Chapter 17 #2
“Yes, you are incredibly stealthy. Your upbringing explains that completely.”
“The lowly servant that I am.”
She gripped the table. “That’s not what I meant.”
“I think it is exactly what you meant.”
“By my words, I meant that you have the stealth of someone used to moving soundlessly so as not to bother others.”
“We can never bother our betters.”
Frustration bent her brows. I felt little sympathy. The bile was too immense, all I could do was spew it forth.
“Is that how you see me? As someone who thinks herself better?”
“Do you not? You think yourself better than feckless Ferris. Better than hapless Kennen. Better than your wastrel parents. Tarred by your own tongue as judgmental and harsh.”
The scathing condemnation came so easily. Inflicting pain beyond my own. I ruthlessly crushed the knowledge that I was hurting her. She was of the upper class. She had betrayed me. She had pretended to care.
Why had I believed it? Why had I let myself think she might care for me? I was tainted.
“Nothing to say, Marietta?”
She lifted her chin. “You are right, of course. I am judgmental. And at times harsh. But I’m not a liar.”
“Never?”
“I prefer frankness, even in my tactless, harsh manner.”
“How refreshing.” The skin along my wrist went tight.
“Then let me be frank. How did I come to be at your door? It was not a coincidence. How did you convince Frostwood to send me your way?”
An unsettling sensation fell over me, a shadow I had missed. Pieces clicking together, just out of sight.
“I haven’t spoken to him in months. You came to me of your own free will. Unless you will lay that too at my feet. Have I overcome your will?” I leaned forward, looking at her through my lashes, cocking my head. “Made you do anything you didn’t want to do?”
Her eyes hardened. “You use your sexuality well, Gabriel. It is hard to escape. Hard to avoid. You are good. Too good. Your teachers taught you well.”
Anger, fear, and something darker coiled in my gut. It seemed we were both willing to get dirty in this game.
“Didn’t you know?” she asked. “You look surprised. Sick, even.” Grim satisfaction edged her short smile. “You didn’t know you were using all the tactics they taught you? Using them and hating yourself even more for it.”
I stilled.
“You didn’t.” Her breath hitched. “Did you just expect that your self-loathing, your obvious hatred of the responses you receive from women, was motivated by—what?” The grim satisfaction turned to pity then hardened once more. “Well, Gabriel?”
“You have no idea of what you speak.”
“Don’t I?” She laughed, no humor in the sound. “Everything became as clear as the peal of a spring bell when I realized who you were. Who the man in the journal was. Octavia Winstead knew you well.”
“She knew nothing.” The household spells spiked. The book flew from her grasp, crashing against the wall. I heard the spine break. “She knew how to terrify little boys. She knew nothing about me.”
Marietta swallowed and looked down. An odd sound registered. My own harsh breathing.
“Did you murder those women, Gabriel?”
“Right now, I wish I had! But why would I give them that power over me? I ruined them. I made them live with it.”
I tossed her pistol on the table. “Leave, if that is what you wish—little rich girl gone poor and tattered. I’ll get your brother out of prison. After that, nothing more.”
I didn’t know how I got from the room.
~*~
MARIETTA
He slammed the door so hard it clicked from its lock.
I wiped an angry tear and gripped the butt of the pistol, dragging it across the exposed wood and spoiled papers. The heart of a crushed walnut shell trailed beneath it.
The journal lay in the corner, crooked and awkward. Helpless. Malicious. Waiting like a predator feigning injury.
Cruel. Terrible.
I pushed back from the table and stumbled to it. I picked up the broken spine between my thumb and forefinger and dropped the whole thing into my bag.
The kitchen was silent. Eerie. Judgmental.
Exhaustion crackled my edges. The battle against Crane had sapped my magic. Arguing with Gabriel had done worse. I had no plan. No course of action. Nothing to drive toward.
A muted voice cut through the silence. Another joined it. An argument muffled by curving halls and the half-cracked door.
I stared at the knotty wood, finding myself in front of the door that led to the rest of the house, not the one that led away. My hand touched the oak and pushed.
