So yes, then.
She made a noise and gripped Cal tighter, sliding neatly into the gap beneath his arm. She could feel the beat of his heart now, and his presence was a comfort in a place filled with so much death. “Your family—did all of this?” she asked, horrified.
“Yes. And over there is where we store the wine,” Cal said dispassionately, shining the light in the direction of some dull green bottles arranged in racks against the far wall.As if I’d notice the fucking wine in a place like this, she thought, gulping down another stale lungful of air.
His family was fucking psychotic.
“I don’t like it down here. W-why would Noelle be here?”
Cal didn’t respond. Her fear grew legs and began to crawl around like an agitated spider as she imagined her sister, stripped, skinned, and dead. Hanging upside-down with all these deer, as eyeless as the shades from her dreams.
“Cal,” she said shakily.
Nothing needs eyes down here in the dark.
“Cal, please,” she said, swallowing wetly. “Please tell me that Ben didn’t—” She couldn’t finish. Couldn’t bring herself to say,hang Noelle from a hook like meat.She was gripping Cal’s arm so tightly that she must have been hurting him, and she was going to be sick, oh god.
“This way,” he said, his voice soft. “Almost there.”
He could leave me down here,she thought, breathing harder.Down in the dark.
Nadine gripped him tighter—tight enough to take some skin with her, if he tried to shove her away.
It took a moment to understand what she was looking at. Cal had stopped walking, and was shining the light on a massive furnace, with a grate large enough for a small child to crawl through. There was an ancient dial on the outside, starting to rust. The pipe led all the way to the ceiling, possibly into one of the fireplaces on the upper floor. She wasn’t sure though, and wasn’t about to stick her head inside to take a look.
“W-why are you showing me this?” she asked, feeling faint.
(I need you to be brave)
Cal turned the beam on the grate, revealing a powdery carpet of blue-gray dust. There were a few things sticking out that looked like white stones. And then she realized they were bones, when Cal nudged one with the tip of his shoe, revealing its black and splintered edge.
No, she thought wildly, as the blackness undulated wildly before her eyes.Not this, no, no—
“What’s left of her is in here, mixed in with Jesamyn Cullraven’s bones.”
“No,” said Nadine.
“When she sent you those letters, she was already dead.”
“No!”
“It happened after that day in the square. She had found the journal and had gone to the hellebore. That’s why you found her necklace there; she had dug up Jesamyn’s body and found the bones of her and her lover. By the time you came here, there was nothing to find. Nothing but the necklace. Ben must have forgotten it,” he added, an ironic tone to his voice.
“No!” Nadine said. “It’s not true! You’re lying!”
“Ben and Rael took her home. She clawed them both up and tried to shove a piece of the green book down Ben’s throat. It got all over his hands, crumbling into the wounds. They got infected. After that, Rael injected her with the same anesthetic Gideon gave you, but Noelle didn’t get to wake up. Our father told Ben to kill her, and he, the good son, obliged. He brought her here, to this place—the other bridal suite.”
“No!” she wailed, slumping against him as the word faded into a scream.
“You never had a chance at saving your sister, darling. And the moment you came here, all eyes were on you. So now you see what’s at stake.” She felt his hand at her back. “If it’s any consolation, it was probably painless.”
“She didn’t want to die alone,” Nadine wept. “She was so—afraid . . . and now she’s gone. Oh god, she’s gone. I’m—I’m all alone, too.”
“You’re not alone,” Cal said. You have me.”
Nadine looked up at him sharply but she couldn’t see his face. Just like in the mine, he was a menacing shadow. He kept taking her to the darkest of places, again and again, and this place—this place of death and old bones and terrible secrets—was the very worst place of all.
“You,” she repeated, in a thick, choked-up voice. “You want to hurt me. You want to fuck me in the woods.”
