Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
Sleep eluded Poppy as she sat near the window with her wrapper drawn close around her, watching nothing in particular.
Beyond the glass, there was only darkness and the blurred grounds.
Somewhere in that darkness stood the fortress where Aurora and Princess slept under the nanny’s care. And she knew that Hector was awake too.
Poppy endured his silence and all the things he refused to say, as well as all the things she had been too cautious to ask. She had spent the day telling herself that patience was kindness. But by midnight, the thought had curdled into cowardice.
Poppy deserved at least one honest conversation. She deserved it because she had stood beside him, and he had let her stand there without ever telling her whether he meant to remain.
She rose from her bed with a huff. Her feet found the floorboards quietly. She had not decided what she would say first. Perhaps nothing prepared would survive the sight of him. Hector had a way of reducing speech to its barest truth, even when he himself spoke around his own.
She reached the door and set her fingers on the latch when a scream resounded. It was high, jagged, and unmistakably Aurora’s.
Poppy moved before she fully understood. The door struck the wall behind her, and she gathered her skirts in both hands and ran into the passage. The house, moments ago, was heavy with silence, but now it seemed to fracture around the sound.
Another scream tore through the night.
“Aurora!” Poppy called, though the child could not possibly hear her from here.
A door opened ahead, and Hector emerged from the dark, tall and disordered, his cane already in his hand. He turned toward the sound with the instant focus of a man who had spent years learning to listen for danger.
“Poppy?” he called.
“It is Aurora.”
He did not ask any questions. He just ran beside her.
Poppy followed him through the corridors. Hector moved quickly despite the dark, his cane tapping hard, his body angled forward.
The chamber doors opened before they reached them, and a servant stood pale in lamplight.
Inside, the urgency sharpened. Footsteps shuffled, and low voices followed by the thin, frightened cry of Princess filled her ears.
Annabelle then appeared from a side passage with the baby held close against her shoulder.
“She woke them both,” she said, breathless. “I have Princess, Your Grace. Miss Aurora is—”
Another sobbing cry came from the room beyond.
Poppy slipped past her, with Hector following her.
Aurora sat upright in the bed; she looked small beneath the twisted blankets, her hair was loose around her face, and her cheeks were wet. She had both fists pressed to her mouth as though trying to hold in the next scream and failing. When she saw Poppy, she reached out at once.
“P-Poppy—”
“I am here.” Poppy crossed to her. “You are safe, darling. It was a dream.”
Aurora shook her head so hard her whole small body trembled. “I saw her.”
Poppy sat on the edge of the bed and took the child’s hands. “Whom did you see?”
Aurora’s breath hitched. “M—”
The room stilled.
Poppy felt Hector stop behind her soundlessly.
Aurora looked from Poppy to Hector, then down at the blanket. “My real mother.”
Poppy’s fingers tightened around the child’s.
“Oh, Aurora.”
“She was there,” Aurora whispered. “And then she was gone again.”
Hector moved to the other side of her.
Poppy expected Aurora to draw back, but the child had trusted him in careful increments, with the grave courtesy of the very young toward an adult they had not yet decided to love.
But he approached her slowly, making sure his movement announced itself, and when he reached the bed, he lowered himself beside Poppy with a gentleness that made the mattress barely shift.
“Aurora,” he said.
His voice was stripped of its command. Softer than Poppy had ever heard it. Aurora looked up at him, and Hector held out his arms. For one breath, no one moved. Then Aurora leaned into him.
Poppy let her go, and Hector gathered the little girl against his chest as if she were breakable and precious beyond speech. Aurora clutched at his shirt and buried her face there. Her sobs came smaller now, worn thin by fright.
“I saw Mama,” she said again.
“I know.” Hector’s hand rested on the back of her head. “I know.”
Aurora sniffed. “Did you know her?”
Hector’s eyes closed. When they opened, their pale gray seemed almost colorless in the lamplight. “No, I never knew her. But I wish I did. All I knew was that her name was Rose, and I believe that is the most perfect name for the most perfect mother and sister.”
Aurora lifted her head a little and sniffed. “She was perfect. She was the best mama. She always smiled, and even when she got sick, she laughed and played with us.”
