—
Leena searched for a portrait of the 16th Lady Avon, Percival’s wife, but she could not findit.
The gallery in which they’d had their initial tour was filled with portraits of the Lords of Avon, all blue-eyed, all fair-haired. There was the 1st Marquess—bewitchingly handsome, drenched in light, making it look like the golden glare originated from him. Leena remembered what had been said on that tour: that Weavingshaw’s initial purpose had been to be a fortress, Morland’s frontline protection from the Casland invaders. When the King had given the property to the 1st Marquess of Avon, it had comprised only the burnt remnants of a house and untamable lands, with orders to ready it as a stronghold.
To Leena, it seemed an impossible task—especially the more she saw of the north. Even the ocean was not safe. She’d caught glimpses of shipwrecks and ruined hulls left on the beach, centuries old.
Itwasan impossible task. The 1st Marquess should’ve failed, the Avon root cut, Weavingshaw a pile of forgotten bricks.
Yet standing here, nine hundred years later, staring at the portrait of the 1st Marquess, she wondered how he had managed totransform Weavingshaw into this enduring bastion. Beyond the Marquess’s handsomeness, the artist had given his face an almost beastly expression, his sharp features molded in cold aristocratic cruelty. Leena felt a quiver race up her spine at the thought of what, exactly, the Marquess might’ve done to ensure the continuation of his line.
Her eyes then drifted toward the last Lord Avon’s portrait, and she could not help but contrast this painting with how he appeared in both Moira’s and Lady Hargreaves’s memories. He was younger in this rendering, dressed in a crimson hunting jacket with a musket slung over his shoulder. He still wore his silver insignia ring, but the wedding band was not yet on his finger. In Moira’s memories, there had been a different smolder to him—a fever that was all-consuming.
That had, in fact, consumed Moira to her death.
—
All four of them met in the same gallery that evening.
Leena, Rami, and Mrs. Van had spent the afternoon scouring the attics as the rain persisted outside, unveiling trunks filled with clothing from centuries past: dusty dresses with wide hoopskirts; linen pantaloons; musty, white-powdered wigs. There were also other hidden treasures, but the diary was not one of them.
St. Silas had returned from the smugglers’ caves in a foul mood, his wet hair plastered to his forehead in thick tendrils, mud caking his boots. “I found only boxes of old rifles,” he told them grimly.
“What’s next?” Rami asked, loosening the cravat at his throat in frustration.
“The crypts.” St. Silas’s gaze flickered to the portrait of Lord Avon, his first acknowledgment of the painting since his arrival at Weavingshaw. “Tonight we go to find Percival Avon’s tomb.”
The crypts werehidden deep beneath Weavingshaw—cavernous and seemingly endless, with sudden drops and blind ends, deadly as a devil’s fist.
“They were designed by the First Marquess of Avon,” St. Silas explained as they descended the steps to the cellar. “He was a paranoid man. He kept all the heirlooms, as well as the family mausoleum, down there.”
Rami seemed entirely unimpressed with the 1st Marquess of Avon. “Why go to all that effort?”
“He feared grave robbers, so he constructed crypts that would be impossible to traverse without a map.”
“These family heirlooms,” Rami said, “must be worth a fortune if he had to build a city under Weavingshaw to protect them.”
St. Silas’s mouth twisted without humor. “That’s the irony. It would be his own ancestors—penniless and desperate—who robbed his tomb.”
It was half past two in the morning; not even the servants stirred when St. Silas led the Al-Sayers into the wine cellar. Lining thewalls were stacks of wooden shelves that must’ve held countless bottles of wine once, but which were now empty save for dust. Each of them carried kerosene lanterns, but they provided only a weak defense against the encroaching darkness.
St. Silas walked the entire length of the cellar, inspecting each shelf. Finally, he tapped one booted foot on the floor and a hollow thud resounded.
“Here it is.” St. Silas knelt down, swinging open a concealed door. The hidden latch was nearly indistinguishable from the rest of the tiles, easily missed in the dim lighting.
Rami shone his light into the passage, revealing winding stairs that descended into pitch-black. “Steep.”
Leena peered as well. The entrance looked like an open mouth, framing the steps like teeth, waiting to swallow them whole.
St. Silas pulled Rami back just as he was beginning his descent. He took the lead instead, his lantern illuminating the path onward. Leena went second, and Rami brought up the rear. There wasn’t a railing to hold on to, just a stone wall that grazed her palm whenever she used it to steady herself.
“Do you have a map?” Leena asked, no longer able to stand the silence.
“Last step,” was St. Silas’s only response as he tilted his lamp downward.
His reticence worried her more than his answers.
The ground leveled as they walked a long stretch of passageway, the light from their lamps pooling in the crevices of the curved ceiling. Here, even the scurrying of small rodents was magnified. They passed a doorway barred with metal railings, a rusted padlock still hanging from the handle, and Leena shuddered to think what lay behindit.
