Chapter 26
twenty-six
Red bleeds through the stained glass like an open wound.
I lie on the cot, staring at the ceiling, while Rascal bays in the nave.
One night has come and gone, and the Haunts have left us alone, though the church is no longer consecrated ground.
I think of Ransom, his soul already sold to my mother before we even stepped foot into the rowan wood, and something inside me cracks.
The part that thought I could fix him, piece him back together.
But maybe I only broke him a little bit more.
From the stained-glass windows, the Haunts are seen eddying at the edges of the blackened River Thine, like buoys awaiting a storm. The sight chills my bones.
Clara stays near the altar to Ithrandril at the front of the church, a makeshift bed of dusty blankets, with her cloak perched atop it like a nest. She says the closer to the father of light she is, the safer she will be from the Haunts. But I do not think the god is in this place.
Here, a different power is at work. Something that morphs my parents into monster and monster alike. One of shadows, one of stolen faces.
This might not be Hell itself, but Erybrus’s presence is palpable here. A taste like rotten wine in my throat.
The patterns on the ceiling contort while I watch them.
Knots in the wood becoming eyes of those I once knew.
Frances Gordon, the girl Rixton buried when I was all but four.
Dinah Bo, the postman’s daughter, who Mother always said had the most beautiful, rosebud lips.
And then Rosalyn Eckers. Hair like copper, eyes wide and weeping blood, screaming empty sound from an open mouth, a strangely stained tongue when they brought her body up from the banks of the river.
The way her skin had been peeled and removed from her right arm. The patterns of freckles broken.
Bile bubbles in my mouth, and I sit up violently, swallowing as much of it as I can. I wince as the sourness slips back to my stomach and look down at my hands. The cut on my thumb is still raw and red. So much death, so much blood, and for what?
Eternal life, Mother said. But the words had come from the lips of another, a body made up from pieces she took. Pieces she had killed and stolen for. And somehow convinced Ransom to do the same.
My back itches, the stays of this tight gown still rigid against my skin.
I miss my plaid wool, the softness, familiarity, and smell of home.
Wheat fields, crisp leaves, and frost thawing in the autumn sun.
There is a sudden heaviness in my pocket, and I reach for the bell, feel its harsh ridges against my thumb.
In the bloody light, it looks like such a little thing. Part of me wants to crush it. Place it beneath the heel of my boot and hear it shatter. Watch the metal snap. But then Clara and I would be trapped here forever. Bram too. Haunted by things of my mother’s making.
My shoulders slacken at the thought. How long has she been the one poisoning the tongues of Rixton girls and wearing their flesh? My blood runs cold, and I feel the whisper of her soft hands on my hair when she tucked me into bed. Soft and lovely and smelling of lemons.
My stomach twists. Did I ever truly know her? Or is she just another part of me that is a lie?
I twist the bell. If I destroy it, I might never know the truth and put it to rest. I will be hunted by a man who is so broken he doesn’t even recognize himself in a mirror. He has already stolen too many faces.
Lilith Corley.
Hester Samuels.
Liza would have been next—I am sure of it.
I slip the bell back into my pocket when the doors to the vestry creak. Bram’s face peeks from the opposite side, a smudge of ash above his brow.
“Fire’s finally lit. Took it a while, with the wood being wet and all.” He shivers.
Outside the tiny window, snowflakes dance through the colored haze.
Midwinter is upon us. Back home, the wheat and rye will be piled in Farmer Whitley’s barns, the apples picked for pies at the bakery.
I shudder against the thin fabric of my gown, wishing I could rip it off my body and replace it with something warm. Something sturdy.
“Are you cold?” Bram crosses the room in easy strides, shrugging out of his jacket.
“No.” I raise a palm. “I’ll just sit by the fire. Keep your coat.” I try to move past him, but he doesn’t budge.
Here in the dull light, he is so solid and real it almost hurts.
Part of me is afraid that, if I reach out and touch him, he will vanish into a cloud of dust. Another part of me wants nothing more than to hold him, to feel him against me.
The pattern my fingers would form against the splay of each and every bone and know they are his.
That he is who he says he is. Not something with the face of one thing and the soul of someone sold to shadow.
Just himself. Bram Avery. The man who read books in the apple orchards and woke up dead in a place he didn’t know, with a bitter taste in his mouth.
