22. Chapter 22 #2
“It was his father’s last wish,” Christof said, coming in with a tray in his hand and lowering a cup of tea and biscuits in front of me.
“That he’d been born his son and die as his son.
Logan loved him, and Edmund loved him more than his own.
That cost the both of them a lot.” He sighed.
“When Ulric sent Logan away to command the naval guard, that’s when his mother lost her sanity entirely—at least what was left from the overuse of suppressants over the years.
She knew Ulric would want to claim Logan as his own, and she was terrified Logan would find out the truth about who he was.
At least she died never knowing he knew the truth from the beginning. His lordship is a smart man.”
Goddess. Was it too late to string a curse around Ulric’s neck and watch him suffocate on it?
My bedroom door drew open again. Theodora cried as she crossed my room, hugging my head tightly against her big bosoms. “Oh, my kind girl. Who’d do something like this to you?”
She sniffled, sucking back all her tears. “I know her.”
She pointed at the photo of Agnes and Sybil, standing side by side, smiling at each other. I knew they’d been friends before they’d gotten married, but I didn’t know they’d been allowed to meet in Mortdale, too. Let alone attend social functions and parade before cameras for socialite periodicals.
“Agnes Deveraux,” Theodora said, settling on the floor next to me. “Everyone was talking about her back then. They say she could be heard from down the road singing a mourning song and crying day and night.”
“What went down with them? Agnes and the count?”
Theodora leaned in. “I worked in their county at the time, for an old statesman who was close to the count. Rumour was it she was in love with him. And that he was taken by her, too. It was almost thought to be a love match. Not something anyone found unusual; her beauty was talked about amongst us common folk. People would say she’d straightened him out.
” She stuck a little bread stick between my teeth and put a teacup in my hand.
“And then it came out he had a bastard with one of her closest friends. People said he’d given the mistress a mansion only down the road from them.
The countess herself couldn't get pregnant even though they’d been married for years; it was only after the mistress gave birth that she found out what he’d done.
The count wanted to move the mistress and his child in, but then Agnes fell pregnant.
Next thing we knew, the poor mucker’s feet were pointing east. His mistress had drowned in some lake, and the countess was gone by morning back to Meridian. ”
Agnes had loved the count?
Agnes Briar?
The Agnes Briar?
The Holy Mother I knew seemed to be someone far from whoever was posing next to Count Deveraux.
She was known to have a revulsion to any kind of human contact.
She’d never taken any lovers even though many had wanted her over the years.
Nothing good had come from their infatuation with her either; all had ended up dead.
Which, as unusual as it had been, no one had ever doubted.
No one could doubt the strongest Holy Mother to have sat in the coven’s iron seat.
By the time I’d gone through half of the Devereaux documents, the room had grown more crowded.
The house guards, the kitchen aides, his grandparents who’d travelled all the way from Galahad.
Everyone was here. In this tiny room. Some were sitting on the bed while Piper mouthed off another ankle-bitting story from her dance class.
Some were sitting against the walls. Others perched on any bit of furniture they could lean against or sit on.
Only one was missing, and I imagined he was there, too, standing by the door.
Braced against the frame with one hand in his pocket and the other holding an unlit cigarette.
I missed him more than anything.
I feared leaving this world only because I knew he’d keep my boneless soul bound here. And I didn't want to haunt him. I wanted him to be free of me. He deserved to find his happiness, just like I’d briefly found mine.
My fingers ran up and down my breastbone, feeling my fading pulse still fighting. A chill travelled to the back of my ear as I moved my hand up and up until my fingers rested against my jugular notch. And then something struck me when I lowered them back down in a straight line to my heart.
Only someone without a heart can do this to someone like you.
Someone without a heart.
I picked up Agnes’s wedding photograph from the papers.
The scar on her chest was missing. I’d always thought it had looked like…a median sternotomy.
My finger traced the figure in the corner—Sybil, smiling ear to ear.
Sybil.
Oh no.
Oh Goddess.
Sybil was a surgeon.
But…it couldn’t be.
Everything hit me all at once. The heartbreak infection. The suicides. The scabiosa. They were all telltale signs of—
The newsprint paper shook in my hand. “Sybil, what the Hell have you done?”
A love curse?
Why would…why would Agnes put a love curse on herself—on her own heart?
Oh shit.
My hand covered my parted mouth.
A curse is like mould, spores infecting everyone else around.
This is why there’d never been any trace of magic in the infected. They were only a symptom of a bigger curse.
The room grew quiet, turning to stare in the direction of the windows framing red fireworks blasting in the dark sky.
“What’s that?” I asked, pressing my hand against the chilled glass.
“War,” Christof regretfully said. “Morngate seems to have chosen to advance into Mortdale.” He swallowed hard. “Our duke will be sent to the front to lead it.”
Something dragged against my dress skirts. Thomas sank his long claws into the fabric as he climbed to my shoulder. “Ethel is gone.”
“What? Gone where?”
“She’s left Meridian. She brings no children with her.”
Hot, stinging tears pressed at the back of my eyes as a sob raked through my chest. “Agnes sent her to the Fair Isles?”
“No. She’s here, in Mortdale. And brings no children.”
“What are you talking about?”
He jumped on the sill, leaned on his fat backside and lifted a leg to scratch his side. “She gave me a fat, juicy deer to tell you that your vampire helped her escape Crimson Weaver. The witch is safe.”
I collapsed to my knees. Relief and agony scorching my lungs.
It was near the start of November, but the ground had already gathered a layer of frost. The Basilica gardens were not only dead and burned, but the soil rotting.
New roots had poked through the layer of charred silt, their tips frosted.
The root gasses had filled the air; though foul, they also had a sugary smell—like acetone.
“I can’t believe you convinced me to do this,” Liam whispered as he followed me into the strangely-empty sacred Basilica grounds. “I’m a dead man walking. Stake me though the heart already, crazy lady. I’m as good as gone.”
“Where’s everyone?”
“The clergy will hold a vigil mass in the city centre as the power of the king transfers into a new vessel. To honour Lamuel, who sired his own successor by turning them with a bite.” He grabbed my elbow, holding me back before we stepped into the compluvium.
“There’s one heartbeat getting closer to us.
Stay here,” he told me, backing away into the shadows of the tall pillars.
A humming melody slipped into the air, dragging my attention to the gardens just outside the periphery of the compluvium.
The sound grew louder and clearer the closer I got to the wide, stone well.
Bracing my hands against the round walls, I stared down the empty dark depths of the water.
The sweet smell of honey was stronger, nearly choking.
“Miss Briar.”
I turned around, facing the once-dead human now turned vampire acolyte standing only a few feet away from me.
Fredrick’s smile was mechanical, forced. Pulled at an angle like the strings on a puppet. “You should not be here. Agnes will be very upset that you have disobeyed her. What would happen to Ethel if you upset her?”
The corner of his face started melting, peeling off his jawbone. “You should go home, Miss Briar,” he said, reaching to smooth back his skin as if attempting to stick it back to his bone. “While you still can.”
“It’s Lady Duncan.” I lifted my lantern farther up, casting more light over him.
“And her heart is at the bottom of that well, isn’t it?
Poisoning the water. That’s why she ordered Sybil to convince the Basilica to burn the flowers.
That’s why you’re here. To make sure no one finds out anything about it.
And if anyone were to find it, they would blame it on the Basilica because you’re a vampire.
” It explained why he remained undercover as an acolyte—no one would doubt a thing about Agnes.