“Hargreaves?” Leena echoed, her mind reeling back to the memories that Lady Hargreaves had left. A missing child—who was not missing at all, but a man now, bleeding in front of her. “Why was Hargreaves at the duel?”
Another perilous lurch. This time, Leena was more prepared, holding on to the cushioned seat tightly.
Leena could now see that they’d passed the forest surrounding Weavingshaw. In the distance, she could see big plumes of smokerising from the miners’ town, but she didn’t have a moment to wonder about the cause.
“Hargreaves wanted the red diary for the Wake.” St. Silas tried to sit up straighter, but Leena pushed him back, continuing to wrap the bandages firmly.
“Why?”
“He very rudely did not specify his reasons.”
“Have you read the diary? Could there be anything in there that could capture his interest?”
His mouth was a firm line. “There are few passages, mostly mundane accounts from the First Marquess of Avon. The rest of the pages are blank.”
Blank?
“Do you think Lord Hargreaves knows this?” Leena asked.
“I doubt he does,” St. Silas said, gazing down at her hands tying the bandages. “My father must’ve fooled him into believing that it held vital information.”
Leena held her misgivings. If the red diary retained benign, mostly blank pages, would this be enough to capture Percy back from the dead?
Leena looked back out the window, her mouth pursed. They’d just entered the moors, leaving behind Lytham and Weavingshaw’s ever-watching tower.
He continued softly. “There is something else, something about Theo—”
Horror descended into Leena’s stomach with St. Silas’s brief but concise explanation of the events leading up to the duel. His expression remained neutral throughout, his voice continuing in that same slow cadence.
Warring emotions played through her chest: hurt on St. Silas’s behalf, fury at the betrayal of the boy-ghost who stood guard over her bed each night, and shame that Leena had led their entire party to disaster on Theo’s word.
She felt like the worst sort of fool. Tears pricked the backs of her eyes.
St. Silas must have marked the expression on her face, for he opened his mouth to say something, something soft and careful—
—but he was cut off by the deafening screech of wheels, followed by the snap of breaking metal.
This time, the carriage didn’t correct itself, instead plunging into the snowbanks with force.
Leena was thrown forward toward the window as the carriage fully overturned, her back painfully crashing against the glass panes.
Stillness.
Leena blinked through the confusion, trying to gain a sense of orientation, instantly looking for St. Silas. Before she could utter a word, the carriage door—now where the ceiling had been—flew open, and Rami’s panicked face appeared.
“Are you two all right?” he cried, eyes jerking between the two of them.
St. Silas slowly straightened beside her, his hand spasming across the site of his wound, jaw tense with pain.
Relief flooded Rami’s face when he saw them both begin to stir. “The wheel of the carriage had broken and I couldn’t stop it from toppling over into an icy ditch.” He helped Leena exit the carriage first, followed more slowly by St. Silas. “Hurry. We must move fast.”
Mrs. Van helped Rami unharness the horses, but her attention kept slipping back toward the road. “They are not far behind.”
The snow had thickened. Already the sky had darkened beneath the clouds; only a thin remnant of light remained to guide their way. All around them the earth was covered in white, the snow now up to Leena’s ankles, coating the hedgerows and the trees.
Her teeth chattered, more from spent nerves than the cold, but she knew that the temperature would soon drop further. Already the tips of her ears felt raw.
St. Silas was leaning against a birch tree, eyes too bright and slightly unfocused.
