15. Chapter 15
Willow
The Cleansing was the oldest and most preserved tradition in Mortdale.
They’d gone so far to preserve a secret that might have potentially harmed and killed their own daughters and sons for years.
Chaos suppression of this magnitude could have contributed to much more than just their deaths.
What if it was truly nature turning on itself?
Had all the suppressed chaos somehow created this enormous cloud of misfortune?
The deaths of the witches and the Madness, both?
Was it why I felt the two were related somehow?
And maybe the clergy were more at fault than we’d thought.
What would they be hiding down in those tunnels?
Logan had told me the grave of Sankta Katerina was down there; the pioneer of the vampire race and she who’d disobeyed her divine lord and fed a dying man from what was called the Ewer of Life to create Lamuel, the first vampire.
If something had happened to her grave— as accumulations of dark chaos in vessels of potent chaos were not unusual, given that powerful witches were buried in cold iron caskets—why now? What might have triggered it?
I’d ditched a plastron, instead picking a sapphire blue dress with a pale white bertha covering the bodice that extended past the bust to cover the short sleeves.
A sheer black fichu was tucked down the bodice for some modesty, though I’d ditched the suffocating busk corset, too.
Thinking about it, there was never anything immodest to begin with—I could barely find them in the mirror sometimes.
The bustle also was lost after a long battle of consideration, and I just wore the skirts as they were.
I was supposedly getting naked for my de-witchification, so there was no point in complicating it for myself.
At least according to the very implicit guide Theodora had walked me through.
The old woman had just the words to make me feel like a decrepit pervert sometimes.
A heavy deluge whacked and cracked against the carriage walls. The thunder grew intense and deafening, but the chills covering my skin had nothing to do with the coming autumn breeze.
My chain-smoking husband sat across from me in the carriage, his eyes having been glued on me since he’d shut the doors and told the coachman to go.
His leg was pressed against mine, and he’d made no move to pull away despite the abundant space. “Regretting even proposing this idea?”
I set the fan on my lap. “Not yet. I’ll let you know before I make a run for it.”
“Take all the head start you need. I’m sure I’ll figure it out and catch up in no time.”
“I’m an excellent runner.”
“Piper calls you wobbly-legs-Boo.”
“She’s one to talk. Her feet are a walking hazard.”
“Go easy on the four-year-old. She’s not had the chance to test her limbs properly yet.”
Glaring at him, I reached into my bag and took out a bottle of liquor I'd borrowed from his smoking room.
He leaned on his knees, watching me take a long gulp. “Stealing is a terrible habit.”
I licked my lips. “You know who to bill for it. He’s made of money.” I pointed a finger at him as I drank again. “And I’m sure I am missing a tintype of me and Piper we took a week or so ago.”
He lit another cigarette. “I paid for it.”
“Do you want my drawers, too, since you paid for them?”
“You can keep those.” He leaned forward, and with how close we were, he was nearly in my face as he pinched my fichu between his fingers, and said, “Did I pay for this, too?”
I nodded.
He pulled the sheer cloth covering my chest, briefly buried his nose in it, and then pocketed it.
As he leaned back, his eyes dropped to my chest.
As did mine.
Maybe the damn corset had a point. Otherwise my nipples wouldn’t be pointing in my husband’s direction.
I looked out the window, staring at the foggy, bland scenery. “An apology would be nice.”
“I’m not sorry about anything in particular. I’ll come back to you when I think of something.”
“Stop staring while I’m so indecent.”
“Nothing indecent about it.” He leaned forward again, his palms resting against each side of my ribs. “What’s the matter? I can hear that something is worrying you.”
I’d briefly forgotten he could read my pulse like a musical sheet.
I sucked in a deep breath, struggling to let it go. “I feel lost. I’m not used to it.”
“Is this about Ethel?”
“Her, too. I can’t think of her without a fist-shaped hole appearing in my heart. I don’t want to fail her. We’ve been failed enough in this lifetime.”
“Look at me,” he said, his palms gently moving up and down the sides of my ribs down to my hips—and I was grateful to have skipped the dratted corset. “You can never fail her. I have a feeling she knows that, too. She’ll never blame you. I would have never blamed any of my siblings, either.”
“It’s grown so much bigger now, too.” My lower lip slid between my teeth in an attempt to hold back what I told him next. “I think it could be somehow related to this Madness. What I’ve been sent here to find, I mean.”
