Chapter 50
THE REVELATION
Iam a block of ice on the move—hair frozen, breath frosted—lost in the hedge maze, dead ends at every turn as shadow closes in and panic rises. I must get to him. I have to save him. But when I finally reach the center, Jude isn’t there. Instead, the portrait lies on the ground like a mirror.
Birdsong fractures the silence as the locket in the painting shimmers like a sunbeam.
Ribbons of light spider outward.
The portrait splits into a gaping maw, and a black tentacle reaches out from within.
I jerk upright in bed.
My phone is buzzing.
Jude has sent a message.
He’s on the road. Headed to Athens, chasing a solution I’m not sure exists. If it did, surely Ezra would have found it. But Ezra didn’t find a way to destroy Seraphina. He only found a way to lock her up.
Now Jude wants to let her out.
I shiver.
Cold has become a merciless, inescapable companion.
I draw my comforter around me and step out into the hallway.
It’s quiet. Dad’s bedroom door is ajar. He must already be out mowing the paddock or clearing the stables.
I wonder if he’s found the old carriage yet, and the pair of initials carved inside a heart.
One of them belonged to his wife, who was here thirty years ago.
A kid in foster care, sent to Foggy Hollow. Drawn to Simon Vandenberg with no idea that Simon’s great-great-great something grandfather had painted the daughter she would one day have.
Simon fell in love.
The curse was triggered.
Tragedy struck.
My mother was sent away.
But the demons went with her.
She had me.
She left me.
And because she left, we came here.
Was it all meant to be? Was this moment, right now, written in the stars? Or could she have stayed? And if she had stayed, would we still be in Ohio? What about Jude? What about Rafe? What about the gemstones and the portrait and the curse?
I kneel on the floor, pull the portrait out from under my bed, and stare at the locket in the painting. It drew him to his wife and led to the birth of his son. He hid the locket inside a jewelry box, inside a coffin, inside a crypt. Marked by coordinates inside a compass, inside a Bible.
Clues inside of clues, like Russian nesting dolls.
Maybe this is why I’m so convinced there must be something inside the locket, too.
Ezra dreamt about it. In his dreams, Seraphina wore the locket as she murdered Molly.
So why did he paint it around my neck? Because he dreamt of me, too?
And what of the words scrawled on a fragment of parchment in Maggie’s office?
Surely, if there was a revelation and he thought I might be its fulfillment, he would have kept careful track of that revelation.
I narrow my eyes.
Clues within clues.
I run my hands along the frame, feeling for a hidden latch.
A secret compartment. There’s nothing. I pick the portrait up, turn it over, and set it on my bed.
On the backside, muslin has been nailed in place.
I smooth my hand over the aged cotton, much softer than the flaxen weave of the canvas.
They are two different things, with a small space between them.
Clues within clues.
With a jump of adrenaline, I search for an opening. There’s not even a loose thread to pick. My eye catches on the tome set upon my bedside table, with its busted lock.
Five minutes later, I’m back with a razor blade.
As carefully as possible, I cut near the frame’s edge. I work the blade along the stretcher, and the fabric starts to give—slowly, painstakingly, until finally, the muslin is gone. And there, hidden against the raw back of the canvas, are words.
With my heart in my throat, I begin to read.
This revelation was set down by my own hand in the year of our Lord 1777, though I remember it not.
What she could not claim in Heaven, she sought through blood.
A mortal line, forged to swell her might, so long as it endured.
Silver was shaped, a fragment of her divine essence sealed within.
Protection for those she named her kin, given not from love, but greed.
Yet in her reach for dominion, the seed of her undoing was sown.
By the cruelty she wrought, her end shall be fashioned.
Power unlocked by the blood of her progeny.
Fates entwined through the touching of blood.
The curse shall return to its maker.
A reckoning bound to sacrifice.
For no mortal may touch the divine and live.
- E.V.
Ezra’s revelation has been here all along, recorded on the back of the portrait. I reread every line, trying to make sense of the words.
What she could not claim in heaven, she sought through blood. A mortal line to swell her might.
The subject is clearly Seraphina. It matches the information from the scroll we found in Ezra’s crypt, translated by Ezra himself. Unwilling to be bested by Dante, she forged a mortal line to increase her power.
Silver was shaped, a fragment of her divine essence sealed within.
My attention darts to the middle drawer of my writing desk. I haven’t touched the locket since the hammer incident. But now, I open the drawer and weigh the locket in my palm, unsure if the faint pulse is a figment of my imagination, or a fragment of Seraphina’s divine essence.
Power unlocked by the blood of her progeny …
The words jump off the page. They reverberate through my mind like a plucked bowstring.
Unlocked.
Blood.
Progeny.
My heart thuds—a heavy glug-glug-glug in my ears.
Seraphina created a bloodline.
Silver was forged, her essence preserved inside. And that power can only be unlocked by the blood of her descendants.
According to Ezekiel Cotton, those descendants would have a strong connection to the spiritual realm. So strong, perhaps, they’d be able to see doorways others couldn’t.
I pick up the razor blade and prick my finger. A droplet of crimson pools on the tip. I touch it to the locket’s clasp, and like ink blooming on paper, my blood spreads through the silver.
Slowly, it fades.
For a moment, nothing happens.
The locket sits in my palm, my blood consumed.
Then it begins to glow.
My heart beats harder as the locket shudders … and opens.
A drop of shadow laced with thin veins of pulsing red floats inside.
A tiny black beating heart.
Ancient.
Hungry.
Waiting.
I feel its pull.
To lean closer.
To touch.
As if I were always meant to do so.
But just as my fingertip hovers over it, I stop. The final words of the revelation echo through my mind.
For no mortal may touch the divine and live.
The curse is coming to a head. It’s coming for me. I can feel it in the coldness of my bones. It’s as inevitable as me, here in Foggy Hollow.
My fate written in the stars.
So, too, is the task before me.
Rafe will open the tomb, and Seraphina will come out. But that is where it will end.
She will not rise more terrible than before. I won’t let her. With the touch of my blood, our lives will be tethered. Our fates, entwined. And the curse that is coming for me will come for her, too.
By the cruelty she wrought, her end shall be fashioned.
Her essence pulses in my palm.
I cannot touch it yet.
But I will soon enough.
Jude is looking for a solution.
And I have found it.
A supernatural weapon.
A way to stop the curse.
To rewrite the ending of this tragic tale once and for all.