Chapter Thirty-Four
We surfaced from Ardent’s as if rising from the murky depths of the River Temese.
I eagerly gulped down the cool Linden night air, inviting the smog and animal droppings and reek of unwashed bodies to drive
out the last of the incense’s heady magic from my blood. I felt exhausted and exhilarated.
But more than anything, there was tremendous relief. As if I were taking the first true deep breath of my life, after not
having realized how shallow the rest had been.
It was over.
I had faced the monster who had haunted my every step, my every choice, year after year, and I had exorcised that terror from
my soul.
It had been as though I was meeting half of myself for the first time. All the greed and self-interest and pride and grit
that Mama had lacked—the part of myself that I had never liked but had kept me alive.
Hugh’s hand closed around mine as he hurried us through the men milling outside of the club’s main entrance. He didn’t speak
at all as he scanned the street.
My cheeks flushed as glimmers of memory surfaced, my body still thrumming with wild longing. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying
to bank the embers of desire the memory stirred. My skin clung to his touch possessively, refusing to relinquish the sensation.
Thoughts arrived and flittered away like feathers as I touched my kiss-stung lips.
“Hugh—” I began.
“Not now.” The traces of tenderness I’d felt within his arms had faded, and all that was left was steeled purpose.
To my surprise, he’d been hunting not for a hack, but for Foxcourt House’s unmarked coach. We located it three streets away,
near the Bend—the famous street of lively shops that ran perpendicular to what had once been the old bank of the river. Cartwell
spotted us first, waving an arm through the darkness.
We hurried over to it, and without preamble, Hugh opened the door and quickly handed me in. I collapsed against the seat, the last of the golden pleasure fading.
Hugh took the seat across from me, widening the gulf between us when, no more than a half hour ago, we had nearly been as
close as two people could be. Even now, I felt the emptiness I’d begged him to fill. Even now, I was mortifyingly desperate
for him.
Hugh rapped on the ceiling, ensuring the window between him and Cartwell was well and truly shut before he turned to me again.
The anger in his face set my teeth on edge.
“Why in God’s name would you ever agree to do a favor for that man?” he snarled, ripping the mask from his face.
“Because it’s the only way to get the oil quickly,” I answered, sliding off my own mask. “You said it yourself—everything
hinges on the completion of this perfume. It will be close, yes, but if the King can hold out through tomorrow, we’ll have
Immortal Rose to him by the next morning. What otherwise would have been his final morning.”
Hugh reeled back against his seat, looking as though he was struggling to master whatever words were threatening to explode
from him. “I didn’t—it wasn’t meant to be at such a cost to you, damn it.”
“Every perfume comes at a cost to me,” I reminded him.
The last threads of his composure seemed to hold, but only just. His eyes flashed dangerously.
“Where is that ruthlessness?” I asked him. “That willingness to see this through at any cost?”
He seemed taken aback by the question, as though he hadn’t dared to ask it of himself. “I’ve let you become far too entangled
in this—”
“You’ve let me?” I echoed in disbelief.
“To owe something to a man like that—bloody hell, Viola.” Hugh raked a hand through the thick hair I’d mussed. He’d lost his hat somewhere between when I’d basically crawled
up his body in the hall and when we’d been discovered.
God. The mortification was late in coming but no less powerful. Of all the people to witness the tail end of our . . . activities . . .
it had to be him.
“And what’s the matter with Greystone anyway?” Hugh asked. “What did you mean about his scent?”
I knew he wouldn’t be able to resist asking, not when there was another powerful secret to collect.
“I’m not sure I can explain it,” I told him. “His essence smelled vaguely of magic, but it was brittle, like burnt sugar. Finding out is another reason to go, isn’t it?”
I almost laughed at his testy expression, which very much said yes even as those sensuous lips said, “No.”
Truthfully, Greystone’s essence had unsettled me altogether. The wintry chill of long-buried pain with the mineral grit of
greed. There were the usual touches of a man of business—parchment, ink, coins, leather—but also blood and steel, and, more
than anything, the devastating, heady scent of lilies.
“What if you go to fulfill your end of the bargain and he doesn’t release you upon its completion?” He braced his hands against
his knees, staring at them as he collected his thoughts—or rearranged them into another shield for his feelings.
I arched a brow. “Would you allow that?”
“Of course not, damn it, but that’s beside the point.” His expression turned bleak.
“Can I not rely on you to keep me safe?” I asked, wanting to kiss the furrow between his dark brows, wanting all of him, even
this foolishness.
“I think tonight proved you cannot.”
“Ah, yes,” I said dryly. “You beast, giving me exactly what I desired. What I still desire.”
He looked up sharply at that, a note of warning in his voice. “Viola . . .”
“It had to be done,” I insisted. “Glenmoor won’t become regent, and once the King learns that the duke is responsible for
the poisoning—”
“It won’t matter,” Hugh cut in. “Whatever he has on the King stands. He may not become regent, but he will still find his
way into power by marrying Eleanor. There’s only one end for this now.”
I sat back against my seat, speechless. “You mean to kill him.”
“Does that shock you?” he asked, his tone turning mocking and sardonic. But I knew him too well now and recognized it as an
attempt to push me away. “I was in denial before. He’s positioned himself too well to be merely knocked off the pedestal now.”
“That’s not true,” I told him. “You’ve only settled on the deadlier path because it’s the one you can carry out alone, at
huge cost to yourself.”
He stared impassively at me—through me. I could feel myself growing more upset, as if needing to fill the void of his emotion with my own. But this retreat didn’t
feel cruel; it felt self-protective.
“There is no reason Glenmoor can’t be exposed for the monster he is, but that will require everyone’s help, as tonight did,” I continued.
