Chapter Twenty-Eight
Without the assuring press of my coin driving into my hip bone, I felt naked as I walked through Fortblanche, vulnerable as if it had been a sword I’d slung off in the turret room rather than a bit of metal.
The corridors seemed to stretch longer in front of me, every corner I rounded a risk now that I did so without an ally alongside me.
Now that I was alone.
The maidens’ corridor was all but abandoned when I arrived, the rest of my competitors either absent or recovering from the news of Sybil’s passing in their own quarters.
Shutting my door behind me, I surveyed my bedroom—quiet and peaceful aside from the patter of the continuing downpour beyond my windows—and got to work.
First, I gathered up the book I’d taken from Sybil’s room and tossed it into my empty trunk, satisfaction rolling through me at the sound of its spine thwacking against the bottom.
My desk was next. Pushed to its back, Ophelia’s candle sat, cold and half melted like a drooping horn, no new missives awaiting me around its bottom.
My correspondent, it seemed, was maintaining their silence.
I took the candle by its brass holder and placed it in the trunk alongside the volume by Pender. When my hand lifted to shut the lid, I hesitated.
The actions I took, I took in the hope of bringing her justice.
Eliot’s words made my resolve waver. Without the clues I’d uncovered to guide him, I doubted he’d be able to piece together the mystery of his sister’s death—certainly not before the end of the Vainglory.
He’d lied to me, yes…but as much as I wished I could deny it, a part of me understood why he had.
Was I truly going to deny him what might very well be his sole chance at bringing Ophelia’s killer to light, simply because of my own pride? My own spitefulness?
But as rapidly as my misgivings had risen, they faded again.
Logically, I could appreciate that Eliot’s deceit, cutting as it was, was not personal; by contrast, what I could not forgive was the reality that I had fallen for his schemes.
Since the day of our meeting in the Diplomat, he had allowed me to believe that I was the scoundrel in our relationship, and he, the gentleman—that if either of us turned traitor, it would be his back bearing the knife wound, not mine.
He had used me. Forced me to break the oath I’d sworn to myself after my uncle had cut my hair all those years ago: that I would never, in any circumstances, allow myself to be used. Not for my Wit, not for my looks, not for anything.
I felt tears burning at the corners of my eyes and hated myself for it. If in Eliot’s mind, neither of us was a good person…I’d show him I could be worse.
Rising, I let the lid fall, enclosing my secrets within.
I was done.
—
When I woke again, it was to the gentle rocking of the sea.
I sat up, hissing at the vicious bite of icy water soaking through my nightgown.
Where previously, the walls of my bedroom had boxed me in, a seemingly endless expanse of open ocean now unfurled around me, moon-glossed and as black as a slick of paint.
I bobbed in the center of it, carried by a small rowboat, its wooden carcass placed like a cradle atop the waves.
Someone had laid me across its seats; with a jolt, I realized that my arms had been crossed over my chest, like that of a corpse at a funeral.
Panic kicked at my chest. How had I gotten here?
Shifting on the rowboat’s bench, I searched my memory: The last thing I could recall with clarity was climbing into bed near midnight, my stomach cramping with its now-typical anxious throb, and then…
nothing—only the shadowed, death-silence of sleep. Was I dreaming?
When I pressed on the thought, an image shivered through my mind—a pair of men, gloved and cloaked in black, hovering over my bedside—but attempting to focus on the figures made the scene smudge like a puff of blown soot.
There was a strange taste in my mouth, as chemical and pungent as lye, my head foggy in the same way it had been after I’d drunk the cupful of brooding clover whiskey in Bastian’s study.
Had I been drugged ?
Uneasily, I turned my attention to the vessel itself. Two oars extended outward from the boat’s center, held in place by a pair of circular oarlocks, their flat ends like palms hovering over the water’s surface. Aside from them, the craft was plain, featureless, except for…
Ah. It was as if a weight had slipped from my shoulders; at last, I understood. Carved along the inside of the boat’s stern in jagged capital letters was a message—a single sentence, its instructions clear:
Find the Door That Leads You Home.
A challenge. Which must have meant that this rowboat, my seeming abduction…were both part of the third trial.
And it had already begun.
So soon. I marveled at it, how quickly time seemed to scurry on in the Alaires’ circles, like a spider down a hall.
Only a night prior, one of Noé’s prospective brides had been found dead, and though I’d gathered from the speech he’d given us that he and his father intended to carry on with the competition, I’d nonetheless expected a mourning period of some kind.
Ophelia’s passing had brought the entirety of the Vainglory down with it, after all.
Why, a year later, were Bastian and his son in such a rush?
I forced the question from my head. I had no need for answers now that Eliot and I were through.
I needed only to succeed.
Eager now, I glanced around in search of my destination—a doorway home, though how one could exist amidst the rolling waves, I had no idea.
To one side of the vessel was only the glistening tapestry of the ocean; on my other, though, a craggy bulk rose in the distance, the curve of a larger landmass visible a ways beyond it.
