Текст книги "The poison daughter"

Автор книги: Sheila Masterson

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Текущая страница: 41 (всего у книги 48 страниц)

I clink glasses with him and knock back the rest of my drink, savoring the burn in my chest.

“All right. I’m cutting you off after this one, so enjoy it. Tomorrow is a big day and we can’t have you slow and hungover,” Carter says, filling my glass one more time.

It’s more ceremonial than anything. It’s hard for the Deathless to get drunk, or rather to stay drunk, because of how quickly we process alcohol. I’ll sober up in an hour or two if I don’t keep drinking, and while I don’t get hungover like I did before my first death, I do sometimes get hungry for blood if I’ve pushed too hard.

That’s very unappealing since I’d rather shrivel up and die than be hungry for blood right now. Because it won’t be a general craving I’m trying to sate. It will be a specific one. Nothing has ever tasted as good as Harlow’s blood.

I take a slow sip of my drink, trying to savor it, instead of just using it to blunt the ache in my chest.

Naima sighs. “Look, you need some tough love. Your ego is bruised and you want to use it as an excuse to act out, but whether or not your wife used you like you were using her, you don’t get to act self-righteous just because you lost. If you could have done the same to her, you would have in a heartbeat. And let’s not forget the bigger issue here—Kellan knows you’re twice-blessed, and his sister, your wife, does not.”

I stare into my glass and refuse to look at her. At first, I had been entirely focused on Kellan knowing that secret, but after our talk in the garden, that was all but forgotten in the wake of Harlow’s cruelty.

“Divine deliver me,” Naima mutters. “Why don’t you actually talk to her, Henry? If what you learned from her brother disturbed you so much, why don’t you speak to her tomorrow before the events start?”

Bryce tucks his long copper hair behind his ears, then smacks a hand on the table. “That’s it! Naima is right. You should confront her with it before the evening starts. She won’t be able to avoid you for the rest of the night, so you can really make her suffer for it,” Bryce says.

Naima rubs a hand down her face. “That’s not what I meant.”

“No, he’s right,” I say, spinning my glass on the table. “If I talk to her before tomorrow’s events, I know exactly how to get the truth out of her, now that Kellan has been so forthcoming.”

She can be cruel. Fine. I can be cruel, too. It will be good to clear the air before the rest of the festival. If we’re going to have a prayer of pulling this off, I need her to be honest, even if I have to force her to do it.

I stand, gulp the rest of my drink, and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand.

Tomorrow, I’ll bring her back to the garden and confront her there with evidence she can’t charm her way around. She’ll be forced to surrender this game she’s been playing with me. Either we’ll move forward with the clear understanding between us, or I’ll take her down along with the rest of her family.

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57HARLOW

Carrenwell House is the absolute last place I expected Henry to want to go during our only free time on Descent day. That said, there is hardly a more appropriate place for me to begin a journey into darkness.

It’s midafternoon, but the eclipse has made the day so dark, the only light in the garden is from the glowing sunstones that line the paths. The lights cast his face in sinister shadows, and my stomach twists.

“Will this take long?” I ask.

Henry squeezes my arm a little closer to him, like he’s afraid I’m going to bolt. “Not long. Why? Did you have something else you wanted to do other than take a walk in the garden with your husband?”

I eye him suspiciously. “Is this a sex thing? Because yesterday was just a temporary lapse of judgment.” I wait for his comeback, but it never arrives. Now I know something is wrong.

His face is inscrutable. I fight the impulse to press onto my toes and bite the strong line of his jaw just for something to snap him out of his unsettling stoicism.

“I was just going to check my mailboxes if we had the free time before we have dinner with my parents tonight,” I say. “I didn’t have a chance to stop and check for messages on our last visit.”

He finally looks at me. “Your murder mailboxes?”

I glare at him. “Women rely on me, Henry.”

“The women will have to wait today. I need to show you something.”

He’s been too intense all day. Maybe it’s just his frustration over lying about Rafe, but he disappeared with Kellan last night, then left me at the party. Carter and Naima walked me back to the boarding house and Henry wasn’t in our room when I got there.

He stayed out all night, returning this morning smelling like alcohol. He’s barely looked at me all day, orbiting me more than interacting with me as we prepped for tonight’s events.

I was already dreading having dinner with my parents, but Henry’s sour mood makes me even more apprehensive. If he’s this standoffish in front of them, it will ruin my chance at getting the key from my father. I just need my husband to not be himself for one night.

