Chapter 30
My vision blurs and my lungs constrict. I can’t breathe, can’t think. The dizzying realization threatens to bring me to my knees.
Alana’s gasp is the only sound, and the room stays like that, still and silent, until Gray growls low in his throat.
He stands straight-backed while the three men hold him in place, but the venom in his tone is unmistakable.
“No,” he whispers, voice low. “You made all of us think he was dead. Your own daughters.” His voice rises a degree.
“He loved them more than anything, and you lied to all of us so that you could make him a pawn in your war.”
“Not a pawn,” Lord Damarcus answers. “A leader. If I could have told any of you, I would have. Please, believe me. This legacy has been entrusted to the alchemers since the first war. I was doing this for you and Roe. For all others like you. Like us.”
My body shakes, and I can’t stop trembling. Leith. My big brother is alive? It was all just another lie. Another lie I don’t know how to process. I feel like I’m floating, rising above the scene as I look down, like a spectator of my own life.
“Rosaline.” Ivander’s voice is soft behind me. Ivander fixes people. He doesn’t like to watch them break. But I don’t know how to hold it together. Not when this building rage is the only thing keeping me standing.
Lord Damarcus motions to one of our captors.
“Bring four goblets. Quickly,” he commands.
Without hesitation, the man releases his hold on Alana and heads in the direction of the kitchens.
My mind’s still spinning when he returns with four silver goblets that once held hot hearth fruit cider in the wintertime.
He dips each of the goblets into his steaming potion. My hands clench, and I strain against the cuffs around my wrists. I won’t drink anything he gives me.
“What is that?” Gray asks, voice unsteady.
Before Lord Damarcus answers, one of Gray’s captors walks forward and takes the full goblet.
Although Gray struggles, the man holding him in place yanks his head backward.
The man with the goblet forces the liquid into Gray’s mouth and covers his mouth until he swallows.
“I’m sorry,” Lord Damarcus says as the captors continue down the line, pouring the potion down Alana’s and Ivander’s throats. “I need you to see. It will help you truly understand.” He swallows hard. He has the gall to look ashamed. “Then you’ll see what I sacrificed. You deserve the truth now.”
“Roe…” Alana begins, sensing the anger nibbling at my thin threads of self-control.
I ignore her, straining against my captors so that Lord Damarcus has no choice but to look at me. Making my brother lead an army against his will became more important than our family. More important than Lysandra losing her child.
“You’re above nothing,” I spit. “If you’re willing to lie about Leith. To me, to Eliza, to Lysandra. Then you’ll lie about anything.” A thrill of heat runs through me, cutting straight to my core. “I don’t recognize you anymore.”
The memories rewrite themselves. The soft smiles he shared at the dinner table.
The immaculate waistcoats I never see him without.
The casual warmth of spending a morning with him in his study, volunteering to catch the rats he needs for his next potion.
I recognize nothing. This is the punctured image of a man I know I’ve lost.
Lord Damarcus shakes his head, and the lines in his forehead crease.
One of my captors tips my head back. I writhe back and forth to escape her grip, but she pulls my hair until tears sting the corners of my eyes.
She moves as if to yank my mouth open, but I don’t let her.
I drink from the goblet held out to me without fighting.
There’s no sense in fighting when the others have already drunk.
The potion smells like Father—incense, sage, smoke, and the pages of an old book.
My tongue burns with the taste of strong ginger and cinnamon from his favorite tea.
“It allows me to show you my memories. No matter how much they pain you, you deserve them. I hope in seeing them you realize my actions were only because I saw them as entirely necessary.” Black spots eat at the corners of my vision.
Lord Damarcus fades from view, and the pressure of my captors’ grips releases.
The world goes black and then blinks back into light.
I’m standing in the study. It’s clear I’m seeing through Lord Damarcus’s eyes and not my own, as I appear to be in a secret meeting.
Lord Trevor, a man who helps Father with the affairs of Credence, Boss Balanyr, Boss Charmaine, and a woman wearing an expensive dress whose name I don’t know gather around Lord Damarcus’s cauldron.
I dip my hand into the boiling indigo liquid, then withdraw it, letting the liquid fall through my fingers.
It’s strange seeing through his eyes while feeling my own hot rush of betrayal.
