Julien peered at the diagram. “Give me the rest of that.”
Before I could protest, Viktor grabbed the folder and tossed it at the desk. Sheets of paper scattered across the top. Julien flipped through them, his eyes darting rapidly back and forth. He sucked in a breath.
“Can you read it?” I asked.
He made a short, insulted noise. “Of course.”
“Does it say what kind of plants they are? What he intends to do with them?”
Slowly, Julien glanced up, blinking at me as though I was extremely dim-witted. “These aren’t plants. They’re anatomical renderings.”
I looked over the drawings I’d been studying with fresh eyes, still unable to guess what organs they were meant to depict.
“The female reproductive system,” Julien clarified, flipping the paper around as though it would help.
It still looked like a flower to me.
“What do his notes say?”
“They’re lists of trials, apparently,” Julien said, so absentmindedly engrossed in the reading, he sounded eerily similar to Gerard. “Specimens used, ratios and dosage amounts. Drugs, extracts.” He flipped to another page. “He lists out all of the women… I think I’ve found your Constance.” He cleared his throat. “Constance Devereux. Twenty years old. Blond hair, brown eyes. Biological father, Aukera. No discernable gifts.”
“Translate, please,” Viktor said, running his fingertip around the rim of the tumbler. His eyes had taken on a glassy sheen. “Not all of us have your eidetic memory.”
Julien glanced up. “Aukera. Lord of mirth and god of chance. One of Vaipany’s sons.”
“Constance’s father was a god?” I asked.
“Papa believed so…” Julien scanned more of the trials. “This subject was a granddaughter of Acacia…” He trailed off as though trying to recall which goddess that was.
“Pontus’s daughter,” I supplied, feeling pleased to know something he didn’t. “She controls the waves with waterspouts.”
Julien nodded. “Papa injected a combination of hydrophytes directly into the mother’s womb. The babies were born with gills.”
I drew in a sharp breath. “He was experimenting with women who came from gods.”
Frowning, Julien returned to the papers. “It would appear so, though I don’t understand what he’s attempting to produce. He tried a variety of bloodlines—Seland, Oberonin, Arius, Versia. There’s even a weak line descended from Vaipany himself. Six women. Six gods.”
An uneasy sense of déjà vu crept over me. This story was so familiar somehow.
The memory hit me.
Alex had told me it, when I’d first arrived at Chauntilalie.
Dauphine was meant to have a bit of the divine within her, running straight from Arina’s progeny. These boys. Alex. They had holy blood within them.
I opened my mouth but Julien continued on, stopping me short.
“Here’s a list of medicines used…” He whistled through his teeth. “Poisons, actually. Salvia, mescaline, hyoscine. He crushed up betel nuts, extracted opium poppies…”
I froze, remembering the tea Gerard had given me.
“He even laced the candles in these women’s rooms with oil of Brugmansia.” He glanced at me as if knowing I wouldn’t understand. “It’s a trumpetlike flower. Very poisonous.”
“Their candles,” I echoed. “He put poison in their candles?”
Julien nodded.
“And these flowers…what color are they?”
“They come in a variety of shades,” Julien said. “Yellows, whites, even oranges. But the most powerful of them are a deep pink—much like those candles over there.” With a grimace, he gestured to a series of unlit tapers gracing a sideboard. “Don’t even think about lighting those, Viktor.”
They were the same shade as the pink candles in that cursed nursery. The hallway outside my quarters. Resting beside my bed.
Who knows how long I’d been breathing in their poison.
Gerard had been drugging me, ever since I’d arrived. Lulling me into a state of complacency. Compliancy. Numbing me so I didn’t notice all of the strange things within the manor that weren’t right.
Viktor clicked his tongue thoughtfully, unaware of my discomfort. “Why would Father be giving babies hallucinogens?”
Julien pursed his lips, musing. “Perhaps to ensure they’d be born in a perpetual state of seeing…things.”
“Ghosts?” I whispered hopefully.
“Gods.”
A chill ran down my back.
Viktor sat on the edge of the desk, his second glass nearly empty. “The gods are everywhere. Why go to such complicated lengths to communicate with them?”
Julien set down the papers, musing. “There are many who don’t travel between the worlds anymore, the ones deep in the Sanctum. The forgotten ones.”
When I was a child, Annaleigh’s husband, Cassius, loved to terrify me with stories of those fallen deities, the Denizens, so long unremembered they’d grown shapeless and too large, morphed into hulking beasts of clay and hungry maws. “I can’t imagine why anyone would wish to speak to them.”
Viktor chewed on the inside of his cheek. “Maybe Father wants to hear what they have to say.”
Julien glanced to Viktor. “Did you find anything about it in the diary?”
Remembering it had fallen under my chair, I reached down to pull it out.
“Ver, don’t!” Viktor warned, grabbing for it. His movements were slower than they should be, his accuracy impaired by the spirits.
But I had the journal open, already scanning the pages. Unlike the notes filed in the folders, this book was written in Arcannian. I understood it all.
“Oh.”
There, scrawled out in Gerard’s tiny handwriting and favored evergreen ink, was my name.
My name, written out across the page three times.
Partnered in three combinations.
Again, three.
Always, three.
A small part of me had held out the impossible hope that Julien’s theories were wrong, that it was all some terrible and unlucky coincidence that I found myself here, with this family, in this situation.
But there it was, the unmistakable proof.
Gerard had brought me here on purpose, had selected me, had choreographed every moment since my arrival like a well-executed dance.
Alexander and Verity, the first entry read. A series of symbolled notations followed, ending in his final verdict: Advantageous. He’d ringed the entire section with a circle of approval.
“？‘Julien and Verity,’？” I said aloud, skipping over the bits of shorthand I didn’t understand. “？‘Potentially favorable.’？”
Julien snorted dismissively and I wasn’t sure if I should feel offended or flattered.
“？‘Viktor and Verity,’？” I read the last paragraph aloud. The entire thing had been crossed out with a definitive slash of ink, rendering Gerard’s judgment nearly illegible. “？‘Too volatile.’？”
Viktor shook his head, downing the last of the glass. “As if he knows anything about us, Jules.” He clasped his brother’s shoulder, squeezing it tightly, but I sensed he was the one looking to be comforted and consoled.