Chapter 2
C H A P T E R
T W O
a taste for blood
When the original Caledon Cullraven had first approached Evangeline, he had extended from her a promise along with the knife: safety, in exchange for devotion—hers. Exacted at a price.
Unless their bond was severed, that loyalty was binding. It was an ordainment of god, or something like it.
Killing a sparrow . . . was unthinkable.
Cal leaned against the closed front door as he stared unseeingly out his window. The sun was setting, the dying light pooling like gold melted from a crucible behind the webbing of the trees. Bright as fire, it made the phantom taste of smoke in the back of his throat even more salient.
He had been exposed to this kind of smoke only once before and both times, it had made him retch. As a youth, he had been shielded from the true horror of his family’s punishment for courtship outside the lines. They hadn’t expected him to participate in the disposal.
But this time—Christ. He could still hear Noelle Cullraven’s screams.
(They’re killing all the sparrows)
It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
It wasn’t supposed to fucking be this way.
Ben had demanded his help, red-faced and struggling with his wife. Their entangled shadows looked like two birds on the sidewalk, and Cal had turned away, leaving Rael to assist. The Crockers were good for that. Whether it was elections or the dead, they all came to accounts.
As close as Cal was to Rael, he hated him a little for that, too: for the blind faith, for the unquestioning loyalty. For the ease in which he stepped in to wrest control of Noelle.
When he had realized what was going to happen to his sister-in-law, he had grabbed his brother, drawing blood, but Ben one-handedly struck him down with a blow to his solar plexus that had him gasping, and his father, who had stepped in to assist, snarled, “Don’t interfere—unless you want to join her.
Remember, boy, what happened last time.”
“I remember. But she wasn’t a sparrow.”
“Sparrows are loyal,” his father retorted coldly. “Remember, this is the price of betrayal, Caledon. Your great-grandfather and grand-uncle knew this. Ben is doing what needs to be done.”
What needs to be done. A spasm tore across his bruised chest and he let out a rough gasp.
He made it sound so inevitable.
Odessa stepped out from the direction of the library, the scent of her cigarettes still clinging to her clothes.
She stopped and looked at him carefully, her pale fingers feathering over her skirt as she straightened out the wrinkles.
“What’s got your panties in a twist?” she asked.
“Did one of your clients get charged with contempt again?”
“Noelle,” he said.
“What about her?”
“She’s dead.”
“Dead! What do you m—” Her eyes widened in sudden understanding. “Ben? Ben killed her? But why? It’s not even the festival yet. She married him.”
“I suppose she didn’t care for the idea of being a sparrow.”
“Are you sure he did it on purpose?”
“Oh yes,” he said, with a bitter laugh. “I didn’t think of that. I suppose she could have just fallen on one of Gideon’s needles and sleepwalked herself to the fucking furnace.”
His voice rose, along with his shoulders, as he straightened from his careless slouch.
“Of course he did it on purpose.”
“That’s unfortunate.” Odessa picked at her cuticles. “But I don’t see what it has to do with you. She wasn’t your wife.”
“She was my sister. And yours.”
“No,” Odessa corrected him firmly. “She was a sparrow.”
“And apparently not even that.”
“It’s Ben’s mess to clean. He brought this on his own head.” Bored of the pretense, she dropped her hand to her side. “Stay out of it,” she advised.
Cal heard Ben return later, announcing himself with a loud slam of the door that shook the fury right back into his wearied bones. Every loud footstep slammed out a rhythm that sounded an awful lot like a confession: your fault, your fault, your fault.
But his sister was wrong, he thought. His brother was the heir, and many Cullraven heirs had been excused for culling their wives. It was in their blood.
He would be blamed, no doubt, for not throwing his lot in with the family. They would bring up his past displays of weakness, laid out like the worm-eaten fruit of a blighted tree. His family’s favorite whipping boy, trotted out an example to the others.
Cullraven blood rotted the blood of the wilting, after all.
After an unsuccessful attempt at rest, he went to the library to cool himself off.
But Ben was already there, nursing an amber glass of scotch from one of his mother’s beveled crystal glasses.
The bottle beside him was already half-empty and his eyes, as they lifted blearily to his, were bloodshot with indulgence.
