Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Entranced, holding the map over a candle flame, I watched it burn, sending a greyish spiral of smoke toward the open window.
If this was ever found it would end me.
I wondered if I’d recognize Alicia. I felt ready to forgive her, though for what I wasn’t sure. She’d never come looking for me. Never come to take me home.
Miguel had expected me in the barn hours ago.
I crept downstairs into the basement, avoiding that terrible cell, the dark dwelling where I’d been held captive.
I continued into the fully stocked wine cellar.
Using my teeth, I uncorked one of the better vintages.
The first fruity gulps delighted my tastebuds, and the cold liquid quenched the thirst I didn’t know I had, and then it came…
that exquisite flush, that rush of warmth.
I didn’t finish it but shoved the half-empty bottle into the corner where the others had been stacked. Strolling back along the corridor, I considered peering into the cell. I didn’t do it, though.
Feeling giddy from the liquor, with one foot on the stairs leading up to my room, I paused and then turned to look at Roelle’s office door.
Inside, I settled in comfortably behind his writing desk and rummaged through his papers.
Within moments, I’d located his will, embossed with the Bastillion family crest. I found a perfect match to the paper that his legal document had been scribed on.
With Roelle’s feathered fountain pen dipped in fresh ink, I wrote in his handwriting.
Within an hour, the Bastillion legacy had become my own, the house and all its contents bequeathed to me. I admired my handiwork.
Felipe had witnessed the original will. His signature took longer. I pressed the official Bastillion stamp into the thick red, liquefied wax and sealed the document. I destroyed the original.
This boy had truly proven himself to be Roelle’s protégé. I placed the dispatch, addressed to Roelle’s legal counsel, in the master’s mail tray and headed back up the stairs, taking two at a time. When I reached the landing, my pulse began racing so fast, I feared my voice would fail me.
Roelle had returned earlier than expected. A slender woman stood facing him. Straight raven locks fell down her back.
Alicia?
“Still up?” Roelle eyed me suspiciously. “You don’t sleep here, remember.”
The woman turned and fixed her turquoise gaze on me. Her jaw-dropping beauty was dazzling, just as I remembered her. Vague memories seeped in, rising slowly from their fading edges.
Roelle glared. “Are you just going to gawp or are you going to say hello to your sister?”
He’d never met Alicia, so he’d have no idea that this woman, the one from the mausoleum, wasn’t her. More surprising still, despite my maturing, her appearance hadn’t changed at all.
“You’ll have to forgive your brother,” Roelle said. “He’s not one for words.”
Her bracelets jangled.
A long white tomb inside a deserted mausoleum.
As though reading my mind, she offered me a smile.
Roelle guided her away, down the corridor, and although I knew I should quietly amble off in the opposite direction so as not to arouse suspicion, I found myself staring at her, captivated by her womanly form swaying as she strolled beside him, her fine, black linen gown trailing behind her.
Roelle shooed me away and they turned the corner.
This woman had prevented Aaron from bludgeoning me, she’d warned me not to return home. Trying to work out the reason for her being here, and what she’d told Roelle, I pressed my ear against the door.
Miguel appeared at the end of the hallway. “There you are,” he said.
I pretended to be straightening a nearby mirror.
With squeaky shoes, he approached. “I know it takes some getting used to.”
“What?”
“Sleeping in the stables.”
“I’m just finishing off some errands.”
Miguel raised an eyebrow. “I can see that.” He gestured to Roelle’s door. “Your sister?”
I stayed quiet, and he wrapped his arm around my shoulder. “Come on. Life isn’t meant to be easy.” He thought it hurt me to see my sister with Roelle. Maybe it would have, if it were really her.
I let him take me out of the house and we walked toward the stables. When we got close, I kept going, walking the rest of the way alone.
It wasn’t only the noisy animals that made it impossible to sleep.
My life teetered on the edge of change, and I was eager to see it through.
I obsessed over the mysterious woman, Alicia’s imposter, the last person to see Aaron.
This woman had willingly entered the Bastillion residence, fully aware that I could give her identity away.
I’d looked forward to seeing Alicia, but now I felt relief that it wasn’t her who now lay in his bed.
Though the thought of Sunaria and Roelle together evoked jealousy.
During the years I had grown, her phantom memory was the one thing that made the silence bearable. My plan to leave, with its real promise of freedom, was rekindled.
I bit down on my hand when I remembered that I’d burnt the map – and buried my teeth even further into my skin when I recalled forging Roelle’s will.
It would still be in the mail tray.
Find it and destroy it.
There were small dent marks where I’d bitten into my hand. Mouth dry, I climbed off my straw-stuffed bed and dashed for the exit, still taken by stall upon stall of horses and their ability to sleep on their feet.
I stopped in my tracks.
Miguel sat by the entrance with an open book resting on his lap, the upside-down title unreadable. He looked up as though he’d been expecting me and said, “Can’t sleep either, uh?”
I stared at the house. “I just have to—”
“You read and write, I hear?”
I nodded, half-distracted.
“I’d like you to teach me,” he said.
“Now?”
Miguel stared at me for a long time. “Who is that woman with Roelle?”
My gaze fell away from his all-seeing eyes and lingered on his book.
“She’s not from around here, is she?” His lined face softened, and he raised his grey, bushy eyebrows. “You chose not to tell Roelle that she’s not your sister?”
“I wasn’t sure—”
“How he’d react?”
“Perhaps I should check on her?”
Miguel tut-tutted his disapproval.
