Chapter 18
Phaedra paced the ballroom, her eyes fixed on the three frames hanging on the wall even as she moved. The unexpected revelation twisted around her bones, making her movements jagged, her mind awhirl in a war of hope and dread battling for dominance.
She wanted nothing more than to see Ana’s journal one more time, to reread the entry, now with different eyes, so she might decide if it was sudden clarity that had guided her brush, or mere misinterpretation.
She stopped, her eyes roving over the portraits, trying desperately to gouge some modicum of information from their dead stare. But either the artist had not wished to eternalize what had truly been in their faces, or there had simply been nothing there to show.
She wondered if she was wrong. If whatever she imagined was simply that—mere fancy spun into life by the hand of her own lurid memories, the ones that would not die no matter how deep she would bury them.
Had this been nothing more than the projection of her own experiences, or had she indeed glimpsed the truth behind the veil?
She looked at Mariana, at her stiff and proper posture, her face devoid of all emotion. She knew how easy it was, how natural it could become to slip behind the mask, the bruises and breaks hidden beneath so many layers that one could even question their existence.
She wrapped her arms about herself, a shudder moving through her.
She shut her eyes, willing her lungs to breathe, her body to calm, her mind to untangle from the knot it had wrung itself into.
Because the fact of the matter was that she did not know.
She merely suspected. And even if her suspicions clanged with every note of something true, it would not be enough.
She needed something more to prove her misgivings, something tangible, something eternalized beyond life…
Something written.
Her eyes snapped open and, in an instant, she was out the door, hurried steps flying up the stairs. Her chest was heaving as she finally arrived at the library doors and pushed inside.
The silence of the stacks dropped on her like a welcome weight, slowing the rush of her blood, and she took a moment to breathe in the scent of paper and ink, of polished wood and faded ash.
There was a gravity—a finality—to what she was attempting, and she looked up at the gallery, wondering if this was indeed the right thing to do. Because if her suspicions were proven true, it would completely change their understanding of what the life of this family had been like.
Hesitation clung to her limbs as she climbed the stairs, her fingers brushing along the spines. And as she closed in on the shelf where she had previously deposited the poetry book, she found herself uncertain whether she should tell Nathaniel at all.
She knew he would see it in her painting.
That he would notice and he would ask. But perhaps she could feign ignorance and claim that it had simply been the guiding hand of her muse.
To maintain that she herself did not fully understand, and thus delay what would most certainly be a devastating discovery.
After all, he was already guilt-ridden from abandoning his sister to a household merely deemed cold.
What would it do to him to know the ordeal his mother had been through?
Her fingers were rigid as they bumped against the ornate spine, and with a deep breath, she pulled the book free. She turned and walked past the large windows and down the stairs, the urge to lengthen the time before certainty almost overwhelming.
Apprehension weighed deep in her stomach as she finally sank into one of the chairs by the fireplace. She stared at the worn cover, the soft leather invitingly smooth beneath her fingers. Then, with a jerk of her wrist, she flicked the book open, the pages parting at the poem so frequently perused.
Captivation of You
My love, your need does push me to madness,
The heart that beats against my chest,
For unrelenting is this wildness,
As you pull and I too press
Against the will that binds your hands.
And though the hunger does subside
The urgent ardor once released,
The craving stays, this aching void
Only serves this ragged beast,
Your shudders, your cries its only feast.
My love, I know the blood of your heart,
Know every breath that you may take.
Defy me now, and you will know
All that I may care to break
Just to soothe this battered ache.
For only within you I am sane,
Tattered, frenzied, buried, entwined.
And within you I am whole,
In your soul I am enshrined.
Phaedra stared at the words infused with such longing, her breath ragged in her chest. It felt as if a blindfold had been ripped from her eyes, the light and color of the world beyond suddenly too vivid.
And the words she had once mistaken for the ode of one overtaken by passion now held another layer of meaning—one that spoke of a different kind of need. The kind that would not be denied.
She swallowed against the tight knot forming in her throat, the description of Mariana’s ailment echoing in her mind. How she used to have such violent nightmares that her cries would carry even through the walls. That even Ana would flee into the safety of her brother’s chamber.
She flipped back to the beginning of the book, the sweetness of the dedication almost taunting. Then she turned the page to the first poem, hoping still that she might be wrong.