Chapter 41
Chapter forty-one
Grimrook House possessed only a fraction of the rooms of Mothlock; Riselda left them behind for a different one. She didn’t tell them where she went, but the candlelight slowly diminished down the main floor’s corridor.
The light winked out of existence, and Lux frowned. Shaw had bodily blocked her sight. His knuckle nudged beneath her chin, and she obliged, tilting her face to meet his. “Yes?”
The intensity of his gaze, she expected. She didn’t expect the compassionate sheen.
His eyes were glassy when he said, “You don’t have to continue with this, I hope you realize. Not for me. Definitely not for her. She’s put you through horrors, Lux, and she will again without a thought. You know anything she’d have you assist her in will benefit her and her alone.”
Lux blinked up at him. More rapidly when she saw the tears gather despite his best efforts. They did not fall, but it was a near thing. Her heart tugged, tethered to his. “I know all of that.”
“Do you? Because I know you. I’ve seen you despondent, struggling to remember your dreams. I watched the moment you went from wanting nothing but a brush of sunlight to realizing you deserved to try for it all. I can’t allow you to fall back into old habits now. I will not allow it.”
In response, Riselda’s revelation rattled from the dark where Lux had forced it. It wanted to be freed. To overwhelm her. Her impulse was to bury it deeper.
But instinct told her that wasn’t wise. That she had this boy—man, he’d correct—and he cared for her deeply.
Would listen to anything she would tell him.
He was opinionated, it was true, but not stubborn.
Here was a person she could trust with everything she would otherwise shove into the darkest depths.
Lux drew a slow breath and cringed at its shaking.
“That confession of hers felt like it wrecked something. Only, I’m not sure what yet, and I don’t have time to check.
I knew I wasn’t born to my parents. But I never could have guessed that.
” Lux gestured wildly down the hall. “Whatever legacy her family has, I cannot survive being a part of it. I don’t want to end up like her, but what if I have no choice? ”
The quiet grew around them before Shaw spoke.
“Even if your tendencies run the same, you always have a choice. Maybe it’ll be hard.
Maybe more than that. But you know what it feels like to come out on the other side.
And you can lean on me. I might not have worthwhile advice to give each time, but I promise to always listen. I swear I’ll never let you fall.”
Lux stared up at him, her lips parted, a confession of her own on her tongue. But something clanged from deep in the house, and it shook her enough that she said instead, “I should have helped Aline that day. I shouldn’t have left you to die.”
“I didn’t mind so much.” Shaw wrapped her up against him.
Her ear lay perfectly positioned over his heart; the steady beat lulled her at once.
He was so solid—and she did not mean only physically.
With his arms tensed and draped fully around her so she couldn’t so much as slouch, she understood just how strongly he stood by his declaration.
His loyalty to his family and those who’d been wronged, she had witnessed. She was blessed indeed to realize it applied to herself too.
“We’re not good enough. Not for anyone. Definitely not for him.”
Rotted nails snaked around Shaw’s bicep from behind.
Lux shuddered in his embrace. It isn’t real. It’s a nightmare. Only a nightmare. But the words rang hollow in wake of what she saw.
Half her face, sallow and decaying, peered around him. “Hear all that he promises to give us? What will we give him in return? Another Grimrook with greedy blood. We will only take. We will kill him a thousand ways. We will leave him with nothing!”
Lux gasped in pain and terror both, burying herself in Shaw’s chest.
“Devil below,” she whimpered. “I can’t do this.”
Shaw’s temple lowered to hers. “Do what?”
Lux’s eyes scrunched closed. She did know what it was like on the other side. How freeing. To be back in that wagon, a butterfly in her palm. She yearned for that contentment desperately. That excitement for the days ahead.
She wanted to believe Shaw—that she wasn’t broken.
That she’d only ever been buried beneath the rubble of an unfair life.
It had been easier to hope in her bedchamber, warm from the fire and the relief of seeing him.
