Chapter Twenty-Seven
A fresh squall had kicked up by the time I made it to the top of the tower, the sky beyond the slim lancet windows filmy and gray like dishwater left sitting too long. In front of me, the peeling green door was closed tight, lending no hints as to who might be waiting beyond it.
My chest constricted as I reached for the doorknob, Sybil’s coin held in one fist, my own resting, inactive, in its usual place back under my waistband.
Coming here was a gamble—and though I despised myself for it, there was a stubborn, girlish part of me that hoped it would not pay off.
Even if the token I’d found in Sybil’s room had been given to her by Eliot, there was no guarantee he would have set the same meeting place for the two of them as he had for us.
But if he had—if I were him, and a call from my recently deceased conspirator had come in—it was here that I would return.
I opened the door. On the other side, a figure turned, tawny curls framing a peaked face, hazel eyes widened in anticipation, and an elegant, frowning mouth.
Eliot.
My hopes shattered, a porcelain cup tossed to the ground.
“You.”
There was no masking the disappointment in Eliot’s tone. His gaze roved me boldly, as if searching for a seam, a row of stitches he could pop open and reveal another hiding behind my ribs. Catching his stare, I stepped across the threshold and closed the door behind me.
“You seem upset, sir. Were you expecting someone else?”
As I spoke, I flicked Sybil’s coin from my hand, letting it land with a plink on the bare floor.
Its shine had not dimmed since I’d left my bedroom, and now it howled with white like a gaping celestial maw, in stark contrast to my own.
Eliot winced at the light, reaching into his trouser pocket and issuing three sharp taps.
When he withdrew his hand again, the coin had dimmed.
Sighing, he lifted his attention back to me. “I feared it might have been you who found it.”
“You feared?” My tone was chilled despite the fury seeping steadily through me, like blood from a wound. “A curious reaction from a boy who claims to be my ally. Tell me, who had you hoped would meet you here, if not me?”
In the dirty stormlight, Eliot’s features were hooded, the emotions that flitted across them indistinct, like smudged thumbprints of ink. Even so, I thought I detected a trace of guilt in his furrowed brow as he spoke. “Lovett…”
My name was hushed on his lips, laden with meaning. I bucked against it—against the intention I felt behind it, like a hand on my elbow, drawing me away from a cliff. Lovett.
“Was it Sybil you were waiting on?” I asked, and at the question, his expression shuttered.
“It must have frightened you, seeing her coin light up so soon after its owner had been pronounced dead. Did you think it was her ghost, come back to haunt you?” Fixing my gaze on him, I drew another pace nearer. “Did you kill her yourself?”
His laugh took me aback, cutting and quick like a switchblade. “Please.” His shoulders were tensed; all the gentleness had gone from him, rolling back like shirtsleeves pushed up for a fight. “I’d expect a more creative accusation from you, atleast.”
“And I might have hoped for an original betrayal, but here we are—both of us so very disappointing.”
I pushed farther into the room, Eliot’s chin tilting down in response to track my movement.
His eyes flared, hot and indignant, and under their force, I felt something drop in the pit of my stomach.
A memory lapped at the corners of my mind: how suddenly the distance between us had vanished the prior night, slipping away like a breached horizon.
With considerable effort, I forced myself back. “Were you together?”
I did not clarify the subject of which I spoke; there was no need to. I could sense the burn of her red hair like smoke, filling the air all around us.
Eliot shook his head, matching my retreat. “No,” he said. “Never.” His expression had thawed, his tone earnest. “I am not that kind of man, Lovett.”
I clenched my jaw at his softness—harder to confront than his anger, like a thumb pressing down on a bruise, driving into my weak places. “Wonderful,” I replied dryly. “Only a liar, then. I am glad that some of your morals remain above reproach.”
“I didn’t—” Eliot’s fist tightened at his side, then loosened again. “It was not my intention to deceive you.”
He spoke carefully, his words placed down like a set of cards on a table. They only served to rile me further.
“And what was your intention?” I challenged. “What was she to you, if not your—”
My voice broke, the sentiment too painful to articulate. Pathetic.
