Chapter Twelve #2
His denial was swift and forceful, falling smoothly enough that I didn’t doubt, even for a moment, his belief in it.
Hovering between his armchair and the wall, I debated how to answer him.
With all that had occurred since my arrival at Fortblanche, I hadn’t had much time to consider the note I’d unearthed in my bedchamber—though I hadn’t forgotten it, either.
I thought back to the underlined verses, the swirling O penned in ink above them.
What else could have compelled a person to hold on to such a keepsake—to bury it like a loved one in the ground—if not sentimentality? Affection?
“I found a poem, hidden in my room—her old room,” I said to Eliot. “You were right about the maidens retaining their same quarters from last year.” Glancing away from him, I shrugged. “I assumed it might have been from a lover.”
His hand flexed on the armrest of his chair. “What did it say?” His voice was rough, with a grittiness like a pipe left long unused. “The poem.”
“I can’t recall exactly. It looked like it’d been torn out of a book,” I replied. “Something about spring, I believe, and—and immortality…”
“Spring immortal, untouched by frost.” Eliot finished the quote easily; I stiffened as he gripped the armrest harder, a low growl catching in his throat.
“That’s Vaudevaul— dammit . Every schoolchild in Balmoore can quote him by the age of five.
It tells us nothing.” His manner was frayed, his limbs buzzing with restlessness.
“So your answer, then, would be no,” I ventured hesitantly after a minute had passed in terse quiet. “Your sister never spoke to you of a lover, Noé or otherwise.”
“Never.” Eliot shook his head, running a hand wearily through his curls.
“I suppose she could have hidden it from me, if she thought I wouldn’t approve of the person, but…
honestly, none of it seems like her,” he said.
“Love poems, romance…She hated all that stuff—hated the notion that as a silkwitch, she’d be forced to wed if she wanted to avoid a life condemned to the cloisters.
” His mouth quirked up, his expression turning reflective.
“When she was alive, her friends used to ask her to use her Wit to intuit their husbands, but she never would. Said she didn’t believe in doling out curses. ”
At his soft chuckle, embarrassment unfurled in me, as though I’d caught him in an intimate act. My cheeks heated; our gazes slid instinctively together, both of them surreptitious, like we were trying to determine what the other had seen.
I was grateful when he cleared his throat, steering the conversation back to safer waters. “Do you think the poem could have been a code of some kind? Perhaps she was meeting with someone.”
Pushing away the last of my discomfort, I considered the idea.
“Perhaps,” I conceded. “When I spoke with Anais and the other maidens, they made it seem as though Ophelia was somewhat of a recluse last year. If she had a confidante in Fortblanche, she certainly didn’t advertise the fact.
” I scowled when I saw Eliot observing me, a cryptic look on his face.
“What, you have a criticism to share already?”
His features cleared; it amazed me, the speed with which he could lock himself away, as effortless as shutting a door. Briefly and irrationally, I wondered if Ophelia had learned to read him when she’d been alive—and if so, how.
“No,” he replied. “It is only—You discovered all of that your first night?”
I smiled at the begrudging admiration I heard in his tone. “Impressed you, have I, Mr.Lear?”
“You’ll find I’m rather difficult to impress.” Eliot returned my smirk steadily with one of his own. “Though if it pleases you to try, you are welcome to do so, Miss Lovett.”
An odd sensation came over me then, like a clenching beneath my stomach. I wanted to turn away from him but felt intuitively that to do so would have been an admission—of what, I wasn’t sure. Some weakness, like a gambler’s hand flinching on the draw.
“Who is the girl Noé was involved with?” I asked instead. “You said he’d been in love, but not with your sister. Another of the maidens?”
Eliot shrugged ambiguously. “I only know that she was deemed inappropriate by Bastian, and Noé was forced to end things with her prior to the start of the competition last year,” he answered, seemingly unbothered by my change in subject.
“He didn’t confide in me until after it had finished.
I’m not sure if he ever would have, honestly, but…
when my sister died, he blamed himself. Said he felt it was his fault—that if he’d fought harder against his father’s wishes, there never would have been a Vainglory to begin with.
” Eliot exhaled, his nostrils flaring as he tilted his chin up toward me.
