Chapter 25 #2
“And what do you see in all the mess?”
For a moment, Bram doesn’t look up. He sweeps a finger through the guts, making patterns and swirls in the red.
I recognize the lungs, the pink lump of stomach, the stilled heart, and lean forward to take it in my hands.
Maybe what happened with the rabbit heart was a fluke.
A cruel trick of my eyes. Something that shouldn’t have happened.
But the bitterbloom. The touch of my hand. A remembrance of life.
A hot pressure starts behind my eyes, a tightening in my chest that makes me want to drop the thing, go back to Clara, take her home.
And then—a gentle thud.
My breath quickens.
“Bram, are you seeing this?” I don’t look up at him, just keep my gaze fixed on the beating organ.
“Gods below and above.” His voice is a whisper at my ear.
The heart contracts in my palm, like organ bellows. And then the blood on the floor begins to move. It creeps like a creature, sucking up each drop spilled, each organ ripped from the cavity of the rat. It crawls between Bram’s swift cut until all that is left is the heart in my hand.
With fingers shaking, I place the heart near the corpse. Still beating, it inches its way across the floor until it too disappears between the bones and sinew. Bram and I fall away, the bell clattering in my pocket.
Slowly, the slit in the rat’s stomach sews itself back together, fur fusing. My stomach wretches. My hands burn when the thing moves to its feet, eyes glinting in the light of the fire. It bares wicked fangs at Bram, and Rascal bays.
“Adelaide, what’s happening? What’s wrong?”
I do not look up at Clara’s voice, only hold out a hand. What even is there to say? My own pounding heart presses into my ears until I can barely form thoughts. My breathing comes short and quick, and panic seeps into my gut. Bram’s hand folds around mine, still warm, but now bloodless.
“Adelaide, breathe. It’s all going to be all right.”
Nothing about this is all right, I want to scream.
My mother is made up of pieces of all the dead women from home.
Young women who have been missing for years.
And Ransom is part of it. How or why, I don’t know.
I picture his face. His real face. The sharp line of his jaw, the hard blue of his eyes, the way his hands pressed against my hips that first night in the garden.
The garden that smelled of…bitter lemons.
My eyes snap open. “It’s him,” I whisper. “It’s been Ransom all this time.”
“Doing what?” Bram seeks my face for an answer, but I push myself to my feet and run to Clara.
“Is Liza still alive? When you left, when you followed Ransom and me through the door, was Liza still alive?”
Clara’s face twists, and tears leak down her cheeks.
“Yes, she was. I kissed her before I left, told her I had to run an errand. It was a lie. I just wanted to figure out what Lord Bl—Ransom—was up to. And when I saw him with you, I didn’t know what to think.
I had to know what was going on, and then—” Her eyes go hazy, like steam on glass.
She looks up at me and sweat breaks out at the base of my neck.
“I didn’t follow just you and Ransom through that door. I followed someone—something—else.”
My skin stills, and I reach for the bell. It is so cold. Colder than it has ever been. It cuts a line against my palm. I crouch down beside the pew and place a hand on her knee. “Can you remember what this something looked like?”
The expression in her eye is like something out of a nightmare. The kind of thing that has you waking up in a pool of your own sweat, hot to the touch but shivering in a kiss of air. She blinks, nods slowly.
“Yes, I can remember what it looked like.”
I wait for her to continue, but her eyes go blank, as though her soul has vanished and all that is left is a shell of bone and flesh.
“Clara?” Bram’s voice is soft above us.
Her eyes lift to him, and a shadow crosses her face. “Wait. You said your name was Bram. Bram Avery.” She scuttles back in the pew, realization echoing across her features. “How is it you? You’re supposed to be dead. I watched them bury you.”
I know that fear, the stuff that bubbles like tar in the pit of her stomach, and I hurry into the seat beside her, a hand steady on her knee, if just to keep her grounded.
“Clara, it’s all right. He’s not here to hurt you. If anything, he’s been helping. I came here to bring him home.”
Her eyes shift between us, a rabbit caught in a trap. She buries her head in her hands, rocks back and forth. Her ribs expand with crooked breaths. I stare at her, notice the rips on her bodice, the stains on her skirt.
For so long, I was alone. For too long, I washed my own wounds, bandaged the cuts and bruises left by my father’s ropes.
Afraid of how people would react when they saw my blood, already believing I was cursed by Erybrus.
For the shadow. And then there was hope—just a glimmer, but enough to make me take the damned bell in my hand and ring it.
Now, the truth is that my mother is gone, just a thing of death and darkness.
I might no longer be able to save her, but I can save Bram. I can bring the three of us back home.
I press my hand harder around Clara’s knee, slow her rocking. “Can you remember who you followed through the door?”
She stops moving. A moment passes, and the wind rattles the doors of the church. A low growl rumbles at the back of Rascal’s throat, and Bram puts a hand on my back.
Haunts.
I move closer to Clara. “Whoever it was, you can tell me.”
Silence. Stinging, blistering quiet. She lifts her head.
“He was normal at first, dressed like any other man in the village. But just as you and Ransom slipped through that door, something changed.” Her face wanes.
“It started in his hair, a twist of knots and tangles that quickly turned to shadow. They grew down from his shoulders like wings, a cape as dark as the night sky. He turned around then, didn’t see me.
But I saw him and…” Her fingers strike out, wrap tightly across my own. “I knew him, Addie.”
My breath sticks hot, sweat skimming the surface of my skin. “Who was it, Clara? Who did you see?”
“It was your father, Adelaide. It was Vicar Thorn.”