Hector smiled at her softly. “She sounded incredible.”
Aurora’s eyes lit up as she remembered the details of her mother. “She was. Why did you not visit us, Uncle Hector?”
Poppy looked away, but only for a moment. She could not leave him alone with such a question.
To her surprise, Hector answered without hesitation. “My father hid her existence, and I discovered the truth about her, you, and Princess only after finding a letter from your mother.”
Aurora studied him, reassured by the certainty, if not the words. She shifted against him, exhausted now that the worst of the terror had passed. Her lashes were damp. Her small hand remained clenched in his shirt.
Aurora’s eyes had already begun to close. “If you came… maybe you could have saved Mommy.”
Poppy watched the change in Hector. How his tall body bent so carefully around the child and became rigid. His face gave nothing away, but the absence itself was terrible. She could see the question enter him and find a home among wounds already there.
“Hector,” she said quietly.
He did not seem to hear.
Aurora sighed, her grip loosening. She nestled closer, trusting the very man she had just wounded without knowing it. Several moments passed before anyone spoke. From the corridor came the faint murmur of Annabelle soothing Princess. The lamp flame moved once, then steadied.
At last, Hector lowered Aurora back onto the pillows. He did it carefully, with the precision of a man returning something sacred. Aurora barely stirred. Her mouth parted on a soft breath.
Poppy drew the blanket up over Aurora.
Hector rose.
“Are you all right?” Poppy asked.
He turned his head toward her. For a moment, she thought he might answer honestly. His face was nearer now, and she saw what his control had cost him.
“I should leave,” he said.
“No.” She kept her voice low for Aurora’s sake. “There is no need.”
“I should.”
“She settled with you. Perhaps you could stay a little while. For her.”
His jaw tightened. “I am sorry.”
“Hector—”
“I must go.”
He stepped back from the bed, then turned too quickly. His cane leaned where he had left it near the chair, but he did not reach for it. Poppy noticed the omission at once, absurdly small amid everything else, and for that reason alarming.
“Hector, your—”
He was already at the door.
She looked at Aurora. The child slept, one hand curled beside her face. Poppy touched her hair once, then rose. She took Hector’s cane from beside the chair and followed him.
The house had no shape.
Hector knew that was not true. He knew every passage, every turn from the entrance to the stairs, every distance measured in steps and memory.
He knew the slight unevenness of the floor near the western corridor.
He knew where the wall narrowed before the arch.
He knew how long it took the air to cool after the outer door shut behind him.
But without the cane in his hand, knowledge failed to become certainty.
The darkness pressed close. It robbed the familiar of edges.
His sight, useless for fine detail even in daylight, gave him only masses and shadows.
At night, it offered less than comfort. The house belonged to him.
It had his name, his servants, his rooms. Still, for the first time, he felt lost inside his own home.
He stopped with one hand against the wall.
The plaster was cool beneath his palm. That should have steadied him. It did not.
If you came… maybe you could have saved Mommy.
The words had been drowsy. Unmeant. A child trying to understand the cruel arithmetic of absence. He had no right to resent them. He did not resent them. He feared instead how naturally they had found the truth.
A sound came from behind him. Light steps, quick but not careless.
Poppy.
He turned too sharply and misjudged the space. His shoulder brushed the wall. He hated that she saw it. Hated more that he needed the wall at all.
“Hector,” she said.
Her voice was close enough that he could locate her by it. A few paces away. Breathing slightly fast from following him. She had meant to confront him; he heard it in the first syllable, in the effort she made not to let anger lead.
“You cannot keep—”
She stopped.
He wondered what she had seen. His hand was on the wall. His empty fingers. The way he had gone still, because another step might carry him into furniture he should have known was there.
When she spoke again, the edge had gone from her voice.
“You forgot this.”
He did not reach out.
“Keep it,” he said.
“It is your cane.”
“I know what it is.”
“Then take it.”
He laughed once. It was a poor sound. “There. You see? Even this house becomes strange to me if I am foolish enough to leave a room without a stick in my hand.”
“You were upset.”
“I am always upset about something. It has become a talent.”
“That is not what I meant.”
“No. You meant to be kind.” He turned his face away from her voice. “You are always kind.”