Four voices drawing me around the stairs to the small holding room to the west. Alcroft had joined Lucian and Orion while Gabriel and I argued.
“Worley is still out there,” Alcroft was saying.
“It’s not Worley,” Orion Crane replied.
“But—” Lucian.
“It’s not.” Gabriel’s voice was unsettlingly calm after his angry exit. “Worley worshiped them.”
“All the more reason to bring him to the magistrate,” Alcroft said. “Something is off there.”
“I agree with John,” Lucian quickly added.
Silence.
“It’s true, then.” The house wards pulsed with Lucian’s anguish. “You think I murdered them.”
“Of course I don’t.” Gabriel’s voice was too dismissive.
Horror rose from my gut, leaving nothing below but hollow dread.
“You’re lying.”
“Lucian—”
“You are angry with Marietta for believing you the killer, while you think it’s me? I am your flesh and blood. Your brother. And you think it’s me.”
“It is because you are my brother—”
“I didn’t kill them, Gabriel,” Lucian said quietly. “I would have happily dispatched each of them to erase the past. I knew. I saw. I know who saved me from them. I know more than you think. And father—”
“He had no right.”
“—didn’t have to say a word. I know more than he ever did. She approached me once, did you know?”
“Who?” Gabriel’s voice was deadly.
“High Lord First’s Lady of Steelcrest.”
The rising horror solidified. The hollow dread spread.
Like most of the gilded, High Lord Steelcrest’s wife had many titles.
Most referred to her as the High Lady of Steelcrest and Nightshade, her married and natal names combined.
In the company of her birth family, she might go by order and be addressed as High Lady Fifth Nightshade.
But like all of the gilded, those closest to her could call her by simple natal address—Melissande Nightshade.
Or even perhaps, Lissa.
I hugged my arms, shivering.
M.N.’s husband returns tonight, and with him come his personal servants and guard. M.N. said we need to reinstill the need for total silence into our little avenger.
His father had been the personal butler to High Lord Steelcrest, the First of Steelcrest. I put my hand over my mouth as bile burned up my throat.
“I’ll kill her.”
“Of course. That will be perfect.” Lucian’s sarcasm barely registered as the reality finally hit—beyond the argument, the anger, the betrayal—that Gabriel was the man in the book.
The things I had said...
“Out of all of them, she is the one that remains.”
“We left a week after her overture. She never touched me. You succeeded.” Lucian sounded tired, bitter. “You remained the buffer, took all of the pain. Left me free.”
“It should never have occurred in the first place.” Self-loathing saturated Orion Crane’s voice.
“It did. None of this matters now.” Gabriel cursed fluently, creatively—a string of obscenities that lasted a good ten seconds. “A nightmare come true—to have to go back.”
“Go back where?”
“John, I need you to arrange an invite.”
“No!”
“The next target is obvious.”
“And you are going to save her?”
The shock of the entire room echoed in Gabriel’s silence. I wished I could see his face.
“Gabriel, you can’t possibly—” Lucian.
“I’m coming with you.” Alcroft.
“I need you to delay the trial, John. Marietta’s brother needs another day.” My vision filmed over at his words. “Possibly two. Lucian, I need you to help him.”
“But—”
“I will be accompanying you, Gabriel.” Stillness fell at Orion Crane’s pronouncement. “To get into the estate, you only need me.”
“N—”
“I will not accept your refusal. Once is quite enough in a parent’s life to fail a child so badly.”
“I’m hardly a child. Besides, I’ve seen the bitch since. More than once.”
My fingers found the wooden token at my wrist. The marks underneath pulsed faintly alongside my unsteady pulse.
“Nevertheless, you are not traveling without me.”
Another long silence. “As you wish.”
Chairs scraped the floor. Footsteps echoed. I ran back to the kitchen.
Alcroft appeared in the door, eyebrows lifting. “Lady Winters.”
Lucian appeared behind him. “Marietta, we thought you’d left.”
I heard the front door close. Gabriel and his father leaving on their task. To see the woman who had spearheaded the club. To save the woman who had abused him.
“No.” I met Lucian’s eyes. “Tell me how I can help.”