Chapter Twenty-Five
More than anything else, it was the quickness that shocked me. As if it were only another trial: a change in circumstances, a mild upheaval, and one more girl was gone, the rest of us left to vie for the territory she’d ceded. For a death, it was remarkably un-brutal; I did not even see a body.
At first, I assumed Noé would come speak to us—him, or possibly even Bastian—but neither the Weaver King nor his son appeared to explain the night’s events.
Instead, after gathering us in the ballroom to ensure we were all safely accounted for, Bernard hurriedly shooed us back to our respective quarters, assuring us we’d receive more news on “the incident” in the morning.
Five Alaire menservants trooped after him, one for each of the five silkwitches who remained: To ensure our comfort, the butler insisted. To help us feel safe.
Still, as I stood at the threshold of my room and eyed the un-shifting shadow of the figure on the other side of the doorway, I couldn’t help but wonder whether the servants had been sent to keep whatever had slain Sybil out,or…
Or if, truly, they were there to keep us in.
I’d written back to my correspondent as soon as Bernard had banished us to our quarters, but aside from the flurry of messages I’d found upon returning from the ball, no additional notes appeared to enlighten me.
Whether because the person on the other end had been frightened into silence by Sybil’s death, or because they were themself Sybil and far beyond answering, I did not know.
Still, I read their missives over and over, attempting to pull meaning from the short lines—weave together some narrative that would explain how my fellow maiden had gone from girl to corpse in the matter of a singlenight.
Did you take it?
They will kill you for this.
And beneath them all, Sybil’s voice, muttering in my ear: Do you wish Miss Lear to have died in vain?
Eventually, I gave up on solving the matter, crawling reluctantly into bed. Yet even once I closed my eyes, the facts as I knew them remained, the statistics like a grave marker on their own.
Two Vainglories.
Two deaths.
And now I worried the question was not whether another body would fall, but when?
—
Breakfast the next morning was a somber affair.
With just five of us left to fill the table, the empty seats felt like accusations, reminding us of the girls who’d once occupied them.
Only Anais seemed undisturbed by the gravelike cluster of bare seat-backs, prattling on to a maid about a pair of gloves she’d misplaced the night before.
Her expression soured when she caught me glaring at her. Seeing that she was preparing to snipe at me, I tapped a nail deliberately against my front tooth, in the exact place where Manon’s lipstick had been smeared our first evening at Fortblanche, and glanced away.
Noé entered as I was pouring my second cup of tea, the first sitting uneasily in my stomach.
As always, his judges followed directly behind him—Dorian, sleek and collected, Eliot sleep-deprived and drawn in a wrinkled suit.
I focused on the soggy dregs in my teacup when I sensed the latter’s eyes flit my way, my stomach flushing with the oily shame of encountering a drunken mistake in the light of day.
Certainly, that’s all our… dalliance …had been, hadn’t it?
A blunder born of misplaced emotions and too much time spent in close quarters together.
I was fortunate only that Noé had not caught us—that I still stood a chance of remedying my error.
Do you think I enjoy it…bowing to him…calling him my brother ?
You are ruining me , Lovett.
You have destroyed me .
“Ladies. Good morning.” Noé spoke, and I stowed my thoughts deep. He, too, seemed affected by Sybil’s death—his complexion had the sallow quality of paper yellowed with age. “By now, I am sure, you have all been made aware of the tragic passing of Miss Sybil Dabos?”
We all nodded. At our confirmation, the younger Alaire sighed heavily.
“Miss Dabos’s remains have been transported to her family, so they may begin their grieving process,” Noé continued in a solemn monotone.
“In the meantime, I wish to assure the rest of you of your safety here at Fortblanche. Out of respect for the deceased and her relatives, I will not share details of Miss Dabos’s death, but I will tell you that she lost her life as the result of an accident that occurred in a restricted part of the estate—”
“Which she had no business being in.” Dorian’s interruption was brusque and wholly unsympathetic, his gaze sweeping over us as if in chastisement. At his words, I saw Noé wince.
