Chapter 19
I cleaned blood off my cheek and spent most of the morning in the servants’ wing, waiting for status reports on Voss.
Apparently he only stayed in the bath for a few minutes before he fell asleep.
The servants had to help him out of the tub and get him into bed.
That made me worried that I’d given him too much boozy cough syrup—If only Sister Helen had told me what was in these bottles!
—and that it was sedating him. Of course I couldn’t help but think of Bethany and how she had died, which made me worry even more.
I had no love for Voss, but I certainly didn’t want to be the cause of his death. He was still my patient, and I had an obligation to help him, no matter my personal feelings.
So I continued to fret and bug Mrs. Culpepper for updates, but by midmorning, she reported that he was soundly asleep in bed and wasn’t coughing, and I relaxed a little. Especially when I realized something.
The master is asleep. I can go find Nin.
But when I was preparing to return to my room, Filomena stopped me. “If you wouldn’t mind helping me, I could use a hand in the greenhouse.”
I hesitated, medical bag in hand.
“Please,” she said softly, a look of pleading in her eyes. “It won’t take a minute.”
My heart thudded. “Um, sure. Let me just go upstairs—”
“It won’t take a minute,” she repeated.
Interesting… “All right, then.”
We left the house through the kitchen and trekked up the eastern path around to the back of the house. “Why is the patio door boarded up here?” I complained as my gaze skimmed the manor.
“Mrs. Culpepper said contract workers came to seal up the house for winter. An entire wing got boarded up. A few windows, and the back, there,” she said, pointing at the patio. “She said the contractors were leaving the day she arrived at Riverbend Manor.”
I paused. “But didn’t Mrs. Culpepper arrive at the estate last year?”
Filomena nodded. “I guess they boarded it and left it. I just figured the master was wallowing in grief and never bothered to have it opened back up. We certainly don’t need the space.”
True. But it was still odd. It took several minutes to walk around the house from the kitchen door, making the lack of direct access to the back lawn tedious.
We continued through the garden and entered the greenhouse. The warm air inside felt like a hug, and the scents of potting dirt and orchids relaxed my tense shoulders. “What did you need me for in here?” I asked.
Filomena grabbed an empty basket near the door and a gardening knife. “I’m picking some greens for dinner. They’re over here, come.”
I followed her to the right side of the greenhouse, where long planting tables held rows of fall vegetables. Filomena spotted some dark greens, sliced through the base of their thick stems, and deposited a small bunch into the basket she carried on one arm.
“Those will be rich in iron,” I noted. “Good for the master. He needs to build his strength up.”
“He’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about,” Filomena said, bending over the greens as she worked.
“When his coughing attack started this morning, I was preparing breakfast in the kitchen, and I heard yelling. So I ran to the foyer and found Mrs. Culpepper and Mr. Hoffmann being screamed at by the master.”
“Oh? Why?”
She glanced over her shoulder at me. “He was convinced one of them had been in the crypt.”
I stopped breathing and blinked as anxiety knotted my stomach. I asked as casually as I could, “Had they been?”
She shook her head. “At least, they denied it. And of course he turned his anger on me when I showed up. But, Molly, I swear to you that I haven’t set a foot in the basement since I arrived here.”
“I believe you, Filomena. Did you tell him this? What happened then?”
“The coughing started. When he has an attack like that, it’s difficult for him to stop, as you saw. So the matter was dropped. But I wanted to warn you, in case he asks you about it later. I know you went down to the basement that first night…”
Her eyes found mine, and there was questioning there. I debated how to respond. Was she onto me? Did she know I’d been back down there? Can I trust her?
I wasn’t sure.
“Thanks for letting me know,” I told her.
She nodded, dumping another bunch of greens into her basket. “It is good to share information. The master is… very picky about that basement. He demanded that Hoffmann and Culpepper give up their keys to the copper gate.”
Alarms fired in my head. Had Voss seen me in the crypt with Nin?
“That seems like overkill,” I said.
She shrugged while cutting stems. “Hoffmann has been more absent-minded lately. Perhaps he went down to the basement and forgot.”
Hmph. I knew that couldn’t be true.
“Just be beware that the master is on a warpath,” she said.
Wonderful. “Hey, Filomena, while I’m thinking about it… You’ve left the estate, right? Since you came here as an employee?”
“Once, with the master. We went into town. But that was months ago. Voss said I could go home for Christmas and see my mother.”