It was harder now, knowing such deep-rooted wickedness had also grown inside her since her conception.
Though the nightmare plaguing her steps now was likely a twisted use of brilliance, it didn’t negate the fact hers still was wrong.
This rotting version of her had only ever regurgitated her own fears. Granted, they were much harsher and infinitely more terrifying when delivered this way, but they were still familiar. Was she good enough?
She didn’t know.
Lux’s jaw clenched, a desperate determination building again within. She must be through with allowing fears to stand in her way of finding out. If she was not good enough, it would be proven before the end of this, and if she was unsalvageably rotten—well, she’d sever Shaw free.
Before she rotted him too.
“We must break into the vault,” she and Riselda said in unison.
Riselda stared at Lux afterward, a tilt to her lips. Meanwhile Lux withered inside and wished for something to purge the connection between them. Perhaps there were curses to sever familial ties…
“It is late,” continued Riselda. “We’ll need something to keep us going.” She spun away from them in the strange half-glass room and swished a decanter as delicately as a teacup. “How do you like my conservatory?” she asked.
Lux met Shaw’s narrowed eyes. His jaw tensed and he scowled down his nose at her. They’d argued.
He wanted them to leave Riselda behind.
Lux wanted that too, but couldn’t.
He’d contended they’d managed just fine as a pair in Ghadra.
She’d reminded him she had to leave him to torture, and the aftermath almost mentally murdered her.
She’d won—clearly. Because though he fumed, he couldn’t deny her final point: Riselda knew where the vault was. They did not. And time, she’d learned long ago, wasn’t something to be squandered.
“It’s very…” Lux trailed as she caught sight of the same vines growing over the manor clinging to the rafters here. The blooms were many, more vibrant, and they hung nearly low enough to brush Shaw’s head.
Half the ceiling above them was clear. Lux could see straight through to the moon and stars, and the cool light mixing with the assortment of candlesticks granted the room an eerie ambiance. The vast majority of the candles burned atop Riselda’s workspace.
“…exposed,” she finished.
Riselda’s head lifted to gaze out the wide windows beyond her. The sea was especially wild tonight; the cresting waves glistened like ice. She said, largely wistful, “This was my favorite room of the house. It hurt to leave it.”
Riselda whirled with the decanter in hand, and in the other, she held a short glass. She poured a small amount and held it to her nose. “For energy.” Then she downed its contents.
She poured another and held it out. Not to Lux, but to Shaw. “Cheers, Cock—”
“Enough, Riselda.”
Riselda bit back a grin. “To our resourceful Mr. Roser. A pretty face and a talent: quite an unheard-of combination. For a man.”
Lux thought he would refuse it even as his eyes were begging for rest, but he surprised her. He accepted the glass and tossed the elixir back in a single swallow. He held it out to Riselda.
Who accepted it with a smile. The woman knew what she was doing, Lux must admit. If she’d offered it first to Lux, Shaw would have surely protested her drinking it. He didn’t have the same sense of preservation for himself—she’d known this since discovering why he’d died.
“And lastly.” A splash of liquid met the glass and extended toward her. Lux took it, but she didn’t drink. She sniffed it instead.
“What do you smell?”
Lux stiffened at the question, as it was one Riselda had asked repeatedly when she had been considered family and tutor both. When they’d thought Lux’s fascination with the body was a healer’s mark rather than a necromancer’s.
And same as then, Lux was not a discerning sort. “It smells sweet. Some sort of berry.”
“Dried mulberries, yes.”
In her periphery, she noted Riselda appeared to be her normal self, and Shaw too. He stood a little straighter, some of the tiredness leaving his posture. Lux swallowed the elixir. It was thin and light. She rid herself of the glass.
By the time she did, a fog she hadn’t realized dulled her head had evaporated. Her eyes widened at the feel of it.
“Good. Now that we are all alert for the coming long hours, I have a key. Let’s see if it still fits, shall we?”