She let the heat consume her until she saw only an abyss of pure white. There was nothing but endless space ahead until she heard a gentle, jovial laugh. A face took shape then—Fate’s face, though more relaxed as he laughed, holding someone. Holding her, she realized.
Only, Signa wasn’t herself, but another woman entirely. One with sweeping white hair as pure as snow, who laughed as she eased onto her toes to kiss him.
Vaguely, Signa understood that she was seeing another memory, this one of a time long ago, where the woman in her mind’s eye had burned for Fate’s touch, and his kiss alone could make her heart soar. It was a time when she saw Death sitting alone, watching beneath the shade of a wisteria tree, and she felt nothing for him.
As quickly as it came, the memory slipped away as Signa fell from Eliza. She took her head in her hands, aching with a pain so consuming that she wished she would faint. Yet her mind wouldn’t allow such an escape, not after all she’d just seen. The memory was short and vague, nothing more than passing glimpses. But she could no longer claim it as coincidence. Life’s memories were real, and as Death whispered words she could not focus enough to hear, Signa curled into herself.
Despite Life’s powers and all the proof she’d had so far, she’d been clinging to the hope that Fate was wrong. That everything she’d done thus far had been a fluke, and that they’d one day find the true reincarnation of his wife and be done with this mess. Signa could ignore a song, but she couldn’t deny these memories.
“Breathe, Little Bird,” Death whispered as he bent beside her. Signa was trying her best to save face, though she nearly lost herself at those words because this was the man she loved. This was the man she wanted to kiss, and whose presence alone put her body at ease. But Signa could feel that more memories were waiting, biding their time to surface when she least wanted them.
Eliza came to seconds later. Her clammy skin had begun to dry, and her bleeding had halted. But considering that Signa could still see Death hovering nearby, Eliza must not have been fully out of the woods yet.
Blythe hadn’t moved an inch, alert only when Eliza tried to peel her dress from her thighs, the dried blood clinging to her skin. “Careful,” Blythe whispered, her voice dazed. “You should move slowly.”
Eliza’s thin brows pinched toward her nose. She looked from the poppies to the trees surrounding her as she pried herself from the dirt. “What on earth happened?”
It seemed that Blythe could barely contain her snort. “That’s what you’re supposed to tell us.”
“You’re pregnant,” Signa added at Eliza’s apparent confusion. This time when she said it, Eliza was coherent enough to look her in the eye. Signa had to try to block Life’s memories out a little longer, instead gathering the scattered puzzle pieces of this mystery and speaking her thoughts aloud as she pieced them together.
“The night your uncle died, Everett told me that the duke was trying to marry you off—”
“To a man with one foot in the grave.” Blythe, it seemed, was creeping toward the same conclusion as Signa.
“And one who wouldn’t ask questions,” Signa noted, her teeth still chattering every few words. “The late duke knew about the pregnancy, didn’t he?”
There was no escaping the truth of the situation now, and Eliza seemed to realize as much. Her mouth opened and shut several times before defeat claimed her and she released the tension in her shoulders. “All Sir Bennet ever discussed was how much he needed an heir. Perhaps he was a good fit on paper, but can you imagine letting someone old enough to be your grandfather put his hands all over you?” She shuddered. All three of the women did.
One look at the discarded vial of herbs told Signa all she needed to know about the next piece of the puzzle, and so she pressed, “You didn’t want to marry him. So you went to the apothecary for a solution.” Signa remembered her own visit there months prior, when the shopkeeper had suspected Percy was up to something and had offered Signa the means to take care of him. Perhaps that, too, had been cyanide.
Eliza’s answer came in words so sharp that each one was spoken like its own sentence. “I never, ever meant to cause my uncle any harm.” She made a fist in her skirts, taking a moment to still the quiver of her bottom lip. “I read about cyanide in the papers. There were cases of poisonings where the men did not die but briefly took ill. I only needed to make my uncle believe that Sir Bennet was no longer a viable option. I wanted him to find someone else, so I slipped some cyanide into a drink that a servant was meant to bring to Sir Bennet. But Mr. Hawthorne stopped him on his way and grabbed the laced drink.” For as long as she’d held in her secrets, they now flowed from Eliza’s lips like a rushing river.