The Isle d’Eylau. If I squinted, I could pick out the toothy jut of Fortblanche’s spires, rising like flags above the island’s peak.
Surely, that must be where I was meant to head.
Not toward the home I’d left behind when I journeyed to the Alaires’ estate, but rather the place I would reside if I won Noé’s heart.
When , I corrected myself mentally. When I won Noé’s heart.
My boating experience being limited to a single ill-fated family picnic expedition along Balmoore’s coast as a child, my mastery of the oars was clumsy at best. Still, after a few false starts, I managed to propel myself in the general direction of the Isle.
Judging by the fact that no other crafts appeared to challenge my progress, I assumed this trial was an individual one—though just because I didn’t see any of my fellow contestants didn’t mean there wasn’t a race.
The rest of the maidens might have already reached the shore by now.
Perhaps, a few of them had even found the doorway the instructions spokeof.
If so, I could not afford to tarry.
Eventually, the rhythmic susurrus of the waves lulled me into a kind of half awareness, my body working the oars while my mind wandered.
I was startled when only a short while later a series of shapes in my periphery made me drift to a stop.
My reverie must have been more engrossing than I realized; in the time I’d been thinking, I’d traveled most of the way to the Isle already, its shoreline lingering less than a hundred meters away.
Apprehension flexed in my chest. Positioned in between the Isle and my boat was a row of identical red doors, freestanding in the waves like guards dressed in crimson livery.
There were five of them in total, arranged on a gradual curve, their bottoms sunk into the lapping sea as if they were resting on a rocky shelf just below the water.
Though their polished silver knobs glinted invitingly in the moonlight, they appeared to open unto nothing at all—only the dark night air, as still and lightless as a shroud.
Find the door that leads you home. Certainly, amongst these doorways stood the one I was meant to pass through—yet how was I to determine which one?
I reached for my oars, intending to row closer, then drew back when my fingers swiped through emptiness. My stomach lurched when I caught sight of a wooden paddle floating ten feet away from my craft like a bit of driftwood. When had I letthem go?
Look closer.
My neck prickling, I sat back on the bench, peering hard at my surroundings.
The Isle d’Eylau loomed in front of me—so near, when upon waking it had appeared over a mile away.
How had I closed the distance so fast? I was not especially athletic, and the more I considered my journey, the more I noticed a conspicuous absence in the middle of it.
An obsidian blot as if I’d blinked from one location to the other—the same unexplainable blankness that arose when I tried to imagine how the oars had ended up in the water.
A seed of suspicion cracked open within me. Rising unsteadily, I balanced my bare feet on the wooden bottom of the rowboat—then carefully lifted the right one up and stepped over the vessel’s side, into the ocean.
The waves caught me, as smooth and solid as glass.
With a sharp inhale, I flexed my toes in a test, then left the boat behind entirely, placing my left foot beside the other.
The sea bore me up, the water rippling gently outward from the place where I stood as if the ocean were no deeper than a puddle.
Or, I thought with a drop of satisfaction, an illusion.
Confident now, I strode forward, the waves flattening obligingly beneath me like a garden path.
Once I knew what to look for, the seams in the Weaver-sewn scene were obvious: the cyclical roll of the clouds above my head like set pieces jerked on a string, the uncanny quiet where there should have been the crash of surf against the shore, the cry of gulls wheeling through the sky.
Even so, I could barely fathom the amount of magic that must have gone into crafting such an elaborate enchantment.
The sheaves of silkwitch hair that must have been required to supply it.
I paused a few paces out from the centermost door, its plain red face indistinguishable from the others that filed out from its either side.
Closing my eyes, I drew in a breath and sank into my Wit, bedding down in the familiar grayness.
Immediately, I felt an urgent tug in my gut as my magic registered the presence of a doorway, but when I waited for the shadowed ebony outlines to emerge, none did.
My vision remained stubbornly monochrome, all smoky noncolor, like runoff.
I gnawed uneasily at my lip. Had I misunderstood the nature of the trial? Was I—
Roughly, I was jerked back to alertness as, near the edges of my internal sight, I registered a dark fuzz—not in the direction of the row of doors but off toward their side, out in the open water.
Invigorated, I shifted my consciousness toward it.
Where with my eyes, I’d glimpsed only the ocean, there now stood a single rectangular shape, its edges glowing with spectral black light.
The exit to the illusion: the one true door.
Opening my eyes, I released a breath, then found the place where I’d seen the impression of the doorway and started toward it.
Sure enough, after several steps I felt something wisping over my skin, a faint resistance like a breeze pushing against me.
Gritting my teeth, I shouldered through the enchantment, focusing wholeheartedly on my destination.
The air seemed to shudder, then peel back, like a bud flowering open.
As if emerging from a heavy fog, a doorknob materialized in front of me—not silver-plated like its siblings, but gold, gleaming brightly as if shining with its own internal sun.
I took it without hesitating, giving it a firm twist.
And around me, the night faded as a door swung open.