“What are you reading?” I asked, my stomach twisting.
“I have no idea. I don’t read, remember?”
Miguel closed the book and then turned and gazed up at Roelle’s window. “Now that we know it’s not Alicia, we can sleep.” He winked. “Get some rest. Tomorrow will be a long day.”
“Here, it’s always a long day.”
“Life is fluid. It changes. That’s one of life’s guarantees.”
“In my experience, there are no guarantees.”
Miguel sighed. “So young to be so jaded.”
“What they say about me, about what happened to my brother, it’s not true.”
“I know.”
“How do you know?”
“The animals trust you, which means you trust yourself.”
“How do you know that?”
“I don’t know what happened that night, but I do know that Roelle carries with him a tremendous guilt. I see it in his eyes when he looks at you. He treats you as a son and yet punishes you for things you do not do. He’s punishing himself.”
I stared down at my worn shoes.
“I may not read words,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean I can’t read people.”
My gaze met his. “You wanted me out of the house? You advised Roelle to have me come out here?”
“I choose to sleep near my animals. I don’t expect such dedication from another unless—”
“You thought I might be safer?” I wanted to believe this. For the first time, I’d found someone who had glimpsed the good that I’d always hoped was in me.
“Go to bed.” He dropped the book, and it landed silently on the straw-covered ground.
I started to express my disapproval at his mistreatment of the book, but my tongue found itself wedged between my teeth. I wondered where he’d gotten it. Miguel’s silence forced me to return to my makeshift bed.
I was almost accustomed to the smell of the animals.
The nightmares still came, but they’d changed. I’d been reborn in the darkest corner of that mausoleum – still human but forever altered.
No longer was I pulled back into that small, windowless room…now a woman called to me. It was Sunaria, her figure bathed in silver moonlight, strange and otherworldly.
The darkest craving was for her.
At dawn, my stare lingered on the mail tray, as though Roelle’s forged will would magically reappear if I gazed at it long enough. My heart was pounding furiously, even before I took the stairs three at a time.
Roelle was still in bed, sitting with his back against the headboard. A servant girl had set his breakfast tray by his side – an assortment of breads, eggs, and a small pot of milk.
I held my hands behind my back to hide their tremors. One hint from Roelle that he knew what I’d done, and I’d bolt.
I blamed my reckless behavior on the liquor I’d consumed last night. I’d been so foolish to believe I could get away with it.
“Can’t the chef be more imaginative?” Roelle glanced at the food and then his irritated frown settled on me. “What?”
“Alicia?” I said quietly.
Roelle gave me a confused look. “I have no idea who you’re talking about.”
“The woman?”
“What woman?”
His lack of memory made no sense – Sunaria was unforgettable.
He rubbed his neck as he watched the maid draw back the curtains, allowing the sun to flood in, casting white rays that quickly banished even the sneakiest of shadows.
“That’s too bright,” he said, then waved her off. “Leave them.”
She stepped back as though unsure, sunlight bathing her delicate features.
I was amazed he’d forgotten Sunaria so soon but reasoned he just didn’t want to talk – not with me, anyway.
Roelle’s fumbling fingers clumsily stroked his hairy thigh.
“My skin’s crawling.” He scratched, digging his nails into his flesh, throwing off the bed sheets and kicking at them.
His head slumped back onto the pillow, his body jerking, spasming.
His jaw slackened and his contorted lips formed into a cry.
Out of his mouth came a terrible gurgling, and then a screech escaped his over-stretched mouth, spittle bursting out and trickling, wetting his chin.
He thrashed violently, like something had taken hold of him, as if an unseen force was devouring him from within, seizing his body for its own.
The maid, pale now and shaking, reached for the milk pot as it tipped, its contents pouring onto the floor, leaving a trail of creamy-white liquid snaking its way beneath the bed, as though fleeing in terror.
Roelle’s skin began to blister, and his eyes bulged. He fell off the bed and the tray crashed with him, spilling the rest of its contents. A flash of flames set his hair alight, his flesh melting, as he crawled along the floor with a crazed expression, lurching for me, arms flailing.
I grabbed the water jug and threw the liquid over him, ready to jump out of his way if he turned.
Roelle rose up and bashed against the window frame, catching the curtain on fire. He screamed in agony, a ragged, soul-tearing sound that echoed with pure, unfiltered pain.
I seized the maid’s hand and yanked her out of her horrified trance, and out the door, leaving behind that dreadful wailing. We scurried along the corridor and ran for the stairs.
An orange flash of movement lurched from the bedroom.
The breath left my lungs when I saw Roelle staggering behind us, his arms outstretched as he came closer, a monstrous human inferno. The girl tripped and I yanked her up and pulled her with me down the steps.
Several of the staff, their faces full of fright, stared past us at Roelle, who crashed against the velvet backdrop hanging from the ceiling. Dancing flames leaped from him and onto the drapes, raging upward, spreading wildly.
The heat pushed us back.
Roelle’s face was dissolving, unrecognizable. With that awful glow of yellow, orange, and fleeting red clinging to him, he tumbled toward us, his grotesque scream now a primal cry.
The horror of it all felt like the darkest vengeance.
Roelle, the architect of my torment was dying in front of me.
Something inside me shifted, cold and unyielding, the horror of it all-consuming, neither pure relief nor sorrow – like a dark mirror reflecting all the pain and agony he had caused.
Twisted justice was draped in silence as grey ash and embers fell, fluttering around us as we stared in disbelief.