“Come to gloat? Or perhaps say, I told you so?” Ben gestured with his glass, a mockery of a toast. “Have fucking at it. You’ll never get a better shot.”
“I came here to be alone,” said Cal coldly.
Ben topped his glass off, sloppily. “So did I. And I was here first.”
Anger yielded to disgust as he watched his brother douse his miseries in drink. He recalled another night, with a different girl. The deer they’d slain in front of him.
(“Weakness of the heart is an abscess of the soul, Caledon. Right now, you are not worthy to even bear his name.”)
His jaw ticked. “Your wife died today.”
“Do you think I don’t know that?” It was the roar of a wounded bear, dumb with pain.
He threw his glass—too quick to dodge—but if Ben had been aiming for him, the scotch had impaired his accuracy.
The crystal shattered against the wall three feet to Cal’s left, leaving a dark stain that soaked quickly into the flocked wallpaper.
“I fucking killed her! She chose the knife—” he faltered, his control fracturing “—instead of me.”
“Yes.” Cal stepped to the side, closer to the shelves running around the perimeter of the room like a cage. “I suppose she did. That is the definition of a sparrow, is it not? They get to choose. And she did.” His tone sharpened with scorn that Ben reared back from.
“She deserved to die then. I should have known, when she began turning me away at night. Asking me questions. She found the book—nearly clawed my eyes out. Fuck.”
The word came out as a sob.
Silence spanned between them. Cal folded his arms, glancing back towards the empty hall.
Odessa was the one who wandered, but it wasn’t unusual for their father to roam the house at night.
After that incident with Noelle, their father had lit into Ben ferociously before sequestering himself in their mother’s rooms. When she didn’t appear for dinner, Cal knew what that meant.
Another sparrow, punished.
Was this his fault? Noelle’s line of questioning, though worrisome, had seemed like newlywed jitters, and so he had kept her counsel. But perhaps he shouldn’t have.
Perhaps she’d had some idea, even then, of what awaited her in her husband’s arms.
He should have asked more questions. Discouraged her.
Perhaps then, he could have stopped this.
“Father said I selected poorly.” Ben raised his hand, then seemed to remember belatedly that he no longer had the glass.
With a sound of impatience, he grabbed the bottle off the floor by its neck while Cal watched him drink from the mouth with pitiless eyes.
“He said, and I quote, even the original Caledon Cullraven had to suffer a second wife.”
“And he thinks that should be the standard?”
“Maybe I provided her too long a tether,” Ben said, in lieu of a proper response. “She was always flighty—I used to have to correct her. She was too independent, too used to getting her own way. Spoiled, even. Maybe the honeymoon gave her ideas. I shouldn’t have let her think she was free.”
Cal’s fury crested. “Perhaps you should have leashed her while you were at it.”
“Oh yes, it’s all very easy for you, isn’t it?” Ben rose unsteadily, staggering like a marionette. “They all come to you.”
It was like a current pulsed through the house. Cal could feel something in the air shift and his skin responded, prickling with a pins and needles sensation as if he’d just been shocked.
Cal didn’t believe in ghosts and never had—no one who did would ever be able to sleep at Ravensgate Manor—but he also understood with a prescience that was not rooted in any sort of logic that nothing between him and his brother would ever be the same as it was before. Not after this.
“Her sister.” Ben came to a predatory halt, causing his shadow to jerk violently. “Noelle’s sister. She came to you, too. I saw you both at the wedding.”
“And?” His tone was forbidding: a locked door Ben chose not to heed.
“Submission seems to come to her quite naturally, doesn’t it?
I’m sure you noticed her lowered eyes.” Ben scrubbed a hand over his face.
The back of it was red and scored. “What a pity that is,” he said, with a detached absence that was all the more disquieting when compared to his earlier furor from mere moments ago.
“She’s so young, and now she’s all alone. ”
He looked at his hand, and made a moue of distaste as he rubbed it, picking at the bleeding sores that had been irritated anew by the alcohol.
“I suppose we had better come up with something to tell her family. When the letters stop, they’ll be coming up here, demanding answers. God only knows what she told them.”
“Construction in the absence of nothing is your strong suit, I suppose.”
“Be careful, Baby Cal.” Ben stepped towards him menacingly. “You made the same error, if you’ll recall. And you didn’t even have the guts to rectify your mistake. I had to do it for you.”