The afternoon is clear but cool and the air smells faintly like there’s snow coming. I wonder if Aidia is at North Hold, standing on her balcony, willing it to snow. I loathe the cold too much to enjoy snow, but Aidia has loved it since we were children.

The ache in my chest has been a constant nagging reminder that I haven’t seen her yet. Staying at the boarding house is strategic for showing our distance from my family, but it also means she can’t sneak in to see me like she normally does when I’m in South Hold. Without seeing her face, I’m left with the unsettling vision of the last time I saw her. I just need her to hold on for a few more days.

A cold breeze ruffles my cloak, sending a shiver up my spine as Henry leads me through a white rose-covered archway in the Carrenwell garden. Gravel crunches beneath my feet, and it takes me a moment to realize where we are.

I freeze. A burst of adrenaline rushes through my blood. “I don’t like this part of the garden.”

Henry ignores me and continues pulling me down the path.

The dread presses in on all sides. I don’t like this path with its white roses. I don’t like the climbing vines that write their stories along the stone walls. I don’t like the cold fist of fear that wraps around my heart.

Nothing is wrong, and yet my body is coiled to fight or flee.

I try to tug out of Henry’s grip, turning to look down the path behind us for help.

But Gaven isn’t behind me, waiting to lend a helping hand. Gaven is dead.

“I’ve never seen it.” Henry’s words are clipped. It’s not the tone of a man who’s curious to see the garden. He sounds almost angry.

“It’s just a garden, Henry. It looks like everything else we’ve seen,” I say, my voice hoarse.

He narrows his eyes. “But we haven’t seen the roses.”

I stare down the path ahead of us. I don’t know why I feel like I’m walking straight into a Drained den. The path is lovely, the roses kept in perfect bloom thanks to magic, but fear has my muscles locked up. It’s beautiful, but wrong.

I meet Henry’s deep blue eyes, and there’s no warmth there, just cold calculation. “Harlow, everything is fine. Just once around the garden and then we’ll go back inside.”

An irrational sinking feeling settles in my stomach, but I force my feet to move. It feels like he’s leading me into a trap, but I’m too confused by the panic flowing through my body to do anything but let Henry guide me down the path.

There is a reason I don’t come to this part of the garden, but I can’t remember why.

We turn into the rose garden, and for a few moments, I’m lost in looking at the bright blooms. Peach climbing roses on a trellis blend into yellow ones and then bright red, which blend into exotic deep scarlet that’s so dark it looks almost black. I keep waiting for the dread to leave me, for the knot beneath my ribs to come unbound, but neither relent.

Henry’s hand is warm on my lower back, guiding me through the rows of roses until finally we come to the opening at the center of the circular rose garden.

I stop suddenly, without realizing. It’s like my feet sense that I’ve stepped into a trap before I’m even conscious of it. The toes of my boots edge onto the large white circular stone.

“Harlow?” Henry’s hand on my back nudges me forward.

“I think we should go back,” I rasp.

He takes my hand, which has begun to tremble, and places it on his arm as he guides me into the center of the space. “I just want to see what this monument says.”

I glance back the way we came. My heart is beating so hard. There is no active danger here, but I still want to hide. Every muscle in my body is coiled—ready to run the moment the invisible trap springs.

My steps are leaden as we walk closer to the stone.

Panic clamps down on my chest. My breath becomes swift and shallow. My heart thunders. Something is wrong.

Run. All I can think is how badly I need to run right now.

Henry comes to a stop in front of a white marble stone bracketed by beautiful white rose bushes.

I can’t stand still. My skin is crawling, a cold sweat rising on my back despite the chill of the day. I feel sick to my stomach.

“What’s this, lovely?” Henry nods to the stone. His voice is somehow both gentle and on edge.

He turns to look at me, and I must look the picture of fear and terror. I am a statue. I can’t move. Some deep part of me knows, if I look at that stone, something horrible will happen.

I don’t come to this part of the garden for a reason. I glance up at the tall walls of my family home, at the balconies jutting out from each bedroom and the perfectly manicured florals that decorate them, and the bright blue family banners that hang down over the walls.

“I don’t like this part of the garden.” My voice is barely a whisper.

The barest hint of doubt lights Henry’s eyes. “Just look at this stone and we will leave. Unless—” The corner of his lips tips up. “Unless you’re afraid.”

