And it was Joseph he’d dug a grave for, because he couldn’t stand the thought of a human buried like a demon.
St. Silas’s muscles stiffened as he forced the raft away from the boys standing in a motionless row. Their faces were expressionless, six heads turning as they watched him go. There was accusation in their silence.
No,that was just the cursed waters, feeding on the jagged edges of his memory.
Instead, St. Silas imagined the Rosethorn taking root in the hard soil atop the two burial mounds, digging deep and reaching the dead beneath, speaking a language of comfort that had once been foreign to him.
Once more he felt the vise around his chest ease. He continued to row forward.
St. Silas thought he’d see his father next; it seemed the exact sort of maudlin nonsense that the demon craved. Or even hallucinations of Lord Hargreaves and Lady Hargreaves, and the many nights he’d spent as a small boy in Hythe House when his father went away. Hargreaves teaching him how to shoot or toasting him as he declared,To the youngest member of the Wake.
Perhaps he’d hear Lady Hargreaves’s soft southern lilt as she sang him a lullaby—the closest thing he’d had to a mother in that cold house.
The fact that Lady Hargreaves had drowned by her own hand meant only one thing to St. Silas—that Weavingshaw had also gripped her. Whether it was anger or madness or guilt, St. Silas would never know, for he had been traded before he could ever find out. But the ache of her loss was far more potent than the loss of Percival or even the mother he could not remember.
And still, he would row past.
But they didn’t come.
Instead—
“It’s not intuitive, is it?” a soft voice said from behind him. He turned around, his hand already resting on the barrel of his pistol, but he halted. Leena sat in front of him, knees drawn close together in the tight confines of the raft, her hair spilling onto her shoulders.
He stared at her.
“The demon’s magic,” she amended. “It’s not very intuitive.”
“Isn’t it?” he asked in a low voice.
Her head jerked as if she’d seen something in the edge of her vision; he’d seen her wear that expression before, when a phantom appeared. Fear scrunched her brows, her chest rose and fell—and suddenly, without warning, she buried herself into his chest.
It is merely a hallucination.He knew that the scent of lavender that enveloped him was not real.
Still, his arms tightened around her in spite of himself, and he felt the warmth of her body even through the layers of clothes.
She was dressed exactly as she had been at the Festival of Demons, save for the mask. Her curls swept down the length of her back; he remembered how his hands had burned to entangle themselves in their softness even then.
Leena looked up at him from beneath thick lashes, her eyes earthy brown and wide—that searching look, soft as thistles, a dagger to his chest. Haltingly, she placed a hand on his jaw. He swallowed. His muscles tensed, not daring to move, as she brushed her lips against his.
A tether broke inside him.
He leaned forward, one palm slamming on the wooden seat by her hip, the other drawing her closer as he took her mouth with his own, just as he had wanted to in the cave. She tasted like sweet sorcery—maddening him, enshrouding him. He pulled away to take a deep inhalation, burying his forehead into her neck, trailing kisses across the soft skin.
He felt the vibrations from her throat as she spoke. “I won’t leave you behind, Bram. I’ll stay with you.”
He stiffened.
Those were not her words but the vows of the demon, dragging out his deepest desires from when he had been a boy of twelve, left abandoned in the underworld.
Suddenly, jarringly, he released her, taking one last look at her smile—as if she trusted him, as if seeinghimwas happiness—before he pushed her over the raft’s edge and into the fathomless waters.
The vision of her shattered like glass, plunging him into darkness once more.
St. Silas didn’t linger any longer. It had not been his Leena. He forced himself to keep his gaze steady and row, not to look down, not tomake sure…
Time moved differently down here. Perhaps he was only on the lake for a few minutes; perhaps hours passed. But he finally felt a jolt as the raft hit the shore on the other side.
This time, while on land, the wick held its flame. More statues littered the place, the stone facades aged with algae and dirt, nobility left to decay. He tied the raft to the arm of a Lord whose jaw had crumbled into dust, leaving only parts of a lip still frowning. The flame flickered in and out, collecting shadows on the wall, while he navigated the stone floors and disintegrating relics. His steps echoed. There was no Al-Sayer here to sing folk songs, and St. Silas kept silent.