“He’s not as heartless as you make him out to be. ”
I stared down at him, the lamplight gilding his features like the feathered brushstrokes of an oil painting. “I don’t know him well enough to make him out as anything at all,” I replied. “Nor you.”
His gaze hardened, his eyes flat as they traced my profile.
I stepped back as he rose, at last, from his armchair, stretching his arms out in front of him.
“It is not me you should worry about acquainting yourself with,” he said.
“You met several of the other maidens yesterday. Did anyone strike you as odd?”
I winced, a finger of ice flaring along my forearm at his inquiry—the searing midwinter freeze of an iron bar slipped between my muscles.
“Sybil Dabos,” I said immediately. “She seems…interested in me. I’m not sure how to explain it—only that it feels more complex than a simple case of jealousy. And she—”
“I meant to tell you—Sybil told Noé, Dorian, and me her Wit at her presentation yesterday.” I bristled when Eliot cut me off, only to fall silent as I took in his words.
“She has the gift of prophetic touch. For every person whose bare skin she brushes, she receives a vision: a piece of their past, present, or future, though she cautioned that she does not always know which is which.”
He shifted toward me, suddenly alert.
“You haven’t come into contact with her when she’s had her gloves off, have you?”
The press of a milky white hand as it held mine, as firm as a snakebite. A melodic, crooning voice: Curious. Quite curious.
My stomach twisted like a wrung cloth. Hadn’t I felt, after my encounter with Sybil, that there had been some kind of…intrusion? As if I’d been turned inside out, my dark places all exposed.
She saw you. It was like passing by a window and glimpsing someone standing in your garden—realizing they had witnessed you, the secret, shameful self you let out only in private.
But which sin had Sybil seen? My past: my collection of stolen trinkets; my present: deception and lies; or some ghost from my future, one even I had yet to meet?
I wanted to ask, but by the way Eliot was looking at me, it was clear that there was only one answer he wished to hear.
“No,” I breathed. “No—of course not.”
Eliot’s body sagged in relief. “Good,” he said.
“Sisters know, the wrong bit of your past—or present, for that matter—could expose us completely.” Shaking off his disquiet, he rubbed a hand along his jaw contemplatively.
“As for the rest of the silkwitches…after the first trial concludes tonight, the next couple days should be more leisurely. Use the time to ingratiate yourself with your fellow contestants, if you can. Anais will not be the only maiden to approach you—alliances are a natural part of these games, and your loyalty is as of yet unclaimed.” He curved a brow at me.
“So long as you don’t make the other girls feel threatened, they should be willing to entertain any inquiries about your predecessor.
In the meantime, I’ll bring you any leads I get from Noé. ”
He stepped back toward the armchair he’d occupied earlier, making as if to sit down. I sensed that if he did, our conversation would end, shut tight like the book he’d left resting on the flattened cushion. I should have left it there, yet before I knew it, I was speaking again.
“I found something else last night.”
Eliot paused, looked back at me. My pulse sped under his scrutiny, but I forced myself on. “I was…exploring the estate, as Noé said we could,” I started. “It was late—past midnight. The ball had ended, and most everyone was asleep.”
“You were snooping, then.” Eliot smirked but stayed where he was. “Go on.”
“I was on the main floor, in one of the Alaires’ spinning rooms toward the back part of Fortblanche’s east wing,” I continued.
“There was a door. It was behind a tapestry—hidden—but I noticed it all the same.” I paused, visualizing the black hood of the empty doorway, the icy ribbons of wind which had emitted from it like trails of breath.
“It took me into a tunnel. At the end, there was a stone chamber, with more passageways branching off from it. I hadn’t brought a lamp with me, or I’d have explored further, but…
” I recalled the scratch of the lace against my palm as I lifted it from the stone, the flicker of white.
“I think another maiden might have found it,too.”
I braced myself for Eliot’s disbelief, yet after a moment, he nodded.
“That sounds like the old estate,” he said.
“Fortblanche was renovated during Noé’s grandfather’s time—the structure as it exists today is built, in truth, atop the bones of its past selves.
The remaining access points should have been sealed over by now, but I suppose with your Wit, it would make sense that you could break through. ”
He inclined his head, his expression turning thoughtful.