House of Salt and Sorrows(70)

I turned away from my sisters’ gazes. “Oh.”

“What is it?”

I studied the door handle. “I’m certain I left my door shut.”

But it was now several inches ajar. I pushed it wide open, hoping to find Ligeia and Rosalie inside. When I spotted a dark form near my bureau, a startled cry burst from my throat.

Ivor looked up in surprise, his face cloudy but panicked.

“What are you doing in here?” I demanded, and felt Cassius at my back, peering in.

Ivor slowly shut the drawer. One of my silk stockings caught in the latch. “Looking for the twins.”

“In Annaleigh’s dresser?” Cassius’s voice was dark with warning. “And they’re triplets.”

He shrugged. “Thought with everyone busy, I might search for clues.”

“Clues?”

“About the shoes.”

“My sisters are missing and you’re worried about our shoes?” I flew at him, grabbing his arm and pushing him toward the door with all the strength I could muster. It was like trying to move a mountain. “This is my private room. Get out of here!”

Ivor ducked out of my grasp. “I was just trying to help.”

“Help yourself, more like it.”

“The lady has asked you to leave her room,” Cassius reminded him, stretching out his frame.

Ivor glanced back and forth between us, one eyebrow raised. “And just what exactly are you doing in the lady’s room?”

Cassius’s eyes narrowed. He stared him down, silent and unmoving, until Ivor shuffled off. “There’s a trinket in your pocket I’m certain belongs to Miss Thaumas,” he called after him. “Leave it.”

Without looking back, Ivor dropped one of my hair ribbons to the ground, trampling it as he left. Cassius followed after him to make sure he didn’t wander into any of the other rooms.

As I picked up the ribbon, a memory stirred deep within me.

Hair.

I’d pulled a twig from Lenore’s hair this morning. A berry twig. I knew where those bushes were. They grew in a thicket in the forest not far from Highmoor. Lenore must have been there. And the triplets never did anything by themselves….

“I think I know where they might be,” I said as Cassius returned.

“Where?”

I raced down the stairwell, throwing a scarf around my neck. “Follow me.”





I took the quickest route through the gardens, but we were still half frozen by the time we entered the forest’s edge. Along the way, I kept an eye out for any signs my sisters had come this direction, but the howling winds obscured any traces they might have left. I tried to ignore the growing fears in the pit of my stomach as they twisted my hopes with grim pragmatism.

It was too cold.

They’d been gone too long.

There was no way we’d find them alive.

No!

I pictured Rosalie and Ligeia huddled in the thicket, cold and disoriented, but we’d cover them in our cloaks and bring them home. They’d warm up in front of the fire, cheered with cups of hot cider and a good meal, and we would all laugh about this one day.

We raced through the woods as fast as the snow would allow. In some parts, there was hardly a dusting, but our ankles snagged on frozen roots and vines. In others, the drifts came up over my knees. Within the protection of the trees, the wind wasn’t as sharp, and our visibility increased tenfold.

Cassius caught himself before tripping on a fox hole. “What would they be doing out here?”

I pushed aside a low-hanging limb, but it swung back, catching my face. My cheeks were too numb to feel the sting. My feet ached, frozen and tingling, as they trudged through the heavy snow.

Up ahead was a flash of red, the first true color we’d seen since stumbling into the tree line. The berry bushes!

They clustered together, forming a thick, circular hedge. There was a break farther along the bushes, opening on a small clearing in the center. In the summer months, we often packed picnics and spent whole afternoons hidden in the verdant thicket.

I spotted footprints in the untouched snow.

My heart soared, so full of hope I thought it might burst. They’d been here! “Rosalie! Ligeia!”

Cassius was ahead of me now, following the prints around the hedge. I wanted to push him out of the way and run faster, but snowbanks pulled at my skirts, keeping me several feet behind.

I counted three sets of tracks. “Look! Do you see? They might still be here!”

He halted abruptly at the opening of the thicket, blocking me. Cassius grabbed at me as I ducked around him. His fingers briefly slipped over mine, but it wasn’t enough to stop me.

“Annaleigh, don’t!”

I stopped in my tracks. Everything in the world froze except the beating of my heart. It pounded harder and harder, faster and faster, until I felt its tempo in the hollow of my throat, cutting off my breath.

I think I screamed but I heard nothing, just the sharp whine of a silence grown too strong.

I wanted to go to them, but the only way I could move was down as my knees collapsed from under me and I fell into the snow.

I don’t remember how I reached them—I must have crawled—but suddenly I was there, with my sisters, my hands feeling for a pulse in their frozen throats, their pale blue wrists. I pushed my ear to silent chests, desperate to hear a heartbeat, but there was none.