Gallant(53)

For a moment she has a mad idea.

She closes her eyes, imagines herself a part of this place, and tries to reach out and feel him, as if he were a patch of sun, a pulse. They are connected after all, two Priors, two living bodies in a house full of ash. So she reaches, and hopes, and feels . . .

Nothing. Just foolish.

Wherever Thomas is, she will have to find him the old-fashioned way. By looking. So she moves through the house, torn between keeping to the shadows, which might not be empty, and walking through the moonlit halls, alone, exposed.

She passes the ballroom, but tonight there are no dancers spinning silently across the floor, no soldiers ranged about, no white-eyed figure on his makeshift throne.

The study door hangs open, listing on its broken hinges, the chair turned away behind the desk. She holds her breath as she creeps forward, waiting to hear that eerie voice from the other side, waiting for the chair to turn and reveal those dead-white eyes, that paper skin, bone jaw shining through its face. But she reaches the chair, and it is empty.

Olivia lets out a slow, unsteady sigh, heart racing in her ears. And then she looks down.

She cannot help herself. She crouches and peers beneath the desk, hoping to find her mother’s journal where it fell. It is not there, but halfway to the door she glimpses a bit of paper in the corner, its left edge torn.

On it, her mother’s hand, already beginning to slant.

I am afraid it wasn’t my hand on her cheek wasn’t my voice in my mouth wasn’t my eyes watching her sleep

She shivers, letting the paper fall.

As it whispers to the floor, she hears footsteps overhead. The slow, easy stride of a man at home. Olivia holds her breath and listens until they fade.

Run, says her blood.

Stay, say her bones.

Olivia traces her way back down the maze of halls, not to the grand stairs, broad and bathed in silver light, but to the music room.

She circles the ruined piano, its black and white teeth piled in a heap, and goes to the corner. Her fingers trace the seams, just like Matthew showed her, until she finds the little latch. A gentle press, and the panel swings open onto steep, narrow steps. It is pitch black, and she climbs by feel, counts ten steps before reaching the top.

She turns in the dark and feels for the other door. For a second, it holds, unwilling to give. Fear twists through her, the simple, visceral fear of a body enclosed in a narrow stone space, and in her panic, she throws herself against the door too hard. It swings open, spilling her out into the room.

Olivia almost falls but catches herself on the wooden poster of the bed. She bites her tongue and feels the warm taste of copper in her mouth. Blood. She swallows it and steadies herself. She is in Matthew’s room, or at least, the room he lives in on the other side. Here, it is abandoned. The bed sits covered in a film of dust. The shutters are open, the window glass splintered, the tapestry that hung on his wall threadbare and leached of color.

She holds her breath and listens, but the footsteps she heard have stopped. She rounds the bed, goes to the door that leads to the upstairs hall, pressing her ear to the wood. Silence. Her hand goes to the knob, and she’s about to ease the door open when she feels as much as hears the sound of a body shifting, the sigh of limbs on a mattress.

Her eyes go back to the four-poster bed. It is still empty. She looks to the tapestry on the wall. And then she is there, guiding the heavy curtain aside, staring at the second door. It is ajar, the wood whispering open under her touch.

There in the dark of the other room, there is a bed. And on the bed, a boy lies curled beneath the sheets.

Olivia starts forward, then catches herself, hands on the doorway. It is too easy. Which is to say, it hasn’t been easy at all, but this, this part, feels like a trap. Here is the way in, and there is the bait, and she knows better than to reach for it. Instead she takes a step back.

The trouble is that when she does, the floorboards creak under her feet, and the figure in the bed stirs and sits up. Unfolds, and as it does, she realizes it is not the boy she saw in the fountain, but a shadow. A soldier. The short wolfish one with the feral grin. The gauntlet gleams on her hand as she pulls away the sheet.

Olivia lurches back into Matthew’s room, only to collide with another body, one that made no noise when it came in. Out of the corner of her eye, she catches the edge of a tattered black coat.

“Hello, little mouse.”

That voice, like smoke in a narrow space. She can hear him smile, teeth clicking together in his open jaw. Her hand slides into the pocket of her dress and closes over Edgar’s knife.

“I’ve been waiting for you.”

Olivia spins, drawing the blade. She doesn’t wait, but twists and drives the knife into his chest. The master of the house looks down at the weapon protruding from his front and clucks his tongue.

“Now, now,” he says, “is that how we treat family?”

He curls his hand around her wrist, his touch like paper over stone. His fingers tighten, and pain lances through her bones, along with something else, the spark of heat, the sudden cold, the same strange dip and fall she felt when she brought the mouse and the flowers back to life. As if he’s stealing something from her. Sure enough, the faintest hint of color spreads across his skin, and a wave of dizziness crashes into her, making the room tip and her vision blur. She tears free, surging toward Matthew’s bedroom door, toward the hall beyond, only to find another soldier blocking her way. The one built like a brick, armor strapped to his shoulder.