Chapter 38
Chapter thirty-eight
“Hold onto me.”
Shaw adjusted his footing, his free hand holding tight to the branch while his other splayed over her ribs.
Lux buried her face in his neck. Her heart hammered. She was sure her head was meant to be cracked open on the stones below, but Shaw had been higher than she’d known. He’d grabbed her straight from the open air.
“Place your foot above mine.”
Trembling, Lux lifted her head to do as told. She wedged her boot.
“Good. Now grab hold of the same branch as me.” She did that too. “I’m going to let you go now.”
Her breath shuddered out of her. It’s fine. I’m fine. Quit shaking. His hand released her waist only to come down on the branch beside her. She was caged fully by his body.
“I won’t let you fall, love. Go on and climb.”
“Is it too late to try your plan?” she asked with her eyes shut.
“This plan is just as good. Maybe better.” His chest pressed her tighter against the tree and his lips brushed the shell of her ear. “Your bird is back.”
Lux’s eyes burst open, and she looked up—to the crow perched not far above her, its head tilted and appearing just as dissatisfied with her as earlier on the balcony. “So is the mad version of me.”
“I’ll be with you,” he said. “No matter what.”
She’d told him what it looked like. She’d needed to. And while speaking it aloud had drained some of the terror it held over her, it hadn’t changed the fact the bird was still perched on something.
Lux gritted her teeth—and climbed up.
“Only a mannequin,” said Shaw, after he’d walked across the archway, vaulting over the terrace railing.
Lux stood rigid as a pillar, her lip pulled up into a detested sneer as he righted the fallen figure. The window it had come from was broken; she hadn’t noticed any of it before she’d fallen.
He pushed it back beyond the glass and said, “We have our way in.”
Placing one leg through the opening, he turned back for her, his arm outstretched. Lux climbed over the short railing and gripped his hand, and then he disappeared into the house.
“Thank you,” she said to the crow, a second before fingers tightened on her own, and she was tugged inside.
A puff of dust slurried around Lux’s boots where she landed. She coughed into her sleeve. “Devil below.”
Dresses littered the floor.
Two more mannequins stood fully dressed inside, and the wardrobe was thrown open. Lux’s glance skipped from the four-poster bed to the mussed bedding stitched with dark florals and knew by the twisting in her gut this was not just any child’s bedroom.
She lost her grip on Shaw as he made his way to the bed. To the nightstand and the frame standing atop it. He struck a tinderbox and lit a stub of a candlestick before he plucked the frame from the cobwebs. After several moments, he handed it to her. Lux took it warily.
A young Riselda stared back at her.
Alixsander stared back at her too.
“What the devil,” murmured Lux, wiping the dust away.
The pair sat shoulder to shoulder, a prim pose, and while Riselda did not smile, Lux could see the softness around her mouth.
Alixsander, on the other hand, smiled hugely.
He was older than her fraud of an aunt, likely around Lux’s own age, his expression brotherly and warm.
They looked…happy.
“She grew up with the Alesso boys,” said Lux. “She was close with the murdered one.” Close enough that someone skilled with a brush had painted them to permanence. Had then framed it and gifted it.
Shaw kept himself busy pulling at drawers. He knelt now to peer under the bed. “Who killed him?”
“Corvin didn’t say.”
“Ah. Meaning he did it.”
Lux huffed. “You’re so sure, are you?”
“It makes the most sense to me. Your brother wants to run a school of learning. You want to hoard knowledge and alter the truth to better suit yourself. Kill the brother. Take his place.”
Her brow furrowed. How quick he was to work through horrible theories. “If that were true, I don’t see why he’d have kept him preserved for revival. Even with a curse—”
She realized her mistake then.
Shaw stiffened like her remark had fused a rod to his spine. He stared at her. In the candlelight, his eyes had turned molten.
His voice, however, was frigid. “What did you say?”
You twit! her head shouted.
She’d planned to tell him. Obviously. But not right now. Not when they had other things to uncover, and there’d already been so much leveled at them. Lux replaced the frame.
