8. The Colour of Her Eyes
THE COLOUR OF HER EYES
FRANCESCA
I thought my nerves would settle after telling Hamish, but they haven’t.
Not in the slightest. My knees ache to turn like headlights back to the lake, desperate to keep me aware, to keep that glow flickering lest something move in the darkness.
My throat decides (now, of all times) to recall the way it bruised beneath Gabriel’s hands.
This tightness in my chest is what I lived with for years before he came for me, since Gran laid our history bare for me to see.
That’s why the locket hit so hard, I realise, despite Uncle telling me there’s no reason to be frightened.
This body remembers each day leading up to the test better than my mind even does. I stop by the dresser and force myself to breathe through the fragile shudders rushing through me.
When all else fails, I reach for Percy’s favourite emotional duct tape: words of affirmation. Gabriel tried to kill me, so I killed him instead. The test ends when the heiress survives the traitor. Tradition has been fed. I’ve passed the test.
And yet still, my heart is beating the tune of ‘utter bloody lies’ .
It beats to the cadence of Gabriel’s breathing as he climbed into my bed.
His fingers went for the neckline of my shift first as he sobbed and whispered how much he loved me.
How badly he wanted me as his wife. The cries were pained and emotional.
And when I struck the side of his face, screaming for help, he turned frantic.
Those gentle fingers closed around my throat as his eyes burned with desperation, choking me like he didn’t know what else to do. I’ve replayed that moment a thousand times and always assumed ( convinced myself) that he came to kill me.
Gabriel Fairbanks fit so perfectly into the curse that I never let myself question it. It’s an ugly thing to recall, for I know he would’ve harmed me, violated me—an action monstrous enough on its own. He acted on a violent, lustful impulse, one thing the ghost of Godwyn never was.
I shake my head hard enough to pry doubt loose, but it holds fast. The only duct tape present right now is that note, plastered over old wounds, but instead of holding me together, it traps all my doubts and fears.
It traps the rot.
You were never supposed to survive.
God, there’s no way one person can be this unlucky, but the phrasing is too specific, too intimate.
Whoever penned that note writes as though they were there on the deck.
As though they watched each head dip under until the Lanorythe family was no more, but turned away before they could witness the water hacking me back into the living.
Maybe they even stood at the edge of the woods the night we buried Gabriel, near enough to whisper, ‘Close, little duchess, but not quite.’
If Gabriel’s intention wasn’t murder…
Shit, shit, shit.
Then I’ve mistaken a graze for a bullet and congratulated myself for dodging the practice shot.
The locket gleams in agreement, the equivalent of a slow clap as the truth finally stands before me.
Tommy’s QWERTY Scrabble takes precedence over all else as I question how badly I misunderstood.
One word. Five keys. Watch . Now I’m the most paranoid duchess-heir in history, again .
I begin pacing the length of my chamber when I remember the little box of curiosities from my childhood. Just a bunch of odd, old things I found on the castle grounds and decided to keep like treasure.
It seems a safe enough place to store the seed of my fears, just for the time being, so I stride towards my dresser and search through the drawers for it. I manage to flip open the box, looking up at precisely the right moment to see an SUV come to a stop by the main steps.
Gabriel’s engagement ring gets tossed in first, but Luciana’s locket dangles from my fingers, halfway into the little box, like it can’t decide if it wants to be buried or not.
It sways there, the delicate chain whispering, ‘Not yet’ .
I don’t know; maybe it’s fate or bad timing, or maybe I’m still not all there because of what happened at the lake—but I don’t care.
Maybe that’s why, in the next breath, I’m balling it into a fist and then tossing it onto the counter as though it burns. I can’t spare another second for my paranoia, not when I’m so eager to move towards the larger window, one that offers a sharper view of the courtyard.
Two of them step out of the vehicle, just after Philip, but only one really matters. The man on the left laughs uneasily, burying his hands into his coat, but the one in black stands as though daring the castle to react to his presence.
That one has to be him.
After all of the headlines and articles Percy made me read in preparation, I sort of expected it to follow him somehow; his own reputation dragged like dead weight behind him.
Yet, there’s no sight of it. For a man whose name is attached to chaos and scandal, Prince Eryxon, at first glance, screams restraint.
