House of Salt and Sorrows(71)

“Rosalie?” My voice constricted into a sob as I cupped her cheek. Tears streamed down my face. She was cold. She was so cold. They’d been out here far too long. “Ligeia? Ligeia, Rosalie, please wake up,” I begged the cold shells of my sisters before throwing my arms around them and howling.

They lay in the center of the thicket on their backs, their frozen eyes looking up at the sky. If you could see past the icicles on their lashes, the frost beneath their nostrils, and the blue of their lips, they could have been watching clouds go by, pointing out funny shapes they saw.

Cassius was at my back, trying to pull me off the bodies. No. Not bodies. Rosalie. Ligeia. My beautiful, carefree sisters. They weren’t bodies. They couldn’t be dead. They couldn’t be….

I allowed his arms to enfold me as he tried to absorb my grief. Sobs ripped from my chest as if they would splinter my sternum in two, but he held me tight, pressing kisses in my hair, stroking my back, keeping me together and whole.

When I turned back to my sisters, I noticed their hands were clasped together, and I recalled the story Mama loved to tell about the day the triplets were born. Having spent so many months crammed and squished tightly together, none of them could bear to venture out into the great unknown world on their own, so they formed a chain, holding on to each other’s hands, their bond broken only as the midwife pulled them free. First Rosalie, then Ligeia, then Lenore.

Ligeia had reached her free arm out into the snow, searching for the hand of her sister, looking for Lenore, desperate to leave the world as they had entered it. Together.

Tears filled my eyes, blinding me, and I knew no more.





“We, the People of the Salt, commit these bodies back to the sea.”

The High Mariner’s voice held a trace of sadness I had not detected in my other sisters’ burials. He nodded to Sterland, Regnard, Fisher, and Cassius.

Our makeshift pallbearers.

The storm still raged outside, cutting off access to the mainland and any relatives willing to brave this further confirmation of the Thaumas curse. Most of the guests had wanted to leave Highmoor after my sisters were found. All but Papa’s oldest friends and Cassius had left for Astrea, intending to wait out the storm as far from our grief as they could get.

The men slid the coffin into the tomb, trying not to grunt with their efforts.

Coffin. Singular.

The crypt was only big enough to hold one box at a time. Prior Thaumases apparently never died in pairs. I didn’t want to know what had been done to make both Rosalie and Ligeia fit into one coffin, but it did make me feel better somehow that they were in there together.

“We are born of the Salt, we live by the Salt, and to the Salt we return,” the High Mariner continued.

“To the Salt,” we repeated listlessly.

He poured the goblet of salt water onto the box, doused the candles, and it was over.

There was no speech from Papa this time. No wake. This was not a time to celebrate their lives. Mourning settled back upon us like a second skin.

It took three carriages to return everyone to Highmoor. Papa, Sterland, Regnard, and the High Mariner were in the lead. I sat in one with Verity, Mercy, and Fisher. Camille, Honor, and Cassius followed behind. Morella had stayed at home, unable to be out in such cold, and Lenore…

Lenore.

She’d taken to her bed since Cassius and I returned to Highmoor with the sad news. I couldn’t remember much of the trip back. I’d never swooned before. It was nothing like what I’d read in those ridiculous romance novels the triplets swapped back and forth.

Had swapped.

When Lenore heard the news, she nodded once, our words affirming what she already knew, and left the room with an eerie grace. Hanna hurried after her, certain she would harm herself.

But there was no violence. There were no tears, no screams or moans or wailing. It was as if the spark of life animating Lenore followed after her sisters, leaving behind an empty shell. She woke and slept and ate and bathed, but she wasn’t really there. Even when I curled up next to her at night—I couldn’t stand leaving her alone, knowing the pain I suffered was magnified ten thousand times for her—she said nothing. I almost wished for the frantic, wild state she’d been in before. This detached, silent grief was too terrible to bear witness to.

“You saw them, didn’t you?” Verity asked, bringing me back to the jostling carriage ride. Even with the windows closed and covered, our breath steamed in the air, and we all huddled together under thick blankets and furs.

I nodded.

“What killed them? Papa won’t say. Roland told me it was a bear.”

“There are no bears on the island,” Fisher reminded her.

“It wasn’t a bear,” I said. My voice felt rusty, corroded from tears.

“Then what was it? He said they were ripped to shreds. There was blood everywhere.”

“Roland is going to find himself without a job. He should never have said such things to you. They’re not even true. When we…found them…they were just in the thicket, on their backs.”

“Did someone poison them?” Mercy asked.

“Of course not!”

“Then how?”

I shrugged. “It looked like they wandered out into the storm and just got too cold. It was very peaceful. And they were together. I don’t think they were scared or sad.”