Chapter 59
Chapter fifty-nine
“Bat wings. Black. Wyvern claws…dew only?” Aline snorted, tucking the list into her coat pocket. “If I’d have known it was going to be this particular—and this weird—I wouldn’t have volunteered to buy these things in Loxlen for you.”
“Yes, you would have,” said Lux, nodding at Cecily waiting by the gate. It was a new one, made of red Ravenwood trees, and strong enough to withstand the salt.
She waved away Aline and her grousing, and waved again at Sven in the driver’s seat. She turned her back once they’d climbed into the carriage.
Her glance swept over Mothlock, covered in deep-green vines and lit on either side of the doors by Aline’s new lamps.
The tower had been closed for repairs and so had the sanctum—Lars was a student of masonry and could only do so much on his own.
The manor was still imposing, but the foreboding she’d once felt was gone.
She walked along the graveyard path. With the guardian’s leech trimmed back, mushrooms had embraced the spring season, rising from around dark rocks. Everything smelled wet and earthy, with a hint of promised warmth and salt. Lux breathed it in.
She paused near the statue of a woman. It wasn’t on the path like Granville’s and Rosamund’s, but off in the garden.
Lux pivoted, stepping from the fitted stones onto mossy knolls and rocks.
She picked her way among the mushrooms and told the brambles to remember themselves before stopping in front of the carved creation.
RISELDA GRIMROOK
The House of Grimrook
The woman above the name was not filled with melancholy or despair, but a fierceness never to be sated—her eyes staring not at Lux, but upward.
Lux chewed at her lip. She’d debated giving Riselda a statue at all, but in the end, the woman was indeed her family, and Lux did not need to court more bad luck.
She did sneer though, as she said, “I swear I won’t clear anything off more than once a year.”
A flutter in the breeze announced an arrival. A crow landed upon Riselda’s head. Matching Lux’s height, it gnashed its beak then began to preen. A sleek, black feather cascaded to Riselda’s base.
“Hello, Crow. Don’t forget she’s the only one you’re allowed to perch on.”
The crow warbled back at her, some noise she couldn’t interpret, but the creature seemed content. It’d not bothered a single soul since that banquet night. She hoped it wouldn’t ever again have need to.
Lux left the bird there to attend its business and made her way to the gate. The narrow wooden door opened with only her touch after she’d reclaimed the deed, and she stepped through to the most breathtaking view.
She would never tire of this.
As she walked the path leading her home, she realized something.
That feeling in her chest had returned—not the lonely one or the anxious one, but the sense of perfect peace.
She would wake again tomorrow ready for a new adventure, even if that adventure was only to drink a cup of tea in the comfiest armchair beside the glow of a hearth.
Lux strode across the bridge and passed the garden wall, where she came upon a small cluster of stinging nettles.
The ribbon in her hair was midnight-blue and new, catching in the breeze, and her skirt was blue to match; she used the latter now to clutch the weeds, severing them by the stems. With her dagger, she cut free the seeds. They scattered in the soil.
She thought of her parents, and especially her mother. The woman who’d named her and raised her, and she said to the earth, “We must never take more than we give.”
Lux looked up to find Shaw standing in the ivy-covered doorway. With paint smeared on his nose and a teacup in his grip, he held the refurbished door wide for her. He was smiling.
And Lux could not believe that of all the paths her worn boots could have taken, her freedom had allowed her to choose this.
She smiled back, completely content, and hurried inside.