I turn the corner and the hallway stretches out before me, empty and echoing, lined with doors I know too well. The castle feels huge, hostile, alive with Sokolov ghosts watching from the rafters. I run faster.
“Gustav!”
No answer.
Only ravens.
And the sickening realization settles in that Rupert has finally landed a blow deep enough to split us apart.
He didn’t just send evidence. He sent a match, and my caution struck it.
I wanted to spare my husband from learning of my mother’s sins, but instead my silence fed his distrust and gave it teeth.
Now Gustav, my dark, broken, beautiful husband, is primed to combust.
I keep running, heart in my throat, terrified not of finding him, but of what he will be when I do.
Chapter 54
Gustav
Peighton’s scream slices through the castle. “Gustav!”
I sit very still on the old bed in my mother’s tower bedroom, back against the carved headboard, one leg stretched, one bent. Our daughter sits on my lap, supported by my hand, batting at the air with tiny fists. Beside me, the bare white skull stares at the wall. A neat hole sits between its eyes. My fingers rest over it, middle finger tapping lightly against cracked bone. The contact is almost affectionate.
Footsteps pound up the spiral stairs. They burst into the room like a storm. Peighton. Micha. Keira.
They all freeze.
“Hello,” I say calmly. “You are just in time. We were talking about family.”
Peighton’s eyes go straight to Vera, then the skull. Her face goes pale.
“Gustav,” she whispers.
I tilt my head. “Say hello to my father, mishka.”
Her gaze drops to the bullet hole. Her throat works as she swallows. Micha’s jaw clenches. Keira crosses her arms, nervous.
“Mother kept him in the nightstand,” I explain. “She said it was so he would not go to another woman’s bed. Even dead, she wanted to keep him close.”
A raven taps the window. Hard. The glass rattles in its frame.
My focus slides back to Peighton. She looks fragile and fierce at the same time, hair loose around her shoulders, eyes bright with fear and fury. My wife. The mother of my child.
“How many times,” I ask softly, “did you sleep in Brutus’ bed?”
She blinks. “What?”
“The photos,” I say. “You looked very comfortable in his arms. Did you go to him at night, like your mother went to my dad, tempting him?”
Her hands shake. “The photos are fake,” she says, voice trembling. “They were altered, Gustav. You know that. I told you.”
“All I know,” I reply, “is that you have liar’s blood. Just like her. Rotten blood cannot be bled out. It lives in the bones.”
Her chin lifts even as tears gather. “Then you are tainted too. Your father was unfaithful.”
I consider that, then nod slowly. “Da.”