I knew he oversaw the selection of bosses, but what’s he doing holding a meeting in our home with two of the worst of them? That indigo potion looks too familiar …
“Will she suspect anything?” Lord Trevor asks, wringing his hands.
I feel my head shake. It’s strange, like an out-of-body experience. Sort of like how my movements feel in the spiritual plane. “It’s the same potion she takes every night at dinner. She won’t question it.”
The corner of Boss Charmaine’s mouth lifts. “What does she think it’s for?”
A muscle in my—Lord Damarcus’s—jaw twitches, but his voice comes out calm when he answers. “Her nerves. I’ve told her it calms her and helps her summon.”
Boss Balanyr leans against the bookcase and runs a skeletal hand crusted over with blood through his beard. “But what will it do on the night of the ball?”
This must be the day before the Resurrection Ball, when Mother, Eliza, and I had gone out to retrieve our gowns from the tailor.
Lord Damarcus sighs and stirs the potion with a large ladle.
“The one she drinks at dinner prevents her from summoning family members. But this one will have the added benefit of making her summoning less controlled.”
The horror cuts through the scene and into me. The potion I consume every night is worse than poison. It has prevented me from raising my family members’ spirits all my life. An ability I thought was beyond my reach was nothing more than another of Lord Damarcus’s lies.
“If she loses control at the ball, she’ll be much less sure of herself when she goes to her trial. She’ll drink one more dose at dinner the night before to make sure,” Lord Damarcus continues in a flat, emotionless tone.
Charmaine clicks her tongue. “When she fails, what if she chooses to board the ship? She might be so desperate for her precious magic that she—”
“She won’t.” Lord Damarcus cuts her off. “I will do all in my power to make sure she does not leave her trial with her Morphia.”
Lord Trevor wipes his glasses with a handkerchief and bites his lip.
A flare of anger dulls to a murmur of sadness as I look at a man who used to bring me new books to read each time he visited our estate.
“Perhaps she could be made to listen. Her resurrection might one day make her as useful as your son.”
My head shakes fast. “She could resurrect her great-aunt’s spirit. She was the only female alchemer in the family. Even in her own day, she spoke out against the family and began to learn of the ship’s true purpose.”
Trevor clears his throat. “But if Roe agreed to the cause, why not let her keep her magic?”
“You don’t know my daughter,” Lord Damarcus rumbles.
“You cannot control her. Even potions like these won’t work forever.
And if she ever decides she does not agree with the cause once we’ve let her keep the dead at her disposal, it could result in utter disaster.
It is a terrible price, but I will pay it. ”
You mean I will pay it. My mind races with yet another betrayal. Boss Balanyr taps his heavy boot against the wood floor. “What if you cannot prevent her from boarding the ship?”
I feel my arm move as Lord Damarcus reaches beside the desk and withdraws a crate full of empty potion bottles.
“You will take this back to port with you. I will fill these, and all you must do is make sure a small amount is mixed into the extraction potion she drinks each night. I made it so that it would mix imperceptibly into any other liquid. It will stop her from raising spirits of family members.”
There must be dozens of bottles. More than enough for a month at sea.
He raises two more bottles that have already been filled.
One is filled with a bright green potion and another is filled with a thick gray liquid, tar-like in consistency.
“These two are for emergencies only. A few drops of the green will prevent her from resurrecting a spirit of your choosing. The gray … should only be used if the aim is to kill.”
My own blood runs cold. The green potion must have stopped me from raising Elayne. The boss who handed me the drink at the mid-cruise ball must have known I would find her dead. Poor Elayne must have drunk the gray potion while she was in the haunted hallway.
“Take it to port with you,” Lord Damarcus commands. “If she fails and manages to board, the ship will leave in a few days. You will have what you need to make sure she does not receive a retrial.”
“What if we just took her Morphia while aboard?” Charmaine asks, swiping her tongue over her splitting lips. Her countenance is less skeletal away from the ship.
“You know why,” Lord Damarcus states calmly.
“If you take Morphia without cause, there will be an uprising. But if she looks at all like she might achieve retrial, you will make something so horrible befall her that no one could argue with her Morphia extraction. Send me word with ravens of any developments should she board.”