She drew a deep breath. “His body was preserved after his death. Some alchemical nonsense that supposedly will allow him to be revived. If I go through with it.”
“If you go—Lux.”
She threw her hands up. “I know! I won’t. They said he unknowingly cursed them, and the only option for reversal is his blood.”
Shaw’s raised eyebrow bothered her more in the scant light. He looked at her like he couldn’t believe she’d ever trusted a word they’d told her. Well, she knew now, didn’t she?
“Maybe he did kill him,” she growled.
Do I tell him about the Stripping experiment? About their other offering and the title she’d overhead them use for her? Her eyes raked over his irritated frown.
Definitely not. Besides, she would never have agreed.
Her inner voice writhed. You didn’t agree to the rocks, it reminded her.
Lux eyed the dried flowers in their vases, the decayed plant matter in their pots. It seemed Riselda always held an appreciation for anything with roots. Yet, you left them to wither in your escape.
She wasn’t surprised, only curious. After all, Riselda always chose herself in the end. She couldn’t even die properly.
Another betrayal.
Her gaze flung to Shaw as a floorboard creaked. He held the loose board in one hand, the other holding the meager candle to the exposed space below.
“How did you find that?” she said incredulously.
“The edges were worn more than the rest—fingers have tugged on it often. But it’s empty except for this.”
He set down the board to show her a glinting coin—a silvdan.
“Riselda’s childhood hiding place? She increased her scale by quite a lot, didn’t she.”
He fitted the floor back together and rose to his feet. “Seems so.” He surveyed the room with one last practiced study. “I think this has been pretty well picked through. Apparently, they cared little for the clothes.” He toed a skirt at his feet.
“She would have hated seeing them like this.”
Lux hadn’t cared for clothes in a long time; so much as they were practical, she was satisfied. Of course, she hadn’t felt velvet on her skin then… She eyed the partially open door. “How much longer will that candle hold out?”
“Enough to get down the stairs.” Shaw came up behind her, sliding the coin into her palm and continuing to the door. His hand splayed across it; he pushed it farther open. “Saints above,” he muttered.
“What is it?” Lux hurried up to his back, her heart already thumping relentlessly.
Shaw pushed again on the door—it wouldn’t budge. “Books,” he said. “Everywhere.”
Her heart continued its quick pace, but for another reason now. She bent to duck beneath his outstretched arm. Once she stood in front of him, he held the candle out from her chest.
“Devil’s…”
Books were stacked in the hall. Flat on their covers and nearly to the ceiling on either side. A slim walkway had been created between the stacks, and Lux couldn’t see where it led. She stepped amongst them, plucking the candle from Shaw’s fingers as she did.
The hallway was mustier and held far more dust; it didn’t have the fresh air pouring in from a broken window like the bedroom. Lux trailed the flame’s light along the cobwebbed spines.
“Who would have thought,” Shaw said, and when he lifted his eyes they were bright with triumph. In his hands, he held a book. “Brilliant Brushstrokes.”
Lux’s eyes widened. Both at his luck and over the state of the book. It looked as if it would fall apart in his grip. “I can’t believe you found it in all this mess.”
“I hardly can either, but it feels real enough.” He flipped it open, even though she was sure he couldn’t read it in the shadows. “No devils. No saints,” he said after a few moments.
“I’d guess none of these have them. They look as old as my alcove does.”
Did, her mind corrected. That alcove was destroyed now, a tree root through its heart. And all the books and pages were gone. In the end, she’d only been able to save one. And in her biased opinion, it had been the most valuable. Regardless, the loss still smarted.
“Devil below, there are two of them.” Shaw picked up a second volume of Brilliant Brushstrokes for her to see. But when he did, a tear sounded. Lux gritted her teeth as the cover pulled free.
The remainder of the book plunked to the ground.
He swore and scooped it up. “One is enough, I suppose.”
“I think the collectors would agree.” One manipulated volume, which was then multiplied by a cold, uniformed printing press. “This cannot be the vault…can it?”
“I doubt it,” he said. “This seems more discarded than protected.”
Lux pressed to Shaw’s side in order to see the wounded book for herself. He gave it up, and it fell open to its middle in her palm.
