Chapter 22
Twenty-Two
- MARCELLA -
When I return to my room after the ball and slip off my shoes, a note slides across the tiles from underneath my door.
We need to talk. Come to me.
Please.
-C
I pace about my room barefoot, staring down at his words. My heart and mind are a swirl of murky waters. I need to speak to Lyra tonight at midnight in her room. Alone. Away from listening ears. I need to know what she discussed with Cyrus in the reflection room.
But do I ignore Cyrus’ call for me?
He likely feels guilty about the situation with my brother.
Perhaps wants to talk it through. But I’m still reliving my past as it comes to me in waves.
Raw. Unprocessed once again. I’m scrambling over myself to pick up the pieces of my broken memories and put them together to understand.
It’s unfair that he has all the memories I don’t.
I slide my gaze to the door, wondering if Devin waits on the other side to escort me to Cyrus.
If I see that fool’s face one more time…I’ll find a way to punish him for whatever he did to me, weapon or not.
Glaring at the door as I pull away from it, I decide if it is him waiting for me on the other side, I simply won’t go.
I stalk to the bathroom to undo my hair from the pinned curls. Shaking them loose, I toss the pins onto the counter, then pause.
Slowly, I pluck one of the pins, holding it up in the light.
Perhaps I can pick Lyra’s bedroom lock with this. As I twist it, a coy smile comes to my cheeks.
Yes, this will do. And I won’t even have to chance knocking in the event it gets unwanted attention.
I slip it back to pin a section of hair behind my ear. Then lean forward on the counter to get a better look at my reflection. The cut beneath my eye is almost gone. As I touch a fingertip to it, I barely feel the raised skin.
Odd. Perhaps they mixed something in the wine to speed up our healing process. I had three…wait. Maybe four? Four glasses at dinner?
While I normally can hold my liquor quite well, there’s a soft edge to my mind. Only noticeable if I focus hard enough on it.
I leave the bathroom and assess the position of the moon outside. Waiting until it climbs higher before I move for the door.
Opening it a few inches, I find the hallway empty. Sticking my head out slowly, I survey the shadowed walkways, freezing to pick up any subtle movements. But nothing stirs.
I look down to the left. Into the direction I need to take for Lyra’s room. Then I glance to the right down the hallway that would lead me to Cyrus’ office.
We need to talk. Come to me.
Please.
Despite the tone being hard to determine through text, Cyrus’ letter felt…desperate. Pleading.
Urgent.
Though, I can’t help the irritation spiking in me that he’s requesting me so late after such a taxing day. As if the trials weren’t enough—an elimination and a ball, all within the same day?
It has to be important. Cyrus isn’t a man who is selfish or unthinking.
Slowly, I slip out of my room, quietly closing the door behind me. Freezing underneath the pull toward both directions. After a moment I take a step down the hall toward Lyra’s room.
A high-pitched ring sounds in the distance. So light at first, I have to pause and wait for it to ring again. Three strikes of a bell, growing louder and louder.
The dinner bell?
The bell builds into a distant echo coming from the direction of where I’d need to take to get to Lyra’s room.
Lady Bethany will have my head if she catches me out so late. Especially unaccompanied. She knows I’m here to spy on the other women, but it doesn’t mean she likes me.
Abandoning my plan of visiting Lyra first, I slip off in the opposite direction.
Down the halls toward Cyrus’ office. The light ring of the dinner bell fades into the distance.
I’m grateful for the rugs to keep my feet warm as I stalk about barefooted.
Perhaps I ought to ask Cyrus for a pair of shoes that aren’t heels for instances such as tonight.
I get to his office, but when I turn the handle, the door doesn’t budge. Tossing a look over my shoulder, I try with a bit more force.
It’s locked.
I press my ear up to the door, listening for Cyrus or anyone else on the other side. But when there’s nothing, I slink back, brows pinched.
Why summon me and not wait? Perhaps he thought I wouldn’t show?
A thought slithers into my mind.
Go in. Go in, now.
Staring at the details carved into the wood, I want to fight against it. But the pull for answers to questions I might not yet know urges me forward. Taking the hairpin from behind my ear, I insert it into the lock. Twist and wiggle it, until eventually…
Click.
The lock springs free.
I glance over my shoulder one last time before slipping into the dark office and quietly close the door.
Immediately there’s a rush of anxiety that pulses over me.
Like I shouldn’t be here. Alone, anyway.