His hands settled against my hips as he seemed to mull over my words. “How about we worry about it after we have some more proof?”
“I can’t schedule my feelings like you do. Time management isn’t particularly my strongest suit. Not even dealing with my emotions. I just let them run loose. They’ll figure it out somehow.”
His hands slid over my hips to settle on my lower back, bringing us even closer.
“You just let them cannibalise you. Eat at you little by little. You think if they rip you to shreds, there will be nothing left to feel. Relief. That’s what you’re after.
” He pulled me closer to him, sliding me to the edge of the seat.
“I understand it. I’m tempted, too. All the time.
Sometimes I let myself just stand there, let them have a go at me.
It makes you think there’s some relief in pain.
But it’s only distraction, and distraction isn't a relief. And then you constantly look to distract yourself. Any way you can. And more and more, until the pain just accumulates and accumulates. When there’s only a hollow thing left of you is when you realise it’s only filled with pain and nothing else.
You’re this walking, talking, breathing vessel of agony.
” His golden eyes paced between mine, soft and careful. “We don’t want to be that, do we?”
I shook my head. A dull ache weighed against my malar bones, and I pressed my trembling lips shut.
“We won’t be that,” he said, briefly resting his brow to mine before pulling away, putting so much space between us that I finally took notice of gravity.
He put my shawl around my shoulders, and helped me out of the carriage. Rain had soaked the entire left side of his shoulder, but he held the umbrella steady over me as we crossed through the wide, tall cavaedium gardens filled with dark puddles of water.
“What did they do to this place?” The dead shrubs, the rotting plants, the snag trees crawling in maggots and flies, all of them were…gone.
He looked around. “It seems they’ve cut everything down.”
Huh.
The Basilica was fuller than the opera on a Saturday show. People crowded it corner to corner, all veiled in black and anonymity, chatting about with candles in their hands.
Just brilliant.
He brought me under a roofed part, next to a wide column shielded from the rain. “I’ll have to greet the exarch.” Glancing somewhere behind me, he nodded, and Henry and Arthur came to step beside me as he brushed a hand down my face and left.
“Who are these people?” I asked, gathering my shawl tighter around me.
Arthur looked just as uncomfortable as I did. “Anyone Logan could send an invitation to.”
“Great.”
“The more people attend, the more reason we will have to scan the grounds of the Basilica without being followed around. We had to make the distraction as big as we could. Though—” He looked at me. “We didn't really have to. Mortdale has been dying to see Logan’s little witch take the dip.”
“You’re one to make a joke after almost two weeks of not speaking to me.”
He grunted, scanning the place. “One more fistfight and he might shiv me in the gut.”
Fistfight? “You’ve been fighting with Logan?”
“He’s been taking drills pretty seriously these past couple of months.”
I blew a frustrated breath, raking a slow, long look over the gardens. “The smell is gone.”
He stomped on a bit of scorched turf. “It looks like they’ve burnt the shrubs.”
He was right. The entire garden was charred. Any sort of dry, rotted vegetation from last time was gone.
As I was scanning the periphery of soot lining the rainwater-filled impluvium, I met a pair of strange eyes in the distance. Strange, but…familiar eyes.
Arthur looked around. “What is it?”
I shook my head. “Nothing. I think.” Hiding behind his arm, I took another peek at the tall man. “Who’s that?”
Arthur tried to shrug me off. “An acolyte. There’s many living in the Basilica grounds.”
He looked very familiar.
Why was he looking at me?
That’s when I spotted Gerda. Anxious and pale, she remained behind a tall column, hiding in the shadows, shivering almost as if she could feel the chilled storm air.
Carefully detaching myself from Henry and Arthur, I leaned against the column. “I haven’t seen you in a while. What are you doing here?”
Gerda pointed her head in Logan’s direction where he was in some thick discussion with the exarch. “He was in on their case. On the witches who have died.”
The shawl fell to the crook of my elbows as my arms dropped to my sides.
“He was put to investigate their deaths?”
Gerda frowned. “Investigate? No, dear girl. They’re saying he was ordered by his king to cover them up.
That is why their names are nowhere to be found on any notice.
Why their graves aren’t in any cemetery.
He’s been making sure they vanish and leave no trace.
He’s burnt every record, killed whoever had knowledge of their deaths. ”