Eliot cleared his throat, the sound muffled beneath the patter of the rain. “She was…an associate,” he said a moment later. “An ally, I suppose. We shared mutual interests, like you andI.”
I took in his answer, then hummed skeptically. “And was she aware that she wasn’t the only girl you were sharing with?”
The question drew blood—I could tell by the way his features contorted with defensive ire, like the reactive dart of a viper whose tail had been stepped on.
“You of all people have no right to condescend to me,” Eliot snapped.
“I brought you to Fortblanche to help me, and yet from the moment you stepped foot in its halls, you have sown chaos wherever you’ve walked.
Noé has barely spoken to me in days, thanks to your meddling—you’ve nearly succeeded in severing a friendship over a decade strong. ”
“And I will finish the job, if you fail to tell me the exact nature of your alliance with Sybil,” I said, cutting him off.
Seething, he flexed his jaw, his eyes narrowed and defensive.
“You thought me ruthless when you had my loyalty, Eliot,” I continued lowly. “Imagine what I might confess to the Alaires now that you have lost it.”
Eliot chuckled. Without my conscious effort, the space between us had shrunk again—as if we were standing in a river, swept inevitably closer by a current I couldn’t make out.
“Be patient, Lovett,” he said after a pause.
“I will give you the answers you wish to hear. But do not delude yourself into believing you were ever loyal to me.”
He leaned forward, his voice dropping to a murmur.
“I believe such inclinations are against your nature.”
Silence bloomed, pushing, dense and humid, against my chest. Perhaps it was only his nearness, perhaps the burnished green-gold of his stare, but I felt abruptly and uncomfortably noticed , standing before him, in the same disconcerting manner that one senses another has witnessed a stain on their dress.
Irrationally, I was struck by an impulse to cover myself up—to retreat behind the coquettish mask that I’d worn for Noé when we walked in the garden.
Yet Eliot knew that disguise; indeed, he had helped me to mold it. Why had I not considered earlier that in allowing him to do so, I’d left myself nowhere to hide?
“About a fortnight before the competition began, Sybil wrote seeking an audience with me.” Averting his eyes, Eliot started again.
As soon as his attention left me, the prickling uneasiness did as well, letting me breathe freely once more.
“Considering that our parents have been locked into a political rivalry since before our births, the request was…unexpected, to say the least, but I was curious. I thought perhaps she’d heard that Noé had appointed me to his judges’ panel and was hoping to court my favor. When we met, though…”
A vicious gust of wind stole away the sound of his huffed breath, thumping against the windowpane like a heaved body. I glanced briefly in its direction—taking in the film of rain on the glass, obscuring the world beyond—then back at the boy in front of me.
“She told me she’d grown close with Ophelia during the trials last year,” Eliot went on.
“Described the pair of them as practically sisters, a claim that I initially questioned, considering Ophelia had never been one to make friends easily. But…” He shook his head, his expression clouded.
“She knew things about my sister that I was certain Ophelia never would have let a casual acquaintance so much as glimpse. Intimate details of our childhood, of my sister’s preferences…
bits of her it took me years, even as her brother, to pull free. Her story was convincing.”
I shivered as Eliot’s words sank in. When I’d spoken with Marie-Louise, the other maiden had certainly implied that there had been some sort of connection between Sybil and Ophelia before the latter’s death. Whether it had been a bond of friendship, though…
Lear had no friends. Anais’s voice drifted through my mind, as sharp in memory as it had been when I’d first heard it, the night of my arrival at Fortblanche. Had she simply been unaware of the other girls’ relationship?
It was a possibility—but I thought of the golden-haired maiden extending me the champagne bottle and then watching me, green-eyed and perfectly sober, behind it, and I doubted it.
“Sybil claimed that my sister’s loss had affected her deeply,” Eliot went on, running a hand through his hair.
“That ever since, she’d been haunted by thoughts of Ophelia’s passing.
And, more troublingly”—he cut his gaze my way, as if ensuring I was watching him—“her increasing certainty that my sister’s death had not been an accident. ”
He chuckled shallowly at the scoff that slipped from mylips.