“And either you’re terrified of something happening beyond your control, or you’re simply too prideful to allow anyone else to help you bring the man down. So, which is it?”
Breath tore in and out of him, his jaw clenching as he turned to glare out the window.
“I believe it’s the former, but just now, you’re convincing me of the latter,” I told him. “Hugh, do you know why I felt brave
enough to confront Greystone after years of running from him? It was because you were with me. It was knowing I could trust you completely. Can you not show me the
same trust and tell me why it’s come to this?”
“It’s not for you to understand,” he answered coldly. “Your responsibility is the perfume, mine is to stop Glenmoor, no matter
the cost.”
“Then as the only one of us who has experienced Fairgate, I can assure you that you’ll be longing for the gallows after a
few days, you bloody impossible man,” I ground out. “It’s pride, then. How disappointing.”
The muscle in Hugh’s jaw tensed. How could I make him understand?
“You . . .” I drew in a steadying breath, my hands curling in my lap until the mask was crushed between my fists. “The reason
there was a poison perfume in my mother’s journal, the reason I recognized it, is because she used it.”
Hugh’s eyes darted toward me. His lips parted on his next breath, but I wouldn’t back away from this now.
“She had married Lockwood out of fear, only to find that he had trapped her—trapped the both of us—inside of a prison of it,”
I said. “After he could no longer work, there was nothing to do for him but drink and take out the fury of his pain and humiliation
on us.” I worked my jaw, trying to ease the stiffness there, to choke out the words. “At first he only struck her. And then
I made the mistake of revealing he’d been to a brothel one night, and he birched me for it until I was sure I would die.”
“God,” Hugh whispered, his hands tightening into fists.
“Mama couldn’t petition for divorce, not by the sacred laws of the Church, and he refused to grant one,” I continued.
“She was convinced that he would find us no matter where we went, and—and after what he had done to me, she hated him. He was given the gift of her, and he shattered her like a careless child, and when she pieced herself back together, she was never the same. She was jagged, consumed by that hatred.”
Hugh’s attention was rapt now.
“She took matters into her own hands,” I said. “But she had no fairy plants to use. She would never seek to harm an innocent.
So to poison him, she poisoned herself. In her need to end his life, she destroyed her own. She lived only months longer than
he did, and if her aim was to protect me—well . . .” I closed my eyes against the sting of tears. “She may have killed the
monster, but she left me alone in the world that had created him.”
I could tell I had shocked him; his unguarded expression told me as much.
“I love her, but I hate her for it, too. Because she did it for me and then left me to live with the guilt of it,” I said.
“I would have taken years more of that agony and suffering if it meant she could have lived. I needed her alive and with me.”
“Viola—” he began roughly.
“Don’t expect the rest of us to stand idly by as you destroy yourself trying to destroy Glenmoor,” I said. “You accused me
of not asking for help, but you’re guiltier of that by far. We need you alive. I need you—” I pressed my hands to my eyes,
trying to smother my feelings. “Until all of this is over, until all of this between us is at an end, I need you.”
It felt as though I had cut myself open, exposing my heart to the chill of the night air. Telling him this, letting him see
me—see my pain and fear and vulnerability—was agonizing. Almost unbearable. My body tensed as if to flee.
And then he spoke.
“It will never be over between us,” he said, his voice low. “Can you not feel it? The way my soul beckons to yours?”
My heart stilled in my chest. I pulled my hands from my face slowly.
“You should hate me,” he said, bracing his head in his hands. “I have craved the blade of that hatred like nothing else because
I know I deserve it. Because I know it would be the only thing powerful enough to cut this tether that draws me to you like
a starving man to the manna of heaven.” He made a noise of frustration at the back of his throat. “It is—it is maddening. The harder either of us pulls back, the tighter that knot between us grows. Tell me you feel it, too—that sense of inevitability,
even as it’s what neither of us wanted.”
“I do,” I whispered.
He looked up then, his eyes haunted. “I can neither apologize enough for what you’ve suffered at my hands nor pretend I regret that it has led us here. I am not a good man or even a kind one, but I am yours all the same.”
Hugh clenched his eyes shut.
“I would kill anyone who caused you half the harm I have,” he rasped out. “I would carve the heart from my chest if you asked it of me, because
I’m certain it was always meant to be yours. I swore to you that I would let you go, and I will. I will, damn it. If losing you is my punishment for all of this, I will suffer it—but in the meantime, I cannot risk you. I would
not survive it.”
“Hugh . . .” I began, shocked.
“I found you in the dark,” he continued. “You know it as I do. And if it is my final act in this world, I will do everything
in my power to ensure you’re never made to return to it. But you cannot ask me to turn back now. The course has been set.”
You cannot survive in the shadows of someone’s heart, Mama had told me once. There must be light if anything is to grow.
He was pulling away out of pain and fear. He deserved more than that, and for all society would have me believe, that I was
born a shameful mistake, so did I.
“You’ve decided, have you?” I asked with barely suppressed anger. “Of course you can turn back. Of course you can stop this
or allow the rest of us to truly help you finish it. You are a man who is capable of nearly anything. But you’ve allowed your
pride to dig you into a trap that is so deep you can no longer escape it.”
The first hint of Foxcourt House’s garden reached us then, and within only a few moments, the coach had come to a stop. I
seized the handle of my door before he could, already opening it and stepping out into the night.
I kept my voice low as I whirled back to face him. He was pale and grave in the darkness of the compartment, but his eyes
burned for me.
“I see you,” I told him. “I see you, and I will not abandon you to the dark.”
With that, I shut the door and passed through the garden gate, to the sleeping house.