My stomach lurched and I turned over, sputtering up a mouthful of bile. As I spat it out, I spotted my poker. It had been kicked aside during her first volley but it wasn’t far, a little more than an arm’s length away.
I stretched, grabbing for the poker, then screamed as she brought the dustpan down upon my arm. I flipped over, knocking her back in the process.
She howled, grabbing at her hip, and I took the moment to launch myself at my weapon. My entire body railed against the motion. I wanted to curl up as small as I could, make myself into a space so little there would be no room for the pain. But my fingers closed around the brass rod and I whirled around, staggering to a stand as I pointed it toward Marguerite.
A wicked smile bloomed over her face, her wrinkles stretched manically long.
“Verity!” Alex cried out, hidden behind the balcony. His voice didn’t sound right. It was too thick. Too wet. “Send the lift! Please!” His entreaty trailed off to a garbled end as a bone-shattering crunch filled the air.
With a gasp of frustration, I turned, limping toward the iron doors. Before I could take another step, pulling myself inside the cage, something large fell over the lip of the balcony. A dark form sailed through the air and crashed onto the atrium floor with a horrifying thud.
The body did not move again.
My entire being froze as I stared at the fallen figure, willing for it to twitch, willing for there to be some sort of life in the splayed, spread limbs.
“Alex?” I whispered.
No response.
From the body.
Or upstairs.
I took a tentative step toward it.
Toward him.
He was still a him.
He still might be a him.
Not…it.
“Alex?” I breathed, leaning over the broken body. A sob welled within me. It was him. It had to be him. I couldn’t imagine a world where it was not him. “Please,” I begged anyway, beseeching Pontus, Arina, any god who cared to listen. I wouldn’t be particular. “Please don’t be Alex…”
I turned his face toward mine and the tears broke. His features were soft, swollen beyond recognition. His nose seemed two sizes too big, his jaw lumpy and undefined.
One eye remained half open, staring with an unfocused, lopsided gaze at the skylight above. Red starbursts had exploded like fireworks over his iris, seeping into the white.
There was blood.
So much blood.
“Alex?” I asked, taking his hand in mine. There was no muscle response. No grip. No grasp. His soul, his essence, whatever it was that had animated him and made him whole and human and mine, was gone.
No.
No, no, no.
I shook at his frame, spurred on by the insane hope that Gerard had somehow been right.
That he had made him immortal.
That Alex was still alive.
“Please,” I whispered, my voice small and tight.
Nothing.
Not even a twitch.
A sob ripped through me, tearing my heart in two.
“Verity! Look out!” a familiar voice cried.
I glanced up and my mouth fell open as, through a vision of tears, I spotted Camille.
She was standing at the threshold of the atrium, pointing behind me.
“Camille?”
I turned just in time to see Marguerite’s dustpan swinging at my head.
I woke with a startled gasp, as if being shaken awake.
The room was too dimly lit to be familiar. Long gray drapes were pulled over the windows and the gas lamps were lowered to a ghostly glow.
I couldn’t move at first, my body swaddled in a series of bandages and dressings. A cast plastered over one wrist, hard and heavy, and I could feel gauze wrapping around my middle, but there was oddly no pain.
Not yet, though I was certain it would soon come crashing upon me.
With my free hand, I reached out, searching for water.
There was a sharp intake of air from deeper in the room. Then, from within the gray void, movement.
“Verity? Are you awake?”
The mattress pressed down, as if someone now sat on its edge. I struggled to see who was there and when I did, my heart broke.
“Camille?”
She nodded, taking my uninjured hand in hers. “I’m so happy to see you,” she said, pressing a kiss to my fingers.
“Am I…am I at Highmoor?”
She shook her head. I’d never seen her so out of sorts before. Her hard duchess shell had chipped away, her hair plaited loosely down her side, and circles smudged dark beneath her eyes. “We’re at Chauntilalie, in one of the guest rooms. There wasn’t a good way to move you upstairs after…”
“What are you doing here?” It hurt to ask. My throat was impossibly dry and felt as if it had not been used in days.
“I…I found you. During the attack…don’t you remember?” She pushed back a wisp of hair from my face, her amber eyes dancing over me as she took in every wounded detail.
It seemed impossible to shake my head. “I thought I was seeing things. Why would you ever come to Bloem?”
She looked hurt. “Your wedding. I…I came a few days early. I wanted to…help you, however I could, and I wanted…I wanted to apologize and set things right between us.” Her fingers flexed around mine, holding tight as if to impart every bit of earnest truth she felt.
My eyes were far too heavy to remain open and I closed them, certain I was dreaming. There was no way Camille was here. There was no way Camille would be here, feeling remorseful and wanting to set aside our differences.
“I’ll let you go back to sleep,” she murmured, withdrawing her hand from mine, and my eyes flashed open.
“Are you really here?”
Her eyebrows drew together. “Of course I am.”
“You never sent a response.”
“I did! I did the second I received the invitation, I promise. They were beautiful,” she added, as though it mattered now. “I’d never expected you to choose something so elegant.”
“I didn’t pick them,” I admitted, and she let out a little laugh, surprising us both. “Could you get me something to drink?” I asked. “I’m so thirsty.”
She was gone for a moment, then returned with a pitcher and a crystal tumbler. The sound of the water spilling into the glass was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard.
Camille helped me sit up, positioning pillows beneath my bruised back to help keep me upright. The pain began then—not a slow creeping of awareness, but a bolt down the spine, a series of tremors racing along every nerve. My fingers balled into fists so tight Camille had to hold the glass for me, slowly pouring that blessed water into my mouth as though I were a baby bird.
“I’m glad you’re here,” I began, sinking back into the bedding. Sitting up, even for a short moment, proved too taxing. “Where’s Alex? Where is his…” I trailed off before I could say the horrible idea aloud.
Camille ran her fingertips over my face and my stomach tightened at the gentle touch. It all but confirmed what I feared.
“He’s in the next room, resting.”
My heart skipped a beat; certainly I’d misheard her.
“His body?”
She shook her head, frowning.
“But…I saw him fall. There was no way he could have survived that. No way he could have—”
“That wasn’t him on the floor. He was on the balcony.”