I wring my smile until all the joy is dripping down my chin. “Ithrandril go with you.”
“Thank you.” She turns to leave, then stops, a ghost of a grin still haunting her lips. “And, Adelaide, you deserve happiness too.”
I nod, but I don’t believe her. Ithrandril abandoned me a long time ago, and soon, so will everyone else. I watch Clara disappear back up the bank, across the bridge, and down the lane of thatched houses, taking all the happiness in the world with her.
I blow breath out from between my lips and pull the bell out of my pocket. The line of rowans is deserted. No white mist, no teeth damp with saliva, no words worming their way into the thoughts.
Only silence.
I roll the bell in my palm, watching it catch the dim light.
A Reaper’s bell. Death’s bell.
I barely know a thing about Bram Avery. Whether he is a liar or one who speaks truth. All I can be sure of is the way he huddled in a corner, afraid of things I could not see, and offered me the devil’s deal.
Once, a fool. Twice, a thief.
I close my fingers around the bell, looking out at the rushing river warring against the ice.
Happiness. A word that should taste of honey but slips down my throat like fermented wine. The wheat fields beyond the water waver in the wind, gold against all the gray, all the dead and dying things. A wind dances through the rowans, and the leaves whisper words in my ears.
Love is quite a serious thing.
My words.
I swallow, fingering the bell, setting to memory the pattern impressed upon the brass. There has only ever been one person who loved me: Mother. I hear Bram’s voice in my head.
Two faces beneath one hood.
Two souls to steal from Erybrus.
Three days. I havethreedays.
Three days to bring my mother home. With her here, Father will forget all thoughts of Idlewild, and I can move beyond this wretched semblance of a life. I can find joy once more.
If Mother is alive, maybe, just maybe, my father will become the man he once was. The man who smiled and brought me on his walks about the village. I close my eyes, picture the meadows in summer, Father’s warm hand in mine, the way he used to laugh when I chased rabbits from the blackberry thicket. That is the Father I want. Not the fragile monster with scales for skin, scared of what the world will think, who ties me to chairs and threatens to send me away. I want him to be more than bitter memories. Resurrect the man who laughed and sang and read bedtime stories.
I imagine my mother. Her honey-gold hair, the light reflecting off the River Thine matching the blue in her eyes. The way she taught me to sink my fingers into the earth, tend the growing shoots of foxglove, oleander, larkspur.
I hold the bell up against the sun. Rays of light catch the metal’s decorative swirls. It takes all my strength not to ring it right now, out in the open. But I do not want Ithrandril to see. To damn me when I cross into the dark. I clench my fist and turn back to the vicarage.
Once, a fool. Twice, a thief.
Well, then. Thief it is.
eight
The night gathers quickly outside my window. Shadows ghost in the garden, turning the mangled bushes to lurking ghouls. One wrong move and I am swallowed up, taken down to whatever awaits the dead.
Bram said he lingers in some liminal space of the wood. A part I cannot see. Not fully. A place neither dead nor alive. Ithrandril saving the souls who strived for goodness in their life and the rest rotting away until Erybrus claims them. Where restless souls—those claimed neither by Ithrandril or Erybrus—bide their time, their unfinished business, like worms trapped beneath skin.
My stomach buckles with the thought. Of Mother wrapped in the darkness of the deepening wood, hiding from whatever things Bram was so afraid of. Each breath painful, each moment agony while she waits…
Waits for what?
What could possibly keep her from peace? Her choice should be easy.
I dredge up every option, every moment of my life and hers that might be the reason she is trapped there, in some wood beyond. The realization cracks across my surface like shattered porcelain, and I find myself on the floor, head in my hands, tears running down my cheeks.
