“Do you think really think so, Thorn?”
The voice lashes through the air like oak switches. I pull back, spinning on my knees.
Ransom leans against one wall, his fist full of Clara’s dark curls, a hand wrapped tightly around her lips. Here, his illusion is fully in place. Honeyed hair, eyes like gunmetal, a cocked smile I still taste, as a kind of sickness on my tongue.
I am quick to my feet, the bell still glowing in my hand. His eyes flick greedily to it.
“Let Clara go.”
Ransom’s smile twists. A glint of sliver in the hand holding Clara’s hair. “I wonder what would happen if I were to drag this knife across her throat. Would she die, you think? Or just bleed out on the castle floor for all eternity?”
Clara’s eyes bulge, throat bobbing.
“You wouldn’t dare.” The words are barbs between my teeth.
Ransom’s smile widens, and I notice the patched skin beneath, the black thread. “I have done so much worse, Thorn. Would you like to know about that too?”
Anger boils in my stomach. “That you murdered girls from Rixton, and when that wasn’t enough, you dug up their bodies and pulled them apart to find the pieces you thought could save your own soul? Is that what you’reso proud of, Ransom? That you used me to get to my mother, someone just as bad as you, just as rotten?”
His brow quirks. “You want to speak of someonerotten? I tried to use the bell. When my hand sunk into your pocket in the confessional—”
“So, you did take it.” Bram’s voice is dark fire.
Ransom’s mouth parts, slippery and wet. “I did. But it would not work for me. You want to speak of things rotten, Thorn? Look in the mirror. Only Reapers can use the bell. Only Death. You think your sickness isnatural? Of the earth? It’s not. Your illness was never something that made you weak. It was your strength.”
It is a truth I already know. Why I heard the sound of bells every time the souls came. My illness was never truly something wrong with me. It was so much more.Isso much more. The plunging of my heart in my chest, my breath coming quick, the pain, it was simply the truth trying to break free, to show me my strength lay with shadow and with light. That I contained multitudes.
Ransom’s lips peel back, mold leaking from his gums. “We need you. You’re just like us. And I did it all for you, Adelaide. Can’t you see that?”
I recoil. “Take that back.”
His smile widens, sludge seeping from between his teeth. “It’s such a very strange thing, human life. No one really seems to see it for what it is.”
“And what’s that?” I spit.
“Something to take.” Silver flashes in his hand, the knife pressed against Clara’s throat.
Rascal’s lips peel back.
I hold the bell out and watch the bitterbloom grow in my hand. The flowers shoot toward him, knocking the knife to the floor and pinning him against the wall. Clara scrambles up and runs toward me.
For a moment, Ransom doesn’t react. He just stands there, motionless, sweating. And then his face cracks, every seam of skin stretching to show the rot beneath, the pulling black string, and laughter spills from his mouth like oil while he struggles against the vines.
I hear my heart in my ears, a cold feeling trickling down my back. “You’re sick, Ransom. Please, let me take you home, find help.”
His face contorts when the light from the bell brightens. It floods theroom, forcing me to shield my eyes. I feel the dead girls, their energy spinning through the bitterbloom, soaking into my skin.
“Thisishome, Thorn,” he snarls. “I thought we could do this together, you and me. We could become stronger than either of your parents. Neither for the light nor for the shadow, but for ourselves.” Something softens in his eyes. “I would have had you at my side.”
A dark feeling spills through my bones, anger sharp and hot. “I am on no one’s side, Ransom Black. Least of all yours.”
He surges forward, mouth nothing but teeth and lashing tongue. Clara screams when Rascal launches himself at Ransom, flinging her out of the way. I peddle back.
Bram crosses in front of us, one hand slung against his peeling stomach. His eyes flash with danger. It takes him two strides to close the space between him and Ransom, and his free fist sinks into Ransom’s stomach. Rot blooms, a stinking, sulfurous stench misting out.
“She doesn’t need me to fight for her,” Bram hisses between his teeth. “But I’ve been wanting to do that for averylong time.”
Ransom spits something black from between his lips. “You aren’t going to win this, Avery. Should I kill one of your sisters next? Polly, perhaps? Always with those sad, brown eyes, walking to the churchyard every day, just to lay flowers at your miserable grave. Or Isabel. Those lips would be delicious.”