This was how books were in her experience. Stained, wrinkled, torn, and with the unique script of whoever had written or replicated it. She couldn’t trace the page with her hands occupied, but she could imagine the feel. She placed it carefully back in the stack.
“They’re not collecting,” she said, staring down the darkened hall. “They’re stealing.”
“But not destroying. Why keep them at all, I wonder.”
“Corvin said the loss of any knowledge would be a travesty.”
“Yet they keep them piled in this place to grow mold and dust.”
Lux shrugged. She didn’t understand it either. The manor was certainly large enough. Could they really have hoarded so many books and manuscripts to require overflow into Grimrook House?
Maybe their vault is reserved for hoarding only silver things.
Maybe they didn’t care for books so much as they said.
“If you see a book of necromancy, grab that too,” she told him as she picked her way through the hallway again.
“You forget you have the only light.”
She yelped at his voice near her ear. He’d been well behind her just a moment ago. She swatted his arm, but he only smirked.
“Don’t worry,” he told her. “I’ll find another.” He set the book of art upon a random stack. Then he veered off through a door.
Lux huffed at his departure. His old skill in purloining rich trinkets and jewelry was on full display tonight, but she couldn’t begrudge him any of it.
In fact, she was jealous. The hidden ladder below her childhood home?
The tunnel beneath the mayor’s mansion? The manor mirror that was also a door?
All were found by accident. While she was somewhat stealthy, she hadn’t ever learned any skill in the art of details.
She still couldn’t fathom how she’d found the latch into Mothlock’s underground.
Lux wasn’t surprised when Shaw returned with more than a mere candlestick, but an entire candelabra. All five tapers were lit, and him grinning from behind it. She blew hers out and tossed it to the ground.
“A necromancy book, you say?”
She pursed her lips at him in response—only for her mouth to part when he grabbed her chin. He pressed another irritatingly fast kiss to them and made to let her go.
Lux gripped his wrist and held him there. Then she glared until his eyes widened with worry in the soft light. “That’s enough. If you don’t kiss me like you mean it, then don’t do it at all.”
Shaw’s expression faded into unreadability. Lux didn’t release him, and he didn’t try. She waited to see what he would say; she couldn’t even guess what it would be.
It was her turn for her eyes to widen, as he did not break her stare but set down the candelabra. His voice deepened. “That sounded remarkably like a dare, Necromancer.”
She feigned nonchalance, but really her heart was hammering and even her damnable skin had flushed. She shrugged. “Maybe it was.”
“I haven’t been goaded into a dare ever. I have nothing to prove.” His eyes dipped to her mouth. She could feel every point of pressure from his fingertips like a brand on her chin. “But I think I would like to argue this one.”
She only managed a meager gasp before his lips came down on hers.
Immediately, she thought, I’ve not kissed him enough.
This kiss, again, was new. Not desperate with looming despair, but wild, nonetheless.
He’d missed her. She could feel it everywhere.
His hand remained on her jaw and hers on his wrist, but his other had flattened against her lower back and held her flush against him. She wrapped her own around his neck.
Everything burned: her skin, her lips, her heart. He nipped her lip, and she moaned, deciding nothing else mattered. Not the society nor the madness. Neither Riselda nor lifeblood. She would stay here in this moment and be perfectly selfish.
But Shaw, damn him, was the least selfish person she knew—and he began to pull away.
She growled in annoyance and felt him smile against her mouth, drawing the sound in.
“I will always mean it,” he said, his lips brushing hers with the words. “Even if it’s brief. Or seemingly random. I will always mean it with you.”
“You’re a better person than me.”
He shook his head. “No. And you’ll prove it to yourself before this is done.” He leaned away at last, and also much too soon. His eyes delved into hers. “Shall we keep going?”
Lux opened her mouth to reply when a flicker caught at the edge of her vision. She turned toward it.
A second. A third.
A scraping—of a tinderbox.
At the end of the corridor, a wick burst aflame.
Lux’s heart ceased its hammering. It might have ceased beating altogether.
When the voice behind the candle said, “Welcome to my home, Lucena.”