How? Would Voss give Filomena a miniature hourglass like the one Hoffmann carried on our train ride here?
Was that some kind of temporary key that allowed a person in and out of the aegis?
If I could get my hands on one, then I could go get help instead of biding my time until Sister Helen received my letter.
I wanted to ask Filomena about the hourglasses, but a shadow crossed the glass outside the greenhouse. My muscles tensed as I peered through the steamy windows.
Nin’s somber face appeared through the steam.
My heart leapt into my throat.
“Well, that’s about all of the greens I’ll need,” Filomena said, wiping her blade against her skirts. “Ready to head back?”
“I’m going to walk the greenhouse and clear my head,” I told her.
She raised a brow but smiled at me. “That’s fine. Don’t stay too long. The master will likely want to see you when he wakes.”
“Thanks for the warning,” I told her in a low voice. She nodded once and headed for the door. As soon as it closed behind her, I turned around to look for Nin outside the glass.
He was standing in front of me inside the greenhouse.
“Good lord!” I exclaimed, clutching my chest. “You scared the living daylights out of me.”
“I did not mean to, my apologies.” He dipped his head respectfully. “I told you I’d find you today. I was honoring my word. Voss is deeply asleep.”
His shoulder. Did it look worse today? Did he look worse? On closer inspection, he seemed extra pale. Dark circles rimmed his eyes.
“Perfect timing,” I said, hoping he didn’t notice the concern in my eyes. I patted my medical bag. “Let’s take a look at you, yeah? Perhaps you could…” He was so tall, and I needed to have better access to inspect him. “The bench, over there? Can you please sit?”
He nodded and sat while I brought my medical bag over to him. “I need to touch you. Is that okay?”
“Do what you must.”
I set my bag down. It felt somehow blasphemous to be purposefully putting my hands on him. I tried to think of him as any other patient, and not…
A god.
“Let’s get the other sleeve off first,” I suggested. He complied, relaxing his good arm and allowing me to carefully pull his arm from that jacket sleeve.
As his arm fell free of the sleeve, a soft tinkling sound drew my attention to a flash of gold peeking out from the cuff of his shirt.
Gold bangles. Very thin, very delicate ones.
I wanted to ask him about them, but he adjusted the position of his wrist, and they fell back under his cuff.
Maybe it’s private, I thought, and began slowly peeling the jacket away from his injured shoulder.
“It’s been a strange day,” I told him as my fingers carefully pulled the fabric. The fine wool was stiff with dried blood, and I needed to be careful not to hurt him any further.
“How so?” he asked in a low voice that sounded calm on the surface. But I could hear him breathing. He was trying to control himself, keep his pain under control.
“Well, let’s see,” I said. “First, I met your sibling.”
The sound of his breathing halted. His eyes flicked to mine. “What sibling?”
“That, I don’t know. I was going to research it in the red book, but it’s been a long morning. Voss had a coughing attack after blaming the servants for going down to your crypt—”
“What?”
“—and I ended up giving him an extra dose of cough syrup. So that’s why he’s sleeping deeply.”
Nin squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. “Please back up for a moment.”
“Am I going too fast for you, Your Highness?”
“No, but some details are more important than others.” His eyes were impatient. “Describe this sibling you met, immediately.”
“You might say ‘please’ instead of making demands.”
“Molly, I’m not in the mood for teasing.”
Was I teasing him? Maybe I was. “Fine. He had the same eyes as you. Very pale. Dark hair slicked back—straight, not curly like yours. Tall. Top hat. X-shaped scar above his eyebrow.”
“Kesh,” he murmured.
Oh no. I remembered that prince from the book. Kesh the Knife. “Are you on good terms with your brother… the Prince of Murder?”
“We have a complicated relationship,” he said in a voice thick with old anger. “My family history would take too long to explain right now. Where did you see Kesh? He is very dangerous.”
“He haunts the aegis border near the goat pasture.”
“I told you not to go out there!”
“Then you knew he was there? He doesn’t seem to be able to cross the border onto the estate.” I accidentally pulled his jacket sleeve too far, too fast. “Oh, sorry!”
Nin grunted in pain but signaled for me to continue my work. “I knew one of my siblings was out there, but the border blocks my sight,” he said in restrained voice. “What did he tell you?”
“He seems determined to free you.”
“Oh, I’ll bet he is…,” he grumbled.
“He says there’s a way to get across the border that involves finding some kind of hourglass in Voss’s possession.”
“Hourglass?”