The tension in her frame drained away. “You don’t hate me?” she said in a small voice.
“Hate you?” Robbie repeated, incredulous. He pulled back to face her. “Iloveyou, silly lass.”
Elspeth trembled. “But I lied to you, and I?—”
“None of that, now,” Robbie commanded. “I know very well what it’s like for a master to forge your chains of obedience.” He lifted his hands to cup her face, spearing his fingers through her wet hair.
“Oh, don’t—” Elspeth blurted out, raising her hands instinctively.
Robbie gave her an all-too-knowing look. “You don’t have to hide your scars from me. Isn’t that what you told me about my leg?” He cradled the sides of her head, purposefully cupping her mutilated ears. “That scars are just part of who we are and what we survived?”
Tears blurred Elspeth’s eyes. She pressed her face into his steady hands.
“I said that?” she managed to say. “Are you sure?”
“I recall it so clearly because it was the moment I lost my head over the wisest and loveliest woman I’ve ever known,” Robbie said. “Come inside, Elspeth.”
Elspeth came on trembling legs, clutching the arm Robbie did not use for his crutch. She had only just stepped inside the door when Genevieve flew through the green servants’ door at the end of the hall and came running towards her, her skirts hoisted nearly to her knees. “Elspeth!” she called.
Oh, but I’m not ready,Elspeth thought. She hadn’t rehearsed her apology yet! “Genevieve?—”
Genevieve hit her at nearly full speed, wrapping her arms around her. “Are you all right?” she demanded. “You’re not hurt?”
“I’m sorry, Genevieve,” Elspeth said, sniffing hard. “He wanted me to tell him secrets, things about you and Kendrick—but I tried so hard not to betray you. Please believe me.”
“OfcourseI do,” Genevieve said, sniffing herself. “I’mthe one who’s sorry. I should have seen the signs. I should have known Laurent would have—” Genevieve’s voice cracked. “I’ve been a poor friend.”
Elspeth shook her head. “That’s never been true yet in the twenty years I’ve known you.” Genevieve had been the one who had held them all together by the skin of her teeth down in the dark. She had survived torture and grief and the howling madness of solitude because of Genevieve. “And to repay you this way, after everything…”
“Let there be no talk of payment between you and me.” Genevieve squeezed her again and then turned to Kendrick. “You won’t hold what happened against her, will you?”
“Did I not promise you equal parts justice and mercy?” Kendrick murmured, brushing some of her hair behind her ear.
Genevieve smiled up at him. “Yes. And I know you for a man who keeps his word.”
“Be wary of Laurent, Genevieve,” Elspeth urged. “He’s unreasonable about you.”
“With any luck, he does not have many days left on the earth,” Kendrick rumbled. “Searchers, to me! We have a location.”
Elspeth clung hard to Genevieve’s hand as they ventured down to the cellar. She was hard-pressed to say whether or not approaching Kendrick expecting death had been worse than this. Entering the small, lantern-lit room, Elspeth met the gaze of the woman sitting with unnatural stillness on the bed as Dominic Penrose hovered protectively. Evangeline Hartshorne’s once-green eyes had faded to the typical vampire colorless gaze, and no sound emerged from her chest. She had awakened, true enough, but had firmly passed the boundary from life to death.
Even though she had been given mercy for her crime, Elspeth knew she still had to acknowledge the wrong. “I have to say I’m sorry.” Elspeth spoke up, before anyone else said anything. “No matter the outcome, I still—I still killed you. I have to—beg your forgiveness. I turned you. I can’t express how I wish—how I wish I could have made a different choice. I know what it’s like to have your life—stolen. To be ripped away from the human world, sundered?—”
“But all that would have happened to me, anyway,” Evangeline Hartshorne said with a strange preternatural calm, holding her gaze.
Elspeth pulled up sharply as her ears rang. “What?”
Evangeline Hartshorne smiled a little. “Don’t you remember? That man—Laurent. He had given me his blood. I believe he always intended to kill me. Based on what Mr. Penrose has told me,” she said, her eyes flicking to Dominic, “by giving me your blood, you snatched me out of his clutches, Miss Gibbins.”
Elspeth worked her mouth, trying to speak. But it felt full of cotton. Genevieve’s hands steadied her as she swayed.
She had forgotten.
That was how the bond had broken tonight. That was how she had escaped.
She had broken her own chains.
But I have forged another set, she realized with cold dread.