I have lost the will to argue with him. My fear is indescribable—so intense my eyes blur and burn with tears. It’s a bone-deep terror that I can’t pretend away.

But there has not been a challenge Henry has laid out that I haven’t risen to. Every irrational instinct in my body screams for me not to look, but I force myself to glance at the stone.

I blink the tears from my eyes, and my vision finally focuses on the white marble in front of me—a headstone that bears one name: Aidia Rose Carrenwell.

The truth slices through me with precise violence. I’m fractured between the past and present, rent from the dissociation that has kept me alive for the past six months.

“No.” I’m breathless, my chest hollowed out by the truth I’ve postponed—a secret I’ve kept even from myself.

I don’t know what he thought he was doing bringing me here, but I watch his face morph from anger to shock, and then to horror.

“Why would you do this?” I rasp, shaking my head. “Why would you bring me here?”

His entire demeanor has softened. His voice is low and pleading instead of tight and angry. “Harlow, it’s okay. I’m right here.”

“I have to leave. I can’t—” The air whooshes out of my lungs.

Henry takes a step toward me. “Kellan told me Aidia died six months ago. He said you didn’t leave your room for a month.”

I shake my head, turning away from the memorial, trying to ignore the memory that flashes in my mind of curtains drawn over windows, of my stiff muscles and brutal headaches from crying so hard I thought I’d die too. I had never been so devoted as I was to Divine Asher when I spent days on end begging him to take me with her.

“No, this isn’t right. I’ve seen her. She’s not—” I choke on a sob. “It’s a mistake.”

But some part of me knows it’s not. I’ve seen her. I’m mad. This is it. The whole time I thought I’d been spared, but the well has taken my mind too. Because I’ve seen her, alive and animated and whole. I’ve felt her touching my hair. Haven’t I?

I look up at the balcony three stories above us—my bedroom balcony—and I can’t speak. All the air has been sucked out of the world, and I cannot bear to be here breathing when she’s gone.

An awful jarring awareness yanks at the center of me. I’ve been wrenched from the shroud of ignorance and thrust into bright sunlight—confronted at last with the fact that there is no “we,” only a terrible, lonely me.

“Harlow.” Henry’s voice brings me back. “Kellan said she jumped from her balcony.”

I shake my head violently. “She didn’t.”

“He said she was troubled. Rafe was abusive and⁠—”

I turn on him. “She didn’t jump.”

His gaze is full of pity. “I know you want to believe that, but⁠—”

“I know it’s true.” I look at the circular pattern on the white stone ground. The ghost of a rust stain still mars the center circle, like a direct hit on a bullseye.

It was my fault. For six months, I’ve been holding back the bad memories like a tide, but now they slam into me.

Rafe had beaten her within an inch of her life. Aidia came home, and her body was a war zone. I found her hiding in my closet, her ribs broken, her eyes swollen shut, her lip split, her wrist sprained.

I’d knelt in front of her and taken her teary face in my hands. “My heart.”

But she hadn’t responded, and I knew she was broken—that he’d finally pushed her too far.

It made me think of the Cove—of the shared scars of our youth.

I learned things there I never wanted to know: the look in Aidia’s eyes when she could not take anymore, the way pain breaks someone down to their basest instincts. Survive.

At seven years old, a little girl shouldn’t have to know when to step in to pull attention. She shouldn’t have to know how to become a new target so her father doesn’t kill the person she loves most in the world.

But I knew.

I knew the rhythm of that moment like a skip in a heartbeat. I knew how to focus my father’s rage on me. At seven, I’d done the math, and I knew what it meant. Eight gates to protect in Lunameade meant our father didn’t need all of us to secure his power. The only way Aidia and I could stay alive was to spread the hurt around.

And now she’s gone and I’m still here. Now the sorrow is trapped inside my chest, an angry shrike slamming against its cage, so desperate for escape it will shred itself to do it.

A sob shakes out of me. Henry wraps his arms around me, and I lose every last shred of composure. I cry so hard that I collapse against him. He sweeps me into his arms and carries me to a bench under a nearby willow.

All the hurt pours out of me, all the guilt and rage and grief that I’ve fought so hard to tuck down deep, bursting free. I cannot master myself. I sob until I’m gasping for air and my heart is pounding and my skin is crusted with salty tears.

Finally, the anguish ebbs enough that I can take a deep, shuddering breath and lean my head on Henry’s shoulder.

