“Doesn’t matter which trees we pass through, as long as I know you will use the bell and help me bring my mother home. I can’t—” He slumps to the fountain, the broken man again. “I cannot keep this castle by myself. You see it for what it is. Nothing more than a festering shell. And hell, I needher, Thorn.” He looks at me again, the ghosts of pain in his eyes. “Please.”
The brass in my pocket is heavier than it was moments ago. I pull it out. Oh, but itdoesmatter. For the souls only come from the forest, tethered to the silver trunks like leashed dogs. The bell catches the moonlight, throwing gold stains on the twisted stems around us. I roll it on my palm.
One, a fool. Two, a thief. What would three make me? Death itself? A Reaper with my shadowed blood? I swallow, throat as sharp as needles.
“We meet tomorrow night by the banks of the river. Where the graveyard wall meets the trees,” I say. “Tomorrow or no deal.”
When I look up, Ransom’s eyes are as red as the rowan leaves. My heart stutters, and I stumble, skirt catching on my heel. The bell leaps from my hand when I tumble back, rolling near the fountain. The world seems to slow while I watch Ransom’s boots approach the tiny thing glistening in the light.
One, two, three, his steps strike hard and cold as steel. He bends, fingers brushing the brass. My breath hitches, snags in my throat like cotton thread on a nail.
“Ransom, please.” The words escape me in puffs of air.
Spirits of hunger pinch the sallow of his cheeks. He holds the bell up to the light, watching in mummified awe while it casts liquid gold about the darkening garden.
“Ransom.”
It takes him all of two steps to drop the bell back to my palm and lift me to my feet. His chest is solid against my hand, and the smell of him wafts toward me, like smoke from a candle.
“I will meet you tomorrow evening,” he whispers. “And when we get back, you will become Lady Black, and all thoughts of Idlewild will be wiped from memory. This is your salvation, Adelaide.”
And then he leaves me there, standing in the rot and dust, breathless against the night.
eleven
There is a stench of sulfur on the wind while the carriage traces the long drive of Blackbourne Castle and empties me back in front of the vicarage door. The shadows hound my heels, and my skin thrills at the idea of being caught by Father.
But the house is still when I enter. Not even the ghost of Vicar Thorn to be seen. The hearth is cold in the kitchen, the light beneath his study door gone out. Quickly, I take to the creaking stairs and enter my room, throwing myself down onto the bed and releasing all the breath I have kept trapped in my lungs since Ransom left me.
Already, I long to be back at Blackbourne Castle. I miss the slight touch of Ransom’s fingers, his breath on my cheek. Even for all his threats, I miss his nearness. The way he does not shrink away from me but rather is drawn in closer. As though I am something desired. And I sink into that feeling—being wanted.
I study the water stains on the plaster, tracing the lines with my eyes. So familiar yet something out of a dream. Being stuck in this room forever. A reality that might have once been mine but will be mine no longer once I enter the wood. I have half a mind to draw out the bell and ring it, my eyes fixed on the corner, waiting with bated breath for Bram to appear like wisps of smoke.
But I don’t and the bell settles between the folds of its wrappings like river silt as I wait.
Wait because I am a coward. I couldn’t even make a promise to Bram. Two faces beneath one hood, he said. Two souls for one. But now I have said yes to Ransom, added another to the number. Two faces for what? Bloody sockets, a sucked-out soul, Death in the palm of my hands?
But Ransom has offered me a way out. A salvation of sorts. If I become Lady Black, Father will not be able to send me away, and instead, I will remain close enough to regain his love with the help of my mother.
I roll over in my bed, the scratch of the patchwork familiar on my cheek. It used to smell like Mother: garden dirt, fresh rain, and lemon blossoms in spring. But now it’s nothing more than hollow air and the distant catch of old blood. I push myself up.
No more blood. No more death.
Tomorrow night, I will go through the wood.
The next day passes like custard through a sieve. The village lies silent, with chill wind. The bridge over the water is still; no one coming or going. Too many dead women. I know they think it is me, the killer amongst them. A wolf in sheep’s clothing.
And who is to say they are wrong? Where do I truly go when my eyes swarm black? This ever-waking wrongness? If it is true, whatever everyone believes, that I am cursed by unholy shadow, then who is to say I am not the one with blood on my hands?
Erybrus only seeks to corrupt and steal, to draw souls away from Ithrandril. And maybe Iamfor Erybrus. Perhaps, when Mother died, a Reaper swept in for her soul and corroded mine in the process. Maybe I will finally learn the truth of the illness coursing through my veins.
I stretch my hands in my lap, the cuts softening from angry red to primrose pink.
There is only one way to find out, really.
Enter the wood. Make a devil’s deal for Ransom’s mother, for my own.
Find Bram and bring him home. He deserves as much after I turned my back on him.
