Eagerly, I opened one of Camille’s, but her wax seal was already broken, the letter gone.
I pawed through all of the envelopes. Every one of them was empty. “Where are the letters?”
“He probably burned them,” Viktor said, glancing back at the fireplace longingly.
I blinked in disbelief. “Why would he do that? What good are my letters to him?”
Julien made a face, looking as if he’d swallowed back a heavy sigh. “After all the trouble it took to lure you to Chauntilalie, Papa certainly wouldn’t want you to leave. If he cut you off from your family, making it seem that none of them missed you, that none of them expressed any concern for you, you’d feel as though you had nowhere else to go.” He licked his lips. “I doubt any correspondence you wrote made it out of the manor either.”
I frowned, a spark of anger rising up my spine, as hot and biting as if Viktor had kindled it himself. My hands balled into fists. The nails dug in deep. “He needs—”
“Ah, ah, ah,” Julien said, holding up a finger to stop my outburst. “Save it for tomorrow, Miss Thaumas. Save it for when it counts.”
When Frederick opened the door to Alex’s room the next morning, his face long and grim, I knew the day was not going to go as I’d planned.
I’d fallen asleep with dreams of whisking Alex down to the lake, away from the prying eyes and ears of Chauntilalie, to tell him everything.
But Frederick loomed over me now, filling the doorframe without an offer to step aside.
“I’m sorry, Miss Thaumas,” he began. “Master Laurent is indisposed today.”
“Another fit?” I guessed, my heart falling as I pictured Alex in pain once more.
He nodded solemnly. “He’s resting now. I know he wouldn’t want you to see him in such a state.”
“He’s had so many of them lately,” I observed.
Frederick nodded again, offering no further insight.
“Could I just…” I trailed off as he crossed his arms, an impassable mountain too formidable to argue with. “Could you let him know I came by? Once he’s awake?”
Frederick promised he would and silently shut the door before I could muster any other request.
I stared at the door, memorizing the woodwork, and tried to process my next step.
We were supposed to tell Alex today.
Everything that was meant to happen today hinged on Alex knowing everything we did.
With a sigh, I left the south wing and made my way down to the first floor. I was too restless to return to my rooms. Too nauseous to attempt breakfast. I could feel the weight of every secret I learned last night pressing down on me, compelling me to act, but there was nothing to be done. Not now. Not without Alex.
I turned down hall after hall without purpose.
I passed by the same set of mirrors three times before I realized I was pacing in a circle, trapped in a hazy loop, just like Constance.
I needed to do something. Anything.
My thoughts were a tangled web of half-understood truths, half-formed plans, and layers of questions that had no answers.
Julien’s revelation about Gerard’s selected women ate at me.
It was clear Gerard was attempting to coax out some sort of power, some strain of divinity from the women’s bloodlines and pass it along to his altered progeny. But how did I fit into that plan?
I was different from most people, that much was true.
But I was not like those women.
There were no gods in my family tree, however many generations removed. The Thaumas line, for all its proud nobility, was wholly ordinary. I didn’t know why I could see what I did, but it wasn’t because of some sordid, secret tryst with the divine. I was mortal, through and through.
So why had Gerard chosen me?
And what did he hope my children might do?
I remembered Viktor’s musing from last night, that Gerard might be trying to speak to the gods. The older ones, long tucked away into the deepest parts of the Sanctum. The Denizens.
Why would anyone go to such lengths to speak to them?
He’d dosed expecting mothers with mixtures of poppies and betel nuts, water plants and funguses. Things grown in the depths of his poison garden.
Things like the laurel plant that had so affected me…
I remembered the wicked grin of the weeping wraith. How she’d moved. How she’d spoken.
I stopped my pacing, nearly tripping over my own feet, as I was struck with the conviction that she’d not been a hallucination after all.
She’d actually been there with us.
I was just the only one who could see her.
A goddess.
Or something like it.
I licked my lips, considering what this might mean.
The gods knew all.
The gods saw all.
She would know more about me. About my gift.
She would have answers.
I was certain of it.
* * *
* * *
The ground was damp and warm as I spread a blanket out in the Garden of Giants later that morning. It was the only place in the entire estate where I knew I wouldn’t be found. When Alex and I had come on our picnic, the soaring statues had been surrounded with tall grasses and brush left to grow in wild tangles.
No gardener would stumble across me.
No one would oversee anything I was about to do.
My hands trembled as I unpacked my satchel of gathered contraband.
A flask of poppy tea, brewed twice as strong as I’d normally prepared it.
A pink candle.
Matches.
And a sprig of laurel leaves, cut from a branch poking through the fence of the poison garden, just moments before.
I’d waited until Gerard had wandered away for tea before making my move and immediately wrapped the snipping into a handkerchief, hoping it would hold the toxic fumes until I was ready to use them.
The full magnitude of what I was about to do swept over me.
I was going to knowingly poison myself in an attempt to summon an otherworldly entity.
I winced, remembering the flash of her pointed gray teeth.
Not a ghost. Something far, far worse.
Releasing a shaky breath, I lit the candle. Its scent filled the air, making me want to heave now that I knew its truth.
I uncapped the flask and took a deep gulp of the tea. Then another.
I paused, waiting for something to happen.
“Hello?”
My voice was weak with uncertainty.
I closed my eyes, trying to recall everything about the weeping woman. Her dark, swirling hair. Her long, ragged nails. The cruel angle of her grin. If only I knew her name.
“I…I don’t know if I’m doing this right but…are you there?”
I opened my eyes.
All around me, the colors of the trees were wrong. It was as if I’d looked directly into sunlight, burning my retinas until the whole world was cast into a different hue. Everything was in shades of blue. Deep navy and cerulean. Swirling galaxies of lapis and cobalt.
The trees seemed to multiply.
But I saw no wraith.
I took another swallow of the tea, then unwrapped the handkerchief and breathed in deeply.
The scent of the laurel’s sap tickled at my nose.
I felt faint.
There was a sharp sound of movement behind me.
I turned in time to see one of the garden’s statues pick itself up from the earth.
It was almost a giraffe, a great hulking beast, teetering on spindly, knobby legs. Each footstep shook the ground like thunder. Thick spikes ran down its spine. Its muzzle was too long, like a crocodile. It had eight eyes.