“It’s a beautiful spot,” he says.

I glance around the garden. It is beautiful. If she’s going to be remembered, I’m glad it’s here and not at North Hold.

“I thought you were working me,” Henry says, softly rubbing my back. “When Kellan told me, I thought you knew about my sister, so you made up a sister that could be saved to play to that wound. That’s why I was so Divine-damned angry.” He sighs. “I’m sorry. I would have never sprung this on you if I realized it wasn’t a trick.”

He offers me a handkerchief and allows me a moment to compose myself.

“Do you want to tell me what happened?” he asks.

“No.”

Henry barks out a startled laugh. “Fair enough. Still, it might help.”

“Nothing will help. She’s gone,” I rasp.

“But you’ve been seeing her.”

I wipe tears from my cheeks, not nearly as horrified as I should be that I lost my composure in front of him. “How do you know?”

“Because you were talking about her in present tense.”

The mansion looms over us, and I look up at it. I’ve lost track of how many times I dreamed of burning it down. I fantasized about turning my history and pain to ash and watching the ghosts of every old hurt rise in the smoke.

I stare at the rust stains on the circular stone. “When we were young, my father beat us. Aidia because she wouldn’t use her magic for him. She is a glamourist with a blessing from Stellaria. She is—was very talented. Whenever people started complaining about the blood tax, my father would have her transform some men from the poorest neighborhoods in Lunameade into Drained. They wouldn’t actually be Drained, but they would look like them. My father had some arrangement with these men where he would pay their families a large chunk of money. Then he’d have them run through town, and our guards would fight them off, proving to the people how capable my father was of protecting them. But Aidia—” My voice breaks. “She checked up on a couple of the men’s families afterward and found out that our father never delivered on his promise. And then she refused to help him with his game. So my father started beating her. But that just made her more stubborn. So he did the only other thing he could. He beat me, or rather—” The air rushes out of my lungs and it takes three tries to get myself to say it. “Or rather, he would make her beat me.”

When I finally meet Henry’s eyes, he looks violent, but he says nothing, just nodding for me to continue.

Now that I’ve started talking, I can’t seem to stop. “He made me beat her, also. He’d snap his fingers and threaten to burn her with holy fire, and I was pretty sure he was bluffing but never certain. He’d make me whip her until I gave in and tried harder to master my magic. He wasn’t happy that I could only use my lips. He wanted me to be able to poison by touch. I fought hard to keep that secret. I told Aidia because she suffered for it, but I never told anyone else in the family. They didn’t deserve to know.”

Henry squeezes my hand. “And your scar?”

“The stars are a brand that Aidia gave me to cover the marks from her beatings. She has—had the same one.” I run my fingers over my back, feeling the familiar topography through my dress and cloak. “We had this thing we used to say to check in to know if it was too much. One of us would say ‘my heart,’ and the other would respond ‘my bones,’ and then we’d say ‘our blood’ together. Carrenwells are never allowed to be weak. It was just a way to say—” I break into another wrenching sob. “To say that we were okay because we weren’t alone. It was a way to tell her I could take it.”

My chest hurts, my muscles wrung out from sobbing. My head aches viciously, but I press on. “We all knew that her husband was a problem. Rafe Mattingly wanted to marry me, but at the time, my father thought he could use me to get to Marc Beckley. Marc was running for mayor and was wildly popular with the unblessed of Lunameade, and he’d taken a fancy to me.”

Henry smiles sadly. “Popular girl.”

I sigh bitterly. “No, I was a bitch. I made the mistake of embarrassing Marc at a wine tasting my family was hosting. I was just trying to be charming to everyone else, but I caught his eye for making him look stupid. Marc decided then that he wanted to humble me.”

Henry’s jaw ticks. “And Rafe?”

“Rafe wanted someone who would be fun to break. My father knew us well—two sides of the same coin. Aidia, who protested loudly, and me, who picked my silent moments to wage war. Aidia knew how to size up an opponent, and she knew I would survive Marc, so she volunteered for Rafe. Because that’s who she was—the one person who always protected me.”

I rise to my feet and start to pace, remembering the way I’d pleaded with her not to do it. She was so determined, so light and airy and certain that she would break him first. I think she did in her own way. She showed him the only way he could beat her was to take her off the board entirely. So he did.