My hands snap to my sides. I sit back on the cot, heavy and placid. Bram comes beside me, placing a palm on my shoulder.
“Adelaide, what is it?”
The pieces are fitting together, and I plead with them to stop. I want their edges to turn sharp again so that no matter which way I turn them, they will only get messier. But they click perfectly.
Dead girls. A poisoned man. White flowers. The bitter taste.
Tears cloud my vision when I turn to him. His eyes are like sunlight through amber while I study his gentle face.
“You were ill before you died. Do you remember from what?”
His face darkens a moment, turns to stone. He drops his hand, flexes it in his lap. “That’s not the question I thought you were going to ask.”
“It’s not the question I want to be asking, Bram.” My fingers weave through his, drawing him closer. “But I need you to tell me the answer.”
I am not sure if it is the desperation in my voice or the fact that things cannot get much worse than they already are that makes him sigh and turn to me, shoveling a hand through his disheveled dark curls.
“It wasn’t a natural illness. In the last day of it all, when my lungs filled with fluid and my skin turned ashen, I knew the truth. ”
“The truth of what?”
His throat bobs. “It was poison. My mother bought a tincture from down in the village market for my bruises. It took me a few days to realize what was happening, but by the time I did, it was too late.” He grits his teeth. “I’d seen something, something I wasn’t supposed to see.”
“What did you see?” I cup his jaw in my palm, watching warmth begin to seep into his skin.
“A woman coming up from the churchyard, a body slung between her arms. I didn’t see who it was, not really.
But the next day, I went to church, and by the following day, I was here.
Dead. Given my choice. But I chose not to choose.
How could I when—” His eyes turn haunted, ghosts of his past masquerading there as memory.
“I watched my own funeral, you know? What a terrible thing it was. No one told any good stories.”
A smile cracks on my lips. I don’t want to think about who the woman was. What she might have been doing with a body ripped from hallowed earth. I lift a hand to Bram’s arm.
“The village mourned for you, Bram. Everyone felt your loss. Your mother didn’t leave Avery Manor for months, and when she finally did, she was all skin and bone. She hardly comes into the village, even now—”
“I know.” Bram’s voice is soft as downy feathers.
“I watch her and my sisters sometimes. They’re all so old now.
Isabel is set to be married in the spring, to a coppersmith from Kinnington.
” There is a catch to his voice, and I fight the urge to take him into my arms right here and now.
He clears his throat. “Somedays, all I dream about is going back home, being a part of it all.” He steps away, looks down at his hands.
“But how can I, really? I’m a walking dead thing, Adelaide. They’ll think I’m a monster.”
I observe the man in front of me. The man with so much life it hurts. Who holds the dying in his hands and sees stars. Who stood afraid and broken before me and asked to be brought back home. There can be no monster in something so beautiful.
I take his hands in mine, pull him close until I smell the lifeblood rushing through his drying veins. Ink and strong tea and old books. I trace the lines of his palm, raise my eyes to his.
“You are not a monster, Bram Avery.”
He dips his brow low, his voice deep and soft as crushed velvet. “Are you flirting with me or trying to start a fight?”
My smile widens. I lift a hand to his jaw. Once more, warmth is spreading. He makes a sound at the back of his throat that lights a fire in my belly.
“Why not both?”
He closes the gap between us in a single movement, lips coming to mine.
My stomach flutters, a thousand bumblebees trapped against the viscera.
Bram lifts me in his arms and spreads me out on the cot, as though I am as light as air.
The red light streaming in through the window paints him in hues of caramel, his irises like fire.
Here, in this place, his armor is cast down. Destroyed. I can read every thought on his face, every desire and need. His hand comes to peel away my sleeve, lips tracing the line of my collarbone. I suck in air, fear boiling in my belly.
With Ransom, it was all heady and rushed and hot. There was no love in it. Only wicked, suffocating desire. An all-consuming forest fire. Control and power and the need to have me. To own me. To make me his so he could raise himself, become as strong as Mother.
But with Bram, his fingers gently rake my sides, and I shudder. He is nothing but frosty mornings. Hearthside with a wool blanket, a mug of tea, a tattered and well-worn book. Bram is winter on a window, ice like patterns of lace.
“Bram,” I whisper, throat choked with an emotion I cannot name.