22. Chapter 22
Willow
Sleep was threatening to consume me whole and my buttocks were screaming, begging for a soft surface, but I waited there for him, sitting at the top of the stairs reading through my notebook with Piper’s head laying on my lap as she softly snored.
The news of Luella’s death had come only a few hours after we’d returned from the cemetery, as the new sun had finally risen to reveal the evidence of the night’s thunder. Luella had drunk poison, and by the time her caretakers had found her, it had been too late.
I’d never seen him more devastated. If I’d not been holding him the entire time, I wouldn’t have recognised him to be my Logan.
His entire being had sunk somewhere to the back of his mind as I’d helped him get dressed for her funeral this morning, which Ulric had not allowed anyone but him to attend.
He’d clearly loved his sister, and I saw guilt in his vacant eyes.
Maybe because of what I’d heard her say that day.
I’m not going to let him hurt you anymore, I promise.
It seemed that Ulric had used Luella to control Logan as much as he could. Maybe she’d done it to protect her brother—her final act of love.
The doors drew open, and I knew he’d come home solely by the sound of his footsteps. “Where are my girls?” I heard him ask Christof, his voice resigned and weak.
“Here,” I called.
He rushed up the stairs. “Honey?”
My hand slipped down the edge of a page when I lowered my book, and I winced when the paper cut through my skin.
Logan was before me in a matter of seconds, kneeling to inspect my finger as if I’d sustained a battle wound.
“Just a paper cut. I might survive it.”
His eyes glistened as they beheld me. “There’s hope?”
There, under the shining silver moonlight cast over him, he looked otherworldly. “There is. With an excellent medic, days of rest and an endless supply of toffee combs, I might be good as new.”
“We better get ahead of it then,” he said, bringing my finger to his lips and sucking the tip where a bead of blood had gathered.
“You’ve never told me what I taste like.”
“Deadly.”
“Is there hope?” I managed to ask despite the invisible hands squeezing at my throat and making my words choke.
“None, I’m afraid.”
“I’m sorry about Lu,” I said, bracing my forehead against his. “I’m so sorry.”
His thumb moved back and forth over my cheek, wiping away my tears. “Everyone is always so glad and eager to be leaving me. I don’t know what I’ve done.”
“The curse of being loved,” I whispered. “It’s a karmic debt. To have and to lose. It’s all an unfair game. No matter how hard you play. No matter if you follow all the rules.”
Piper stirred, rubbing a fist to her sleepy eyes as she stared between the two of us. Her bottom lip trembled and a fat tear gathered at the corner of her eye. “I don’t want to die, Bear.”
His golden eyes met mine. And as wretched as it was, my heart bled when a tear slid down his cheek and he buried his face against my neck, holding us both close.
“Were you ever planning on telling me?” he shakily asked.
“I’ve never wanted my death to be a tragedy.”
“You’ve had all your life to make peace with it.
Yet you give me a few days and expect me to be the same?
” He pulled back, his eyes searching deep into mine—for answers, for comfort, for hope.
“Why would you do this to me?” His gaze relentlessly paced all over my face, unsteady and troubled when it couldn’t find what he was hoping to find. “Why would you do this to me, Willow?”
“I’ve been mourning myself for twenty-six years. All I’ve known are mourners. I didn’t want you to be just another mourner. I wanted you to look at me and see me, not this curse.”
His brow dropped to mine and he held me there for a while. “I will fix it. I will fix this.”
Sobs shook my chest. “Stop, Logan. Just stop. Please, don’t make this harder for me.”
He pulled back, wrenching himself off of me like a scab on a new wound. “Your theory is wrong. About the Madness, about the suicides.”
“I know I am right, you just have to let me find out how to fix it. You have to let me go back to the Basilica. I need to see what is poisoning the water in the well. You cannot see or sense or smell dark chaos. Only I can.”
“You’re wrong about it,” he insisted, unsteady as he got to his feet and stumbled a few steps. His expression broke, as did his voice. “Because you’re still alive. And for all it matters, I am still somewhat sane.”
With that, he stormed down the stairs and left again.
Burying my face against my knees, I whispered, “I love you, too.”
He’d be safe from the poison because I was already dead. I had died a long time ago. The malediction had killed me and made me a ghost.
Piper wrapped her weak arms around my neck, patting a tiny hand down my back. “Don’t cry, Boo. Bear will fix it.”
And I almost believed it. I wanted to believe it. But hope made me sick. Hope was violent, and I knew that because I’d worn its bruises many times before.
