The shadows around us darken, swirl until all I see is Father. No Clara, no Rascal. We are alone. I wrap my hand around the bell.
“You must know now what your mother was doing all those years. Frances, Dinah, Rosalyn …they were all stolen by her hand, and now, beneath her façade, she wears their faces as trophies. The lives she stole to live forever. She even taught the little Lord Black when she sensed his hunger. And I was…I was so scared, Addie. When he called you up to the castle, I thought for sure he would kill you too.”
His hand sweeps through the darkness, reaching for my face. But I pull away, loathe to let him touch me.
“Why didn’t you stop him?”
Father drops his hand, face morphing to grief. “Because I do not have that kind of power. I cannot stop sin, Addie. I can only carry out the results.”
My stomach turns, one hand groping in the darkness for Rascal’s calming warmth. But all I find is empty cold.
“It doesn’t make sense.”
“Chaos is not meant to make sense. And that is what your mother has become. She almost died once, before we wed. And the fear of it morphed her into what she is now. I didn’t know it was her at first, killing the girls in Rixton. They don’t speak to me when I bring them over, the souls. But I caught her. Katherine Wright—do you remember her?”
The name brings a ghost to my eyes. Hair like sand, eyes as pale as the winter sky. She was the innkeeper’s daughter, nearer Bram’s age than mine, though that would make us the same age now. I swallow the bile creeping up the back of my throat.
The day they buried Katherine beside her own mother in the church graveyard, her father placed a stone angel in the upturned earth and cried tears I thought were made of diamonds. Ransom mentioned that the line between the living and the dead was thin in Rixton, but I think it is something different. It is a town touched with grief. Perhaps that is why Father was drawn to it. My eyes flash to him.
“You should have stopped her.”
A sort of sadness collects on his face, sinks into the hollows of his cheeks. “There was no stopping her, Adelaide. By then, she’d perfected her technique, and she was so close to gaining what she wanted. In the end, it was her own mind that ruined her plan. But then the Lord Black learned of her work, kept it going. And by then the bell was gone. I did my best to help those girls to peace as Ransom stole their bodies and buried them beneath the castle.”
The castle.
Mother’s bitterbloom beds.
A remembrance of life.
“They have been here the whole time,” I say, more to myself than anyone else.
The bones.
“What?” Father’s face twists.
I picture the bitterbloom behind the vicarage, the petals like a moataround this twisted version of Blackbourne Castle. The way they bloomed brighter at my touch, seemed to grow.
“But now that she’s here, she doesn’t want to go back,” I say. “She asked me to join her.”
Father nods, scratches his jaw, the ring on his finger glinting. I can still feel the heat of the metal when it cut my lip.
“She learned that with death she could have more power and control. Become as close to Ithrandril and Erybrus as is possible for a human soul. And without me here, without access to the bell, she took rule of my dominion.” His shadows undulate. “But I intend to take it back.”
His eyes flash to my pocket.
“I need you to give it to me, Adelaide. Give me the bell.”
My fingers tighten, the sharp brass slitting lines in my skin, and my blood drips hot. Somewhere, outside the bleating darkness, Rascal growls.
“Why do you want it?” I ask.
A flicker of irritation crosses Father’s face. “So I can stop her. Don’t you understand? If she gets her hands on it, if she and Ransom take the power, they will be able to hold dominion over both the wood and our world. Esme will take my place,becomea Reaper, and take any soul she wants. The bell bends to the Reaper, Adelaide.”
The answer I was looking for. I fist the bell; blood leaks along its cracks like veins.
My parents are Death and death alike. One, a shepherd of souls. The other, a thief. I thought the bell would make me a thief too. The lines of my name signed over in red ink to Erybrus. But I am so much more than a thief. Once, a fool. Twice, a thief. The power of death in my hand, deals made in blood.
I am the very power of the bell itself.