“Shut up, Dor,” he said, softly—bitterly.
Then, gathering himself, “Still, I must emphasize that any areas of Fortblanche that have been barred to you have been done so out of our desire for your well-being. I beg of you, please, do not lay another death on my shoulders. I fear I could not bear another loss.”
Like the sweep of a clock hand, Eliot’s stare flinched to me—only for a second, and yet, I understood the meaning of it.
A restricted part of the estate… The tunnels were the only area of Fortblanche I’d discovered that, if not outright restricted, had at least been hidden.
From our conversation, I knew Sybil had ventured into their depths before; still, if I was correct, then what could have compelled her to go back, during the night of the Midway Ball no less?
Her sneering voice rang through my mind. Don’t be obtuse…If you know the way through, it would benefit both of us to share it.
I shivered. She’d been looking for something. Something that, based on the messages from my correspondent, she’d found. But what ?
Again, their gray-stamped letters rose in my mind. You have no idea what you’ve done.
“If any of you prefer to withdraw from the remainder of the competition and exit Fortblanche in light of this tragedy, my father and I completely understand and will support your decision,” Noé went on, drawing me back to him.
“However, if you have the slightest belief in me—if you are willing to keep building on what we’ve begun here—I would implore you to stay.
It is my father’s feeling that Miss Dabos would want to see a victor crowned, whether or not that maiden could be her.
” I raised a brow doubtfully at this but gave no comment as Noé smiled, weakly and entreatingly, at us.
“The decision is yours to make,” he said.
“You may have until sundown today to alert Bernard of your choice. Leave here if you prefer, but if you remain, I swear on my forefathers that I will do whatever is in my power to make your fortitude worth your while.”
The rest of the maidens and I exchanged assessing glances from across the table as he concluded his speech.
A few—Manon Blanc, Clio Lavoie—had a frightened, skittish energy about them like a quivering bowstring, but beneath it, there was the same glacial steadiness that I sensed within the others.
None of us, I felt certain, would withdraw because of Sybil’s death.
We were all too far in now; we had all seen Fortblanche’s halls and imagined ourselves reigning over them.
Not to mention, for everyone aside from myself, the past Vainglory had ended with a corpse already, and it had not deterred a single girl from returning.
With a parting bow, Noé left us to consider his offer, Dorian and Eliot filing after him. I rose from my chair a few minutes after they’d exited, excusing myself with a mention of a stomachache.
As I’d hoped, Eliot was lagging a good twenty paces or so behind Noé and Dorian in the corridor beyond, past the bounds of their murmured conversation.
Once I’d caught sight of him, I reached for the coin tucked beneath my waistband and subtly tapped it thrice, feeling the long petals of its warmth unfurl against my fingers.
My pulse skipped when he paused, frowning down toward his side.
Perhaps it was only the embers of the previous night lying dormant in my mind, but there was something almost…
intimate about the immediacy of the connection between us, our coins bridging any distance like a pair of interlocked hands.
I watched on silently as, up ahead, he reached into his trouser pocket, as the muscles of his forearm flexed—
The chill was a shock, like the sudden dousing of a flame. I felt a crush of indignation as in my palm my coin went cold again.
Abruptly, Eliot snapped his chin over his shoulder, finding me before I could dart away. His brow was furrowed; shaking his head, he mouthed two words at me, the unvoiced syllables sharp with reproach: Not now.
He faced forward again before I could protest, quickening his pace to catch up with Dorian and Noé. Alone, I stretched my hand, then balled it tight again, my fingertips burning as though kissed by a hot stove. He’d rejected me.
Rapidly, my humiliation gave way to fury.
Who did Eliot Lear think he was, to pull me back and forth like some fish on his line?
To kiss me—I cringed, the admission of what we’d done, even just to myself, unbearably mortifying—and then push away my summons as if I were nothing?
Not now , he’d said. As if he commanded my actions.
As if I would listen to him.
