing violet before settling back to white.
She took a sip and let out a long, shuddering sigh as the magic took hold, knitting warmth into the shock in her system.
“It’s not their fault.” Genna set the mug down. Her voice was stronger now, the edge of pain dulling.
“They dragged you into—” Bria started.
“I insisted,” Genna cut in, her blue eyes sharp. “I’m not a parcel they hurried along, Bri. I kept going back because I needed to know what was happening in that house. We talked about this.”
“Maybe you should step back, Gen,” Miles leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Bria’s right. We almost got you killed tonight. If Vellast hadn’t kept you as leverage...” He swallowed hard. “We can manage the rest without you. You don’t need to be in the line of fire.”
Genna laughed, a dry, humorless sound. “Will you? Deal with a moody, sapient house created by a vampire?” She took another sip of the tea, color returning to her cheeks.
“Hardly the purview of you or your Guild. I’m not a delicate flower, Miles.
And I’ve already invested too much skin in this game to walk away now. ”
“Genna—” Bria warned, her hand resting on her wife’s shoulder.
“No,” Genna said firmly. She looked from Miles to Gabriel, her gaze steely. “That attic. I need to see it. I need to see what that old monster did.”
Gabriel expected Bria to argue, to forbid it, to throw them out and bar the door.
Instead, at the mention of the vampire and the attic, Bria went still. Her hand tightened on Genna’s shoulder, her knuckles turning white. A look passed between the two women, a silent, heavy communication that held fifteen years of secrets Gabriel wasn’t privy to.
Bria’s shoulders slumped. “If you must,” she said, the fight draining out of her.
“I must,” Genna said. “Tomorrow. We make the house let us into the attics. I’m going to be there, and no more putting it off.”
Miles nodded, and Bria turned away to wipe her hands on her apron, hiding her face. “Right. Well. Tomorrow is tomorrow. But tonight, you two are leaving. She needs sleep, and frankly, I need to not look at your faces for at least ten hours. ”
Gabriel peeled himself off the counter. “Understood. We’ll be scarce.”
“Go,” Bria said, though she pressed a wrapped bundle of something—bread, maybe, leftovers from the day—into Miles’s chest as he stood. “Eat something. Nothing will be open.”
Miles looked at the bundle, then at Bria, before he tucked it inside his coat. “Thank you, Bria.”
“Out,” she ordered, but there was no venom left in it. Just exhaustion.
They slumped their way down the stairs, exhaustion pulling at them. But somewhere out there, the Order was still at work.
The street outside the apothecary was quiet, the cobblestones slick with the damp, cloying mist that rolled off the Aver every night. Gabriel’s body was humming, utterly incapable of stillness despite the lead weights dragging at his eyelids.
They should go back to the Mourning Lark. They should collapse into bed and sleep for a week. But his brain kept replaying the crunch of Paray Vellast’s skull against the desk, a sound more satisfying than any symphony.
“I can’t sleep.” Gabriel’s boots clicked a restless rhythm toward the river. “I need to know if Viz’s people got the rest of the network.”
Miles fell into step beside him, his stride heavy. “Viz said he’d send word.”
“I want it firsthand. And I won’t be able to sleep until we know, anyway.”
They wound their way down to the water’s edge, past the looming shadow of the Mourner’s Arch. Gardmore’s Restorative Services stood dark and silent, a gray stone mausoleum rising from the canal murk. No light spilled from the windows.
“No one’s back.” Miles tested the door. “And it’s locked. Let’s go, Gabriel. We can come back in the morning.”
Gabriel slid the picks from his boot before Miles could open his mouth to protest and knelt before the door.
“This is a place of business, Gabriel,” Miles sighed, though he leaned against the doorframe, shielding Gabriel’s hands from the street. “And Viz is my superior in the Order. Breaking and entering is poor form.”
“Technically, I’m inspecting the security,” Gabriel muttered, feeling the tumblers click through the tension wrench. One, two, binding on three... “If he didn’t want us inside, he should have invested in better locks. Gotcha.”
He pushed the door open and grinned up at Miles. “After you, darling. ”
Miles sighed, but he stepped over the threshold.
Inside, the air was thick with lavender, cedar, and the sharp, chemical bite of astringents. It was quiet. Gabriel steered them into one of the viewing parlors, a small, windowless alcove draped in suffocatingly heavy violet velvet. A fainting couch sat along one wall, designed for weeping widows.
Gabriel dragged Miles down with him onto the plush velvet. It smelled of Viz’s lavender oil and the distinct, cloying dust of old upholstery.
Beside him, Miles stared at his own hands as if he expected blood to manifest beneath his fingernails.
“Stop it,” Gabriel murmured, knocking his knee against Miles’s thigh.
Miles flinched. “Stop what?”
“I can hear the filing cabinets in your brain slamming shut. Murderer. Loose cannon.” Gabriel leaned in, voice low. “Don’t file this under ‘Moral Failure,’ Miles. It won’t fit.”
Miles’s hands curled into tight, trembling fists. “He was helpless. I didn’t do it for the mission, Gabriel. I did it because I was angry.” He didn’t look up, his voice cracking on the edges. “I wanted to break him. I wanted to turn him into paste for what he said to you.”
He finally lifted his head. He looked wrecked. Young. “I didn’t cast a spell. I just… snapped. What if I can’t stop next time?”