He stands stiff and tall in a pressed black suit with his arms folded, seemingly judging every stone placed to build Redford.
The man is too composed for somebody sent into exile by his father.
How audacious, to stand before my home as though the walls aren’t still bleeding.
“ Terrete eos ,”? 1 I breathe, and Redford listens. The wind gusts violently, slamming into them and tugging at their coats with a thousand invisible hands.
He looks up, his stare locking onto me, and for a moment, I don’t move.
Neither does he. I’m too far away, and I wonder what monstrous shadow the window shows him and why he keeps staring. Being noticed when I ought to be invisible plants little seeds of unease in my gut.
As soon as his brother mutters something to him, I slip away from the window.
My heart sits in my throat as reality crashes in.
They’re early. Too early. My grandparents aren’t even back yet.
I look down at my dress, at the mud and vomit stains, and nearly send myself into cardiac arrest. I’ll be expected to host them, play the good little duchess, even though the only thing I’m currently hosting is a parasitic sort of panic that wraps itself around my lungs.
I barely allow myself a moment to breathe before I’m kicking off my boots and socks, then tugging my dress over my head.
My elbow bangs into the bathroom door as I shove it open, and I’m almost tempted to ring for Aunty Lydia.
But there’s no time, and chances are she’s probably at the Backhall, the internal space where all of Redford’s servants live.
I struggle to unclip my bra and almost yell her name out of pure aggravation at the situation.
Instead, I remind myself that Lydia rarely takes her off-days, not because she isn’t granted them, but because my schedule can be so tightly stitched that carving space for rest feels impossible—for both of us.
Pascoe would kill me if I disturbed her.
Percy once called him a feminist king, and he didn’t scowl, so I’m too frightened to test the truth of that title.
Let Lydia rest; I can handle getting ready for the heirs of Marzod.
Once I’m naked, I kick the fabric aside and then flick on the shower.
I notice too late that I didn’t reach for the hot switch first. It hits my bare skin in an almost violent blast—ice-cold shards of glass pierce whatever panic I thought I was trapped in.
This one is real, and it hurts. The panic doesn’t arrive, doesn’t slip quietly into my mind; it just detonates.
The cold is everywhere; there is no steam, no ceramic tiles, and no glass doors.
Just the lake.
Not now. Not now, please. It’s been fifteen years; I’m safe. I’ve been safe.
But my body doesn’t care. I curl inward, pressing my forehead against the tile and trying to count backwards from one hundred.
Nothing works. The cold keeps pouring, and all I can see is the water closing over my dad, my mum soon disappearing beneath the black ripples.
I should be fine. I’ve showered over a million times since that day, yet I’m not fine.
There’s water in my mouth, and it tastes like blood.
It tastes like memory.
It tastes like that goddamn lake.
“ Stop ,” I whisper hoarsely, flicking the hot switch in a desperate attempt to burn.
I need it more than my next breath. “Stop, please , it’s just water—” I gag on the words, but there’s no food to heave.
Whatever I ate was already buried in the reeds.
My body doesn’t believe my words. It thinks I’m dying again.
The locket.
Of course, it’s the locket.
That pretty golden thing is what pulled this out of me; it’s what cracked the surface like a sledgehammer.
I thought I buried that part of me, wrapped it in years of therapy, enough to tell people, ‘ Yes, I had a sister, and yes, I watched her die,’ without breaking down.
I haven’t thought about Lucy’s arm in years, nor remembered the taste of her blood on my tongue, but now it’s back.
I’m back there, and I hate it.
The weight of the water crashes over me, and I’m no longer standing on the shore, watching the bodies of my family be wheeled away.
I’m still in the lake, something heavy curling around my waist. A thick, muscular arm.
Another arm works upwards, a hand seizing my throat and forcing my head back, and I see a black sky, clouds of cotton wool soaked through with pomegranate juice.
I cry out for my mother, and that cry receives only water.
This man isn’t letting go: I think he’s trying to drag me under.
Thrashing and clawing are futile, and his grip constricts.
There’s a voice somewhere in my ears, deep and warped, but I can’t understand any of it.
He smells like pomegranates and something else.
Like sweet rot.
Where’s Lucy? Why isn’t Lucy holding me?