We were meant to be partners. And if he did not want to behave like one—didn’t want to share with me the details of Sybil’s death, which I was sure Noé had passed to him by now—I would root them out for myself.
Almost before I knew where I was going, I was turning around again, hurrying toward my room. When I reached the gallery corridor, I glanced over my shoulder to check that none of the other maidens were approaching; then, my privacy assured, I bypassed my own door, continuing to the next one over.
Sybil’s room.
Unlike when I’d observed it the previous night, the door was now shut tight—by the Alaires, I guessed, no doubt to keep out prying visitors like me—the knob holding firm when I gave it a testing rattle.
No issue: I summoned my Wit, and it turned easily, like a dog bowing before its master, exposing the space within.
Knees wobbly, I stepped over the threshold, and—closing the entrance securely behind me once more—studied the chamber I’d found myself in.
My stomach turned. It was like stumbling across the ripening remnants of a great feast.
Clearly, the Alaires’ maids had already begun their work, cleansing the space of its former occupant.
Sybil’s bedclothes had been stripped from her mattress, her trunk lying open and half filled at the foot of her bed.
A sense of abandonment pervaded the room, worse, somehow, than the stark flash of blood would have been—as though all the chamber’s warmth had died along with Sybil herself, leaving behind only a lingering feeling of loss.
I considered kneeling down and examining her floor for a loose stone like the one I’d discovered in Ophelia’s quarters but then decided against it, turning instead to her desk—placed just below her window, a mirror image of the one that my own room had come furnished with.
My chest tightened as I pulled out the right-hand drawer, anticipating the glint of a candle holder, or a scatter of papers like the ones that had overtaken my desktop—but the compartment was empty aside from a half-depleted fountain pen and accompanying inkwell.
Disappointed, I shut the drawer, then repeated the process with its sibling on the left-hand side to similar results. If Sybil was indeed my correspondent, she’d hidden the evidence better than I had.
My gaze caught on a row of books arranged along the back of her desk as I lifted my head.
There were five or six of them in total, leather-bound except for a single fraying volume at their end.
Idly, I trailed my finger over the spines, taking in their respective titles.
The majority seemed to be historical in nature—I spotted A People Without a King: Democracy and the Rise of the Virtuous Parliament as well as The Widow and the Wife: A Study of Radical Transformation and The Sorcerer Lines of Balmoore .
I paused on the second to last text in the row: a stout green volume with a title stamped in gilt lettering. Aristide the Culler by one Matthieu Pender.
Pender. My pulse picked up. I knew of only a single Pender—their name was emblazoned on one of the scrolls in my bedroom. The recommendation from my correspondent, which I’d never been able to find.
I recalled the dark slot on the shelves of Fortblanche’s library, the gap-toothed absence where a single text had been removed. Could it be that all along, the information I’d been searching for had been waiting for me here, just a single room away from my own?
And if so, what had Sybil wanted with it?
Worrying at my lip, I pulled the tome from the row, meaning to tuck it beneath my arm for perusing later.
Then I heard the hollow clink of metal .
I hesitated. At my jostling, another object had dislodged from where it had previously been wedged between two of the books, colliding with the desktop. A bronze coin, scratched and tarnished, barely larger than my thumbnail.
Instinctively, my hand jumped to the waistline of my dress, anticipating the absence of the token Eliot had given me—but no, my coin was still sitting where I’d stowed it this morning, round and constant against my skin.
A heady fogginess, like water in my ears, pressed at my temples.
Even without comparing the two, I knew the metal piece on Sybil’s desk in front of me was identical to the one I carried, so much so that I had mistaken one for the other.
Yet, that was impossible. Eliot had told me himself—the token he’d given me was custom-made, one of a pair.
I’d just confirmed that my coin was in its proper place, and Eliot’s had been on his person when he’d rebuffed my call earlier, meaning both were accounted for. There could be no third twin.
Unless…
Unless.
Reaching out, I tapped the coin on the desk: Once, twice. A third time.
And before my eyes, its surface began to glow.