The Death of Jane Lawrence(107)

Jane stood. Jane thought of Augustine. Jane pitched forward, once more, into the dark.



* * *



NO MORE STATUES appeared before her. There was only empty hall after empty hall, with no sign of Augustine, or of death, or even of herself.

She turned down another pathway, staggering, close to exhaustion. Her vigor drained with her flagging candlelight. The cool air pressed in around her, on the little that was left of Jane Shoringfield Lawrence.

And then, finally, there was a change.

There was the faintest of shapes ahead of her, cloaked in shadow, a pile of dirt or the form of a slumped body. Augustine. The possibility flooded her mind, overtook every inch of her, and she fell to her knees, trying to claw closer to it. But her stomach screamed and her candle guttered. The light went out. She cast aside the candelabra and dragged herself forward, hand over hand along the cold stone, until the pain grew so great that she could not move, until exhaustion made the last of her willpower buckle.

And then she felt warmth, hands against her shoulders, her back, hands that shook with hunger and fear and worry, hands that carried with them the stink of a man trapped in the dark for six days, and beneath that, the faint smell of antiseptic.





CHAPTER FORTY-TWO


SHE WAS COLD.

It was the first thought to swim into her consciousness, followed swiftly by It hurts. Her stomach was flooded with liquid agony, and even wiggling her toes made the pain spike. She groaned and pressed back against the surface below her, but it did not yield. Around her was darkness.

And then: a light. A candle flame, burning where there was no wax left, above an iron candelabra that she recognized. And there, beside the flame, was a face that she recognized, a face that she had come to know so well she could have conjured it in her dreams. Augustine sat beside her, elbows braced upon his knees, hands tangled in his hair, clawing at his scalp.

He was alive.

Do not be so hasty, she thought, but it was so hard not to believe, and she had no way left to test him. He had crossed her circle before, and beyond that she did not know how to verify his reality, his breath, his life. Her only hope was that he could see her suffering, that he could worry over her as he had not that night in the study, and by the pain writ upon his face, he knew. He knew, and he was frightened for her.

And with that thought, she was afraid, because the last time she had truly seen him, he would have killed her to save her.

He was sitting in a high-backed white stone chair. She was lying on something cold and hard. She knew this room. She knew this plinth. Elodie had died here, her husband’s hands inside her chest, and Jane had nearly followed.

She did not feel the press of an ether sponge against her lips, but still she wanted to run. To hide. To close the door on him again and—

She tried to lift a hand and moaned in pain, so softly that he did not stir, so softly that she did not know if she’d truly made a sound. Her eyes rolled skyward, houseward. Just one staircase between them and freedom. Why had he brought her here, instead of their bedroom? Instead of the surgery?

But he made no move to threaten her. He was still as stone, head in his hands, as if already mourning her.

“Augustine,” she whispered through heavy force of will.

At that, Augustine looked up at last, eyes widening, lips twisting into a smile for just a moment before he registered the pain creasing her brow and came to her side. “Slow breaths, Jane, slow breaths,” he said, stroking her hair, brushing the backs of his knuckles against her cheek.

He held no scalpel in his hand. No purgatives lined the plinth beside her. She remembered the desperate light in his eyes that would have led him to kill her, those many days ago, and she did not see it here.

This was the Augustine she had first met, not the one she had feared so much that she had sealed him in this tomb. This was the Augustine she had come to save. He was both doctor and husband in that moment, and he stared at her as if he did not dare hope she was real, though he could surely feel her pounding pulse beneath his fingertips.

“Jane,” he murmured. “Jane, you have come back for me.”

Come back for him. She laughed, bitterly, and the laugh sent a new wave of agony through her. Come back for him, but what could she do now, immobilized and in so much pain? She had used the last of her strength destroying the memory of her mother, and she had nothing left to give him. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I trapped you here. The wall—I conjured the wall.”

He frowned, then looked toward the entry room, the stairs beyond. “No,” he said.

“I didn’t mean to, but it was my will worked upon the world.” Her voice caught. “I’ve taken the wall down now, though. We can leave.”

Augustine bowed his head, and she glimpsed how stricken his expression was, how desolate. She had seen that before, after Abigail Yew’s surgery, when he was convinced Abigail would die.

She was very cold.

“This growth,” Augustine said, ignoring her apologies and directions, his hand dropping to hover just above her belly. “When did you first notice it?” He slipped so easily into his doctor’s cadence. It wrapped around her, familiar and calming. She pushed that comfort aside.

“I have worked magic, Augustine,” she said. “Like Renton. Like Aethridge. I have worked magic, I have changed the makeup of the world, and I … I have changed something inside me as well.”