“Sometimes I wonder if he was so brutal with her because he didn’t get what he wanted,” I say, pausing in front of Henry. “He couldn’t touch me, but he could touch her. It was like our childhood in reverse, and I was weak, Henry. I was so much weaker than Aidia ever was. I don’t know how she weathered it. Every time I saw her bruised. Every time I saw a hint of her spirit breaking…I wanted to kill him.”

“Understandable.”

“But the timing was never right and that day I came to my room and found her in my closet worse than I’d ever seen her, and I said ‘my heart,’ and she was silent. So I did the only sane thing. I packed a bunch of my clothes for her, and I was going to hide her in the city. That had always been the plan, so I just moved it up.”

I press a damp palm to my chest. “But Rafe walked in before we could get out and I wasn’t ready. When he had come to retrieve her before, he’s always waited downstairs. I was so shocked I didn’t have a chance to block him. His magic—Henry, he has such a strong blessing from Polm⁠—”

I watch the understanding and horror dawn on his face.

“I’m a hard person to hook with manipulation. I spent a lot of time making sure of it. But I was so afraid for her, and he knew it. He made Aidia beat me with a fire poker, and then—” I can’t say it.

I’ve spent six months forgetting it happened because I couldn’t face it. I couldn’t live with knowing. The wound is raw, the infection too deep to remove cleanly. Speaking it out loud will shred me. It might be madness alone buried beneath my skin, but the only way to know for sure is to tell him the truth.

Henry is patient and quiet, but I feel the weight of his attention. I force myself to meet his gaze.

“When he didn’t get the reaction he wanted from me—when I wouldn’t fight back—he stopped compelling her alone and he started compelling both of us. He made us—” My chest clenches and I feel like I’m dying.

Henry reaches out and squeezes my hand and it’s just enough to steady me.

I point to the balcony. “He made us stand on that railing for so long—told us that neither of us could get down until we pushed the other. My ribs were broken. I was bleeding and trembling so badly from fighting the compulsion that I was certain I would fall. It was just a moment of broken focus, but it was enough.”

The garden is airless. Remembering takes everything from me. “He made me push her. He made me kill the person I loved most in the world.”

The words are acid. They can’t be true and yet I know they are. Down through my heart. Up through my bones. Around and around in the whirling, rushing spin of my blood.

I have been down somewhere in the deepest, darkest part of myself. I lived half a life without her because I knew my life could never be whole again. I made myself all blades, protecting this secret place inside my own head like a warrior holding the line. I cannot break and yet I am already broken, or else I always have been, and Aidia’s death just ripped the blindfold from my eyes.

Now I can see it—taste the salted blood on my tongue as I stand on the railing and try so hard to get her to love me less. The memory is so startlingly bright and perfect that I can’t believe I was ever able to hide it from myself. I want the ignorance back. I want to forget the look in her eyes in that moment—the love so fierce it could level a city.

“She looked at me and told me to do it and I pushed her,” I whisper. “She fell so fast.”

I feel hollow. I can’t escape the look in her eyes, the deep love and relief of knowing her suffering was over. It’s okay, Low. It’s okay. It’s not you. I don’t blame you. She tried so hard to reassure me, but I will never forget her shocked expression when I could no longer fight his compulsion. My mind is so broken, I don’t even remember the physical act of pushing her. I only remember the look on her face when she knew she was falling. All the grief and sorrow of the memory flood back at once.

“Then he made me stand on the railing, looking over the edge, staring at her body. I thought—” My voice cracks, and a soul-deep sob shudders out of me.

Henry clasps his hands around my arms to steady me. The solid press of him is grounding.

“I thought he was going to make me jump, too. The whole time I stood there—maybe twenty minutes, my legs trembling with the effort of balancing while I sobbed, looking down at Aidia’s body. All I wanted was for him to make me jump, too.”

The memory of blood on the white stone, of the dread in my body mixed with shock and grief, is as real now as it was then.

“And then he did.”

Henry goes unnaturally still. “How are you⁠—”

I nod to the tree and bushes beneath the balcony. “I’m blessed by the Divine of Fortune. I suppose Harvain’s purpose for me wasn’t finished yet. By his grace, my dress snagged two tree branches on the way down, so I only fell a story. The last thing I saw before I lost consciousness was Aidia’s bloody body.”

I meet Henry’s eyes and a sob rattles through me. “She turned my scars into stars and now she’s gone.”

My body bows under the sorrow of the secret truth I’ve held alone for far too long. My knees give out. But this time, when I fall, Henry catches me.

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