Chapter 36
Phaedra jerked in her seat as Nathaniel snapped the journal shut. Her breath trembled in her chest, her mind racing to put together the things she was still unwilling to understand.
“Well?” he demanded, his tone so cold that she was seized by a sudden sense of disorientation.
Had he not seen the paintings? Even if he could not picture the words he had just spoken, could he not remember what had been depicted in those dreadful frames?
Could he not see the horrified look in her eyes to know that they had indeed been accurate?
Had he not recognized the man with the green ribbon looped through the buttonhole of his rumpled jacket, or the young woman arching beneath him, her radiant dress in tatters, her skin exposed to the grip of his passion?
Or the skeletal figure standing in the doorway with a face so eerily similar to the one amid the sheets, the flame of her candle as if surging from her own fingertips, lighting up her horrified features before biting into the very frame around her?
And behind her, instead of the vibrant green hallway, a blazing inferno.
Phaedra’s voice felt shredded to nothing as she said in a hoarse whisper, “She wanted to save her. The daughter that was only hers. The daughter she knew he would hurt. Just as he had hurt her over the years, all under the contrived guise of ardent love.”
“So it was her fault then.” Nathaniel tossed the journal onto the desk.
“My dear sister. Funny that my mother would see it so.” He tilted his head as he looked at the fragile remains, a half smile pulling his lips into a sight of pitiless mockery.
“Because from what I could see, she was not at all against his affections.”
Phaedra did not know if he had meant his mother or sister, but it did not matter.
The disdain dripping from his voice, the cruelty cutting through every word made it difficult to look at him anymore.
Unshed tears clung to her lashes, as she dropped her eyes to her hands balled into her skirt, desperately trying to pry some sense out of the change that had befallen him.
It almost felt as if she had lost him to the horror of this revelation, and the more they spoke of it, the more he would fade, with little chance to return to the way he had been before.
If it had ever been real in the first place.
“I think,” she formed the words slowly, as if one wrong turn of phrase could be the end of her, “it is not that simple.”
“Oh really? Because it seems fairly straightforward to me.”
Phaedra reined in her flinch at the last moment, twisting her skirt to hide the trembling in her hands.
“I believe there is more to it, to the driving force behind all that happened. There is…” She pulled in a breath.
The time for truth had come. “There is something I need to tell you. Many things, in fact. But the most important thing, the thing I myself have only recently discovered… I think there is something very wrong here. In this house. In the green—”
Her words were cut off by the obscurity of a shadow falling over her.
She had not noticed—had not heard—Nathaniel move from his desk, and a jolt of fear ran through her as he bent forward, bracing his hands on the arms of her chair.
She pulled back instinctively, her frantic words battling with the loss of air from her lungs.
“I know how this sounds, but please, you must believe me! The green… It lives. It wants. And I do not believe we are safe here.” A teardrop broke free, drawing a hot line down her trembling cheek. “Please, we need to leave! We need to get out of this house.”
The corners of his mouth lifted into a smile that was anything but kind, and the realization of what it meant shot a chill down her spine. Because she had been more than right. Something was indeed very, very wrong. And Nathaniel had fallen to it.
“Oh no,” he murmured in a way that could have been a caress if not for the ice blooming between the words. “We are not going anywhere. Not until we finish what we started.”
Phaedra could barely blink before she was thrust down, his body crowding hers, his hand clenching around her throat. The loss of breath was sudden and overwhelming, and her mind burst with flashing light, her limbs electrified with one single thought. Survive.
“Nathaniel, stop!” she croaked, her legs flailing against his frenzied movements tearing to find skin under the folds of her dress. Her hands grasped his, desperate to pry him away from her throat. But he was too strong, his grip too tight, crushing even the hope of escape from her body.
And then she saw it, a glint of silken green as the light of the fireplace reflected on it—a scrap of emerald fabric bound around his wrist.
He shifted on top of her, pinning her in place, and Phaedra grit her teeth, fighting the onslaught of panic surging through her veins.
Then with the final dregs of her strength, she raked her fingers through the underside of his wrist, her nails breaking skin, the material catching.
Yet it would not tear, her last desperate show of force meaning nothing to whatever power resided inside its unholy hue.
But just as her vision started to darken, her body going numb from the quickly diminishing air in her lungs, she found the binding—a plain, unelaborate bow, mocking in its simplicity.
With barely functioning fingers, she worked it loose and pulled the strip from his hand. Then with a swoop of her arm, she threw it into the fire blazing beside her.
She did not know if it was Nathaniel’s gasp or the gush of her own breath returning, or even if it was but her own mind that had conjured up the muffled wailing erupting around her, but she did not wish to find out.
Coughing, she pushed herself up, Nathaniel moving out of her way in a daze.
The world swayed around her as she got to her feet, and she snatched his hand, pulling him after her, her muscles aching as she rushed out of the study, through the foyer, and out the front door.
And when they were finally outside, she sank to the ground, her breath wheezing, her body shuddering under the shock of her relief.
She barely registered as Nathaniel dropped to his knees next to her, but when she could finally summon the strength to look up at him, she could plainly see the horror chalked across his face, his knuckles white below the crimson of his wrist, clawed open and bleeding into the dark ground below.