My stomach boils at that.Lady.
My mother does not belong here. She needs to be at home. With me and Father. This stupid mask and dress and party is a waste of bloody time. But what do I know? The day before yesterday, I let Ransom almost have me in the confessional box, and mere moments ago, I found myself tangled up in Bram. Nothing makes any sense.
I close my eyes, fist my hands. One deep breath after another. I will do as Mother wants, attend this silly party of hers, and then we will all go home—even if I must force her. The bell will make her whole again.
We just have to find Ransom first. “Damn it.”
Istelle raises a brow. “What was that?”
“Nothing.” I shuffle toward my own homely dress and search its pockets for the bell.
When my fingers brush against the metal, Istelle’s eyes pierce the back of my neck. I freeze. My skin flares hot, heat crawling up the back of my throat. I release the bell, instead slipping my fingers in its wrappings.
When I spin, there is a saccharine smile on my face. “Just looking for a hair ribbon.” I hold it out to her, and her face pinches.
“You’re to follow me,” she grunts.
My boots skim the stones while I walk behind her through the door. The lock snicks into place, and my heart goes hard against whatever waits below—mothers and ghost boys and things that should not exist. I wrap my fingers around the bell in my pocket and hope that, whatever awaits me below, it will not be the end of me.
There is a moment when the world freezes. When autumn falls away into the white ether of winter and the breath fogs from your lips. It is not a gentle slipping. It is a rugged crash to the ground. A tangle of limbs and falling snow. This is how it feels when I enter the ballroom of Blackbourne Castle and see the dead dancing.
There are so many of them—men and women—skirts and coattails swirling in a storm of blues, golds, and purples, bits of bone showing between laced corsets and silk-lined waistcoats. One woman wears a dress the gentle shade of shushing water, her dancing hand devoid of flesh. Her bones dig into the shoulder of her partner, a woman with only one eye shining through her ebony mask. She catches my gaze.
I try on a smile, bob my head.
The room ghosts with cold. Ice crawls up the stones, slicks the floor. And so, it is strange when I catch the scent of the place—all soil and the sour pinch of lemons. It sends me reeling. Back to my mother’s skirts, back to the way her hair smelled after hours spent in the garden. Scrubbing the ruby sap of bitterbloom off her fingertips.
My eyes burst with black, then white, and I am ten years old, standing in the rain outside the garden shed. I listen to Father’s frantic whispers, footfalls in something wet, the squelch and pop of meat and bone.
Here, in the dead castle, my lungs pump, and yet the air does not come fast enough. I reach for something—anything—to steady myself on and brush against something cold.
Cold and moving.
“Adelaide, what’s wrong? Tell me.” It is Mother’s voice, soft now at my ear.
My heart pulls in two directions, pain blooming at the center of my chest. One side wants nothing more than to turn around, sink against her softness, and cry. Beg for answers in the shadows. But the other side is hard. A locked chest. Terrified she might be angry at me for wanting to take her home, when she has so obviously made a place for herself here, amongst the dead. Worried she might not be the same Esme Thorn I lost on that bed, covered in blood and vomit all those years ago.
But what is life if not the flip of a coin? A shot in the dark? So, I take mine and turn.
Mother is breathtaking. She wears a gown the color of spilled blood. It seems to drip off her very skin. In her hair, hundreds of little white flowers flutter like living things.
Bitterbloom.
I take a step away, hardly able to believe what I am seeing. Esme Thorn, the vicar’s wife. Esme Thorn, up to her elbows in the earth or hidden behind the garden shed door, the bitter scent of lemons spilling out to greet my inquisitive nose. Esme Thorn, like a queen in this underworld. My throat turns sharp, and I try to smile, but all I seem to manage is a thing like weak tea.
“Are you all right?” she asks, one lithe hand coming to rest on my cheek.
My pulse quickens. No, no, I am not. I can feel the bones beneath her skin. Count them as if they are my own. They seem so brittle here, like a bird’s, and yet when I look up at her,brittleis the last word I would choose.
Here, she is something else. Transformed. A creature of red and white and gold. It is both haunting and beautiful, and I feel as though I am being tugged in by ropes on either wrist. I swallow, try on yet another smile.
“I’m fine. I just—I just want to go home.”
She curls her hand around my jaw, cups my cheek. Mother towers over me, her face so much like my own it’s like a shadow come to life.
“I’m sorry for how I responded earlier, my darling. I understand your feeling,” she says, and hope kindles in my chest. “I understand the desire to go back home, feel the wet grass beneath your feet, the spring scent in theair.” Her eyes flash behind me to the dancing figures. “But what if I told you there was something better?”
My breath drops to my stomach, my knees shaky. “Something better?”
