Shaw adjusted his footing, his free hand holding tight to the branch while his other splayed over her ribs.
Lux buried her face in his neck. Her heart hammered. She was sure her head was meant to be cracked open on the stones below, but Shaw had been higher than she’d known. He’d grabbed her straight from the open air.
“Place your foot above mine.”
Trembling, Lux lifted her head to do as told. She wedged her boot.
“Good. Now grab hold of the same branch as me.” She did that too. “I’m going to let you go now.”
Her breath shuddered out of her.It’s fine. I’m fine. Quit shaking.His hand released her waist only to come down on the branch beside her. She was caged fully by his body.
“I won’t let you fall, love. Go on and climb.”
“Is it too late to try your plan?” she asked with her eyes shut.
“This plan is just as good. Maybe better.” His chest pressed her tighter against the tree and his lips brushed the shell of her ear. “Your bird is back.”
Lux’s eyes burst open, and she looked up—to the crow perched not far above her, its head tilted and appearing just as dissatisfied with her as earlier on the balcony. “So is the mad version of me.”
“I’ll be with you,” he said. “No matter what.”
She’d told him what it looked like. She’d needed to. And while speaking it aloud had drained some of the terror it held over her, it hadn’t changed the fact the bird was still perched onsomething.
Lux gritted her teeth—and climbed up.
“Only a mannequin,” said Shaw, after he’d walked across the archway, vaulting over the terrace railing.
Lux stood rigid as a pillar, her lip pulled up into a detested sneer as he righted the fallen figure. The window it had come from was broken; she hadn’t noticed any of it before she’d fallen.
He pushed it back beyond the glass and said, “We have our way in.”
Placing one leg through the opening, he turned back for her, his arm outstretched. Lux climbed over the short railing and gripped his hand, and then he disappeared into the house.
“Thank you,” she said to the crow, a second before fingers tightened on her own, and she was tugged inside.
A puff of dust slurried around Lux’s boots where she landed. She coughed into her sleeve. “Devil below.”
Dresses littered the floor.
Two more mannequins stood fully dressed inside, and the wardrobe was thrown open. Lux’s glance skipped from the four-poster bed to the mussed bedding stitched with dark florals and knew by the twisting in her gut this was not just any child’s bedroom.
She lost her grip on Shaw as he made his way to the bed. To the nightstand and the frame standing atop it. He struck a tinderbox and lit a stub of a candlestick before he plucked the frame from the cobwebs. After several moments, he handed it to her. Lux took it warily.
A young Riselda stared back at her.
Alixsander stared back at her too.
“What the devil,” murmured Lux, wiping the dust away. The pair sat shoulder to shoulder, a prim pose, and while Riselda did not smile, Lux could see the softness around her mouth. Alixsander, on the other hand, smiled hugely. He was older than her fraud of an aunt, likely around Lux’s own age, his expression brotherly and warm.
They looked…happy.
“She grew up with the Alesso boys,” said Lux. “She was close with the murdered one.” Close enough that someone skilled with a brush had painted them to permanence. Had then framed it and gifted it.
Shaw kept himself busy pulling at drawers. He knelt now to peer under the bed. “Who killed him?”
“Corvin didn’t say.”
“Ah. Meaning he did it.”
