Thomas shivers at the sound of the master’s voice, and she draws her hand from his mouth, holding just a finger to his lips. She scans the cellar. There are two sets of stairs, the one down from the ballroom and the one up to the kitchen, and she is about to guide Thomas to the second set when he rises on unsteady legs and begins to drag a crate across the cellar floor.
It makes a horrible sound, like nails on stone, and she lunges forward, pinning him still, holding her breath and hoping the thing overhead didn’t hear. And then her eyes go to the crate, not where it is now, in the middle of the room, but where it was before, in front of the shelves. Beyond the metal racks and behind the empty jars is a piece of wood, the size of a very small door.
My brother made a game of it, finding all the secret places.
Olivia kneels in front of the shelf and shifts the jars, one by one, careful not to rattle them. And then she crouches low and slides the wooden panel out of the way. She peers through, hoping to see night, to see the dead grass and winding thorns of the garden.
But all she sees is black.
She turns and finds Thomas staring up at the ceiling, eyes wide with fear as the master of the house rants and rages overhead.
Olivia holds out her hand, and his gaze drops to meet hers.
It’s okay, she thinks, even though he cannot hear her. We are almost there, she thinks, and your brother is waiting.
His hand slides into hers, thin fingers clutching at the strange silk gloves, and she draws him forward into the dark. They crawl on hands and knees through the pitch-black tunnel, and she tries not think of a grave, of a tomb, of being buried here, under the house that is not Gallant.
And then, finally, she feels the panel on the other side. It slides out of the way, and there, at last, is the garden, the sky, the cool night air. Even though it tastes like moldy leaves and soot instead of grass and summer, she gulps it in, grateful to be out of the house.
She pulls Thomas to his feet, and together they run through the garden toward the waiting wall.
She doesn’t look back to see if the soldiers are coming.
Doesn’t look back to see if the master is watching from the balcony.
Thorns catch on her dress and she doesn’t look back.
Ivy scrapes her legs, and she doesn’t look back.
They reach the iron gate in the center of the wall, and Olivia’s gloved hand slides free of Thomas’s as she flings herself against the door, pounding on it, the iron itself buried beneath layers of debris. The sound is swallowed up before it reaches air, but Matthew must have been waiting, must have had his cheek against the metal, because a moment later she hears the hum of a lock turning deep inside the iron, and then it swings open, and he is there, Gallant rising at his back.
His eyes go wide as they slide from her to Thomas. He grips the gate, clearly resisting the urge to run forward, to wrap his arms around his brother. Olivia holds out a gloved hand for the boy, but when he steps forward, a shadow crosses Matthew’s face.
“Wait,” he says, studying Thomas.
Olivia looks back. The garden is no longer empty. She can see the glint of armor at the top of the garden, the milk-white eyes like candles in the dark. Her hand cuts through the air.
Get out of the way, she orders, grabbing Thomas’s hand and barging forward, but Matthew bars the door.
“Say something,” he demands, and for a moment Olivia thinks he’s talking to her, but his eyes are still on the boy. Thomas looks up at Matthew and says nothing.
And for the first time, she sees him as Matthew must. His fair hair, made gray by the silver light. His skin, pale from the years without sun. His eyes, not warm, but cool and dark.
A terrible sadness rolls through her as she watches the hope bleed out of her cousin’s face.
He shakes his head and says, “That’s not my brother.”
Olivia looks at Thomas, his hand vising around hers. She can feel his heart beating, can hear his lungs filling. He feels so real. But then, so did the dancers, so did the soldiers, so did her mother and father, and she saw them grown from nothing but a finger bone and a cloud of ash. This is not a boy. This is a gray thing, conjured from death.
But she could breathe life into him.
Beneath the silk gloves, her palms begin to burn. She has power here. This may not be Matthew’s brother, but it could be. If she brought him back, if—but she cannot do it. Not to Matthew, or Thomas.
Just like her parents, he wouldn’t be real.
He would never be able to step across the wall. He would be trapped here, all over again.
“Olivia,” warns Matthew, “get away from him,” and she realizes she’s not holding on to the boy anymore. The boy is holding on to her. He clutches her hand so hard it hurts, his small fingers digging into her glove as the shadows slide through the garden.