“Didn’t leave the castle much during the day, I suppose.” There is a faraway look in Ransom’s eye, as if something across the gardens has caughthis attention and the novelty of me sitting beside him has worn off. “He would have liked you, I think.”
The words are strange things, curved and angled in a way. I don’t think Ransom means them. But where pain is, love is choked out. The hangman’s noose tightens around his throat while he tries to speak of a father who never knew how to care for his son.
My fingers itch to brush his. To wrap my arms around Ransom Black and show him just how deeply I understand. Instead, I think of the bone beneath the dirt.
“You seem distracted.”
Ransom is staring at me when I lift my eyes to his.
I choose my words carefully. “Your driver interrupted me, and I would very much like to get back to—”
Ransom smirks. “To what, Thorn?”
“It doesn’t matter. Please, tell me why you have brought me here and let me go. I know you have no intention of keeping me.”
He leans closer. “Do you know why my father was never seen in Rixton, Adelaide? Why he never came to church?”
I shake my head.
Ransom tilts his head toward the dark sky. “Because Lord Hiram Black was obsessed with death.”
The word catches like a bone in my throat. I picture Bram pressed against the wall of my bedroom, whispering of things beyond. A place where death isn’t quite the end. I once more run a finger along the rim of the bell.
Whatever this meeting with Ransom is, it isn’t a chance occurrence.
“I don’t see what any of this has to do—”
“With you?” Ransom is up on his feet now, coming to stand in front of me.
I press myself against the stone, heart like cinnamon in my chest—hot and sharp. “I don’t—”
“Do you know what burnt salt smells like? What blood does when it is mixed with melted wax? How to draw an Ouroboros, the everlasting snake, the sign of Erybrus?”
He drops to his knees before me, eyes burning like torches, leaving scorch marks on my skin. I shake my head again, tongue dry and swollen, like a stretch of desert in my mouth.
“Do you want to know how I know these things?” He’s so close I smell the stale tea on his breath. “My father was hellbent on searching for a way to stop himself from dying. An endless return.” He points to the shrub in the shape of the looping snake. “Used his own blood to try and achieve immortality. Served it to Erybrus in streams, hoping it would make him unbreakable. Immortal. But when that didn’t work, he began to use my own.”
There is pain in his eyes now. Something like gunpowder, just waiting for the right spark. He pulls back and studies the night sky. “Do you know, Adelaide Thorn, what waits for the dead? Surely, as the vicar’s daughter, you must have some idea.”
So, this is what he wanted? A theology lesson? Twigs crunch in the undergrowth behind us. My heart thrums. A sparrow against my ribcage. Ascension to Ithrandril—is that the answer he wants? Or being dragged into shadow? Reapers and bells and so much fire?
And then I remember Bram cowering in a corner of my room, frightened of phantoms. Bram, whole and real and almost alive. Trapped in a place where Ithrandril and Erybrus collide. Where I can rescue Mother. Heat courses from the center of my chest.
“I think only the dead can answer that question, Lord Black.”
He crosses his arms, takes another step back, and spreads a smile. “Please, call me Ransom.”
“Ransom,” I repeat.
There is silence, thick and stifling as summer heat. Ransom glances toward a dying bed of flowers—one of many—its scraggled remains like bits of dry paper. I whisper a silent prayer he doesn’t notice the bone sticking out of the earth.
His eyes trace to the stars, and his chest heaves a sigh.
“I know what it is you found, Adelaide. On the banks of the river.”
My skin freezes, pulls, its surface licked through with spider cracks. I do not look up, keeping my eyes fixed on my feet. A strange kind of ache burrows into my palm, spreading to my fingers.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I have always been a terrible liar, ever since the day my father caught me in a lie and made me drink vinegar by the spoonful.