He’d been called to the parliament right after he’d left. I’d been warned he’d be gone for hours, maybe days, until Ulric’s successor was chosen. The clergy, the parliament, and even Ulric himself would argue in favour of their own endorsements.
He’d stuck both of his anxious friends with me.
Henry and Arthur both paced across the drawing room, back and forth about a thousand times.
Unnecessarily because I had barely any strength to pull myself up and down the stairs, let alone pull any kind of elaborate manoeuvre like they were expecting out of me.
“You should get some sleep,” Henry said, settling in front of a window to glare at the new storm brewing outside. “I doubt they will be done for a while. This is the moment the parliament has been waiting for and Ulric’s been dreading. They will fight tooth and nail for it. It’s no use waiting up.”
“Who’s next in line to inherit the throne?”
Henry’s eyes met Arthur’s before they both ducked their heads. It was the latter who answered. “If Ulric somehow manages to hold onto his claim of the title, it will have to be a pick from his litter of bastards.”
“Logan, too, right?”
Both of their heads shot up, and I shrugged. “A ghost told me.”
Henry sighed. “He won’t do it. Now that Luella’s dead, there’s no way for Ulric to control him. As long as you and Piper are way out of Ulric’s grasp, he won’t be forced to take that throne.”
“So, what will happen now? Won’t it mean he’s opened a path in the clergy’s favour?”
Henry started pacing again, rubbing a hand over his eyes. “Logan…he’s endorsing someone, too.”
“Who?”
“Another one of Ulric’s bastards. A guard who he took under wing after Heath was killed by Ulric and he was forced to come back from the Eastern Continent. Her name’s Audrey.”
“Ulric killed Logan’s brother?”
“Both his brothers. His father. And almost every other paternal relative.”
I could taste the bitterness of despair on my tongue, feel it poison its way to my chest, swell my heart until it crushed against my rib cage. The things he’d been put through…I couldn’t even begin to understand the pains of his heart.
“He’s been preparing for this for a while, Willow. I wouldn't worry too much,” he said. “We need to be patrolling. Who knows if Ulric will pull one last trick out of the hat. That idiot doesn’t know when to give up.”
Henry left the room, and Arthur sighed, glancing around us and sighing again as he handed me a huge swollen envelope.
“The librarian scraped up all he could find. The rest of the documents I got from city hall and Alfred’s study, like you asked.
” He blew one last heavy breath. “He’ll kill me for this, witch-woman. ”
“Thank you, Art,” I offered, hugging the envelope to my chest. “You have been a great friend to me, vampire-man.”
He pursed his lips, swallowing hard. “I don’t want to hear any of it.
Logan says you don’t die, then you don’t die.
He’s managed worse things. Death’s scared shitless of him.
Saints, don’t I know it. It wouldn’t have him no matter how much he tried.
” He sighed. “It won’t come near you as long as he’s standing by your side.
No one takes anything from Logan Duncan without consequences. Not even death.”
With that, he stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
Piper laid on top of my bed as I sat on the floor, going through the documents in the envelope Arthur brought me.
Before she’d become Agnes Briar again, she’d once been Agnes Deveraux.
Married to the Count of Deveraux. A man of great means and a close ally of the clergy, one of the most powerful donors to the Basilica.
“Who inherited the Deveraux fortune?”
Liam, who'd taken to chewing on a stick of metal by the window, said, “That bloodline died off with the last count. His properties were divided by the king and the parliament.”
“So, he had no heir?”
He snorted. “He has many heirs. Illegitimate. Neither the crown nor the parliament will accept them. As you know, the act of marriage is sacred in Mortdale. The crown will legitimize only those children who come from marriage.” He itched his neck.
“Though…the king’s been pushing to fix that for years. ”
“Fix?”
He pushed from the window, dropping on my bed. “Screw it, you might be dead by dawn.”
“That’s a lovely sentiment.”
He waved a hand. “Logan is the king’s son. Lu was actually his sister. The old sick fuck…hurt his mother. He cornered her drunk at a banquet and led her to his room. Logan’s father found them. But not before…you know.”
I covered my mouth as hot tears burnt my eyes.
Liam went on, “Ulric wants to force him to take the throne. Logan refuses to even accept the legitimisation and he’s denounced paternity several times—he’ll only accept Edmund as his father.
And the parliament recognises that. Edmund Duncan was a well-respected, loved man. Can’t say the same for the king.”