Wake up, she thought, tears sliding down her cheeks, even though she hadn’t liked the stupid cat.
She buried it in the garden shed, hoping it might haunt her. Hoping that one day she’d catch sight of it out of the corner of her eye, another body in the dark.
She forgot. Isn’t that strange? She forgot.
The world comes back in pieces.
The brittle crack of pages turning. The silver light against the crumbling walls. The moldy fabric against her cheek.
She is lying on a sofa. It takes her a moment to realize it is the one in the sitting room, where Hannah brought her that first night at Gallant. Where she sat, tired and confused, as Edgar and Hannah argued about what to do with her, and Matthew came charging in and tore the letter from Hannah’s hand and cast it into the fire.
There is no fire now, just a splintered stone hearth. A velvet chair. A low table with an object perched atop it: a helmet. The same polished metal as the pauldron and the chest plate and the gauntlet. She frowns at it, her thoughts too slow.
Her hands are bound together with a length of dark gray rope. She pushes herself up, even though the movement makes her head ache and her vision swim. When it steadies, she sees that she is not alone.
The soldiers stand around the darkened room.
The broad one waits by the door.
The thin one leans against the wall.
The short one rests her elbows on the back of the sofa.
And the master of the house sits in the velvet chair, a blue-black rose balanced on the arm and a book open in his lap.
“Olivia, Olivia, Olivia,” he says, and a shiver rolls over her skin as she glimpses the G curling across the front of the book.
“I have been whispering the name into your hair,” he goes on, and then she is on her feet, lunging toward him, toward her mother’s journal, only to feel a large arm catch her around the waist.
The broad soldier hauls her back, and a second later she lands on the sofa again. The short one brings her hands down on Olivia’s shoulders, gauntlet rattling as she holds her in place.
“They say there is love in letting go,” the master continues, his voice rolling through the room, “but I feel only loss.” He flicks ahead as if bored, skipping to the final page.
“Remember this,” he says. “The shadows are not real.”
His milky eyes float up.
“The dreams can never hurt you.”
His mouth curls into a smile.
“And you will be safe as long as you stay away from Gallant.”
He closes the journal.
“What would your mother think if she were here?”
He tosses the book onto the low table, where it lands beside the helmet, sending up a plume of dust. “Good thing she’s not.”
He takes up the rose, and it’s one of the blooms she brought back, its head massive, its petals velvet.
“Leave,” he says, and for a moment, Olivia thinks he’s talking to her, that he’s giving her permission to go. But then she realizes the order was given to his soldiers. The broad one retreats. The short one follows. The thin one hesitates, only a moment, before vanishing into the hall.
The door closes.
And they are alone.
She flexes her fingers. Edgar’s knife is gone, but she studies the broken stone hearth, searching the fragments on the floor. Would any be light and sharp enough to wield?
The voice drags her attention back.
“Quite a talent you have,” he says, studying the wild rose. “And quite a pair we’ll make.” He lifts the flower to his nose, inhales, and as he does, it wilts again. The petals wither, the head droops, the leaves curl like dry paper. As it dies, the faintest color floods back into his cheeks. Brief as a fish darting underwater.
The rose crumbles to ash, but the ash doesn’t fall. Instead it swirls in the air around his hand.
“It is one thing to give death form,” he says, and the ashes coalesce into a chalice. “Another to breathe life back into it.”
A twitch of his fingers, and the chalice dissolves.
He draws something from his pocket. It is curved and white, save for the point, which is black, as if dipped in ink. A sliver of bone. He holds it out to her, and as he does, the ropes crumble from her wrists.
“Show me,” he says, and Olivia stiffens. She should refuse, just to spite him, but an urge takes shape inside her. A longing. Her fingers hum with it. And something else forms there. A question. An idea.
He sets the bone in her hand, and the prickle of life rises through her. It hovers just beneath her skin, waiting to be unleashed.
Live, she thinks, and the feeling rushes forward, out of her hand and into the remains, and as it does, the sliver of bone becomes a beak, becomes a skull, becomes a crow, muscle and skin and feathers. In seconds it is whole again, yawning wide as if to caw, but the only sound she hears is the master’s soft chuckle.