As I walk closer to the window until my eyes adjust to the darkness, I scan his desk.
Tons of papers, letters, and books are scattered across it.
I don’t know what I’m looking for. Only that there’s something here—something that beckons me like an unseen hand.
I should feel guilty about going through his things. Yet…my guilt has been bled dry after the trials.
I need answers.
There’s one folded letter in the center of his desk. Positioned right in front of his chair. A spill of dark ink stretches out away from it, staining some of the other papers, with a quill sitting in the pool.
I grab the letter, and within the first bend I unfold, the top of the letter that it’s addressed to makes me pause.
Marcella,
I open it the rest of the way and loosen a breath.
It’s blank. A small line where the first paragraph is started before it wavers. Like he began to write something before he stopped.
I toss it back onto the desk with a sigh.
Then begin to rummage among the rest of the letters and books on his desk. As I brush some of them around, my fingertips glide against something rugged. When I shift the clutter out of the way, my heart slows.
Five deep gouges scar the wood. Five gouges that look like claw marks.
I back up until my shoulders bump against the window behind me. As I survey the rest of the room, looking for signs of struggle or death, I find nothing. Everything is in pristine order, just as it has been the previous times I’ve come here.
Except I get caught on one thing. On that spill of ink.
Black.
The darkness of which reminds me of something—something so close I nearly lean off the window toward it. Like I can break through the walls in my head and remember.
The wall of ice in my skull creaks, then cracks. A small glimmer of a memory slips through.
Cyrus’ back is to me, his head low as he faces the office window. Arms crossed over his chest. He sighs, “Agnes saw it.”
I lean up out of the armchair, swinging my boots off the ottoman onto the floor so I can stand and walk toward Cyrus. “She saw what, exactly?”
Devin interjects, “That blood will fill the halls.”
I roll my eyes at Devin. He’s always kept Cyrus safe—but often to the point of detriment.
Agnes is not allowed to be in the same room as Cyrus, so it means trusting in Devin or Cyrus’ other advisors to share the exact translation.
“That’s vague. You can’t possibly assume it means Cyrus will be dead.
Perhaps the castle will come under attack—”
“Black blood, Marcella,” Devin hisses through his teeth.
It undoes the kernel of doubt I’m holding onto in my chest. I stop mid-step, a few paces from Cyrus. “You’re sure of it?” I ask quietly, ignoring Devin and staring straight at Cyrus.
He shakes his head, shoulders dropping even lower. “She’s a Dark Seer. It’s not her imagination—it’s the future. It’s truth.”
The memory is whisked away, and I’m left staring at that pool of black ink. Emptiness in my chest.
What was he writing to me, then?
I search the rest of the desk, pulling open drawers when an object catches my eye in one.
A long pointed object wrapped in blue velvet lies in wait. As I wrap my fingers around it and lift it, I already know what it is long before I take off the cover.
A dagger. The handle is elaborately carved to perfection, with green and red jewels glimmering in the golden hilt. I flip it over, running a finger from the tip of the blade down to the details etched in the metal.
My heart stops.
MB is carved into the center of the hilt. Small, but there.
My dagger. Marcella Briarstone’s. No wonder it has such a comforting presence, such a familiar weight.
I sift through the rest of the drawers, hoping to find some sort of sheath. When I find nothing, I close the drawers.
How can I possibly carry this discreetly?
Pulling in a quick breath, I slice off a strip of my underskirts then wrap and secure the fabric around my thigh before sliding in the dagger. That’ll do for now.
As I glance behind me, the moon is nearing the midnight mark. Lyra. I slip out of the office, feeling a tad more secure with the dagger strapped to my thigh. As I tiptoe down the hall back to our rooms, a woman’s scream rips out across the silence.
I slam myself back against a wall, dropping down when I realize the mirrors lining the hall not only reveal the hall around the corner to me—they’d reveal me to whatever is on the other side, too.
The scream cuts off immediately.
Crouching on the ground, I rip my dagger out. Staring at the golden mirror reflecting the top half of the hall around the corner.
I swallow, forcing myself to still in the panic slamming against my chest.
A vibration shakes in the halls, the floors—my blood. The flames on the wall sconces within the mirror’s reflection whip wildly, then still.
I follow each pulse that drums in my ears. Waiting for the next beat to introduce the summoner of the scream. For chaos to break.
But as the seconds tick by in undisturbed silence, I slowly rise from the floor to get a full look at the other hall’s reflection.