His jaw ticked. “Your wife died today.”
“Do you think I don’t know that?” It was the roar of a wounded bear, dumb with pain. He threw his glass—too quick to dodge—but if Benhadbeen aiming for him, the scotch had impaired his accuracy. The crystal shattered against the wall three feet to Cal’s left, leaving a dark stain that soaked quickly into the flocked wallpaper. “Ifucking killed her! She chose the knife—” he faltered, his control fracturing “—instead of me.”
“Yes.” Cal stepped to the side, closer to the shelves running around the perimeter of the room like a cage. “I suppose she did. That is the definition of a sparrow, is it not? They get to choose. And she did.” His tone sharpened with scorn that Ben reared back from.
“She deserved to die then. I should have known, when she began turning me away at night. Asking me questions. She found the book—nearly clawed my eyes out.Fuck.”
The word came out as a sob.
Silence spanned between them. Cal folded his arms, glancing back towards the empty hall. Odessa was the one who wandered, but it wasn’t unusual for their father to roam the house at night. After that incident with Noelle, their father had lit into Ben ferociously before sequestering himself in their mother’s rooms. When she didn’t appear for dinner, Cal knew what that meant.
Another sparrow, punished.
Was this his fault? Noelle’s line of questioning, though worrisome, had seemed like newlywed jitters, and so he had kept her counsel. But perhaps he shouldn’t have.
Perhaps she’d had some idea, even then, of what awaited her in her husband’s arms.
He should have asked more questions. Discouraged her.
Perhaps then, he could have stopped this.
“Father said I selected poorly.” Ben raised his hand, then seemed to remember belatedly that he no longer had the glass. With a sound of impatience, he grabbed the bottle off the floor by its neck while Cal watched him drink from the mouth with pitiless eyes. “He said, and I quote, even the original Caledon Cullraven had to suffer a second wife.”
“And he thinks that should be the standard?”
“Maybe I provided her too long a tether,” Ben said, in lieu of a proper response. “She was always flighty—I used to have to correct her. She was too independent, too used to getting herown way. Spoiled, even. Maybe the honeymoon gave her ideas. I shouldn’t have let her think she was free.”
Cal’s fury crested. “Perhaps you should have leashed her while you were at it.”
“Oh yes, it’s all very easy foryou, isn’t it?” Ben rose unsteadily, staggering like a marionette. “They all come toyou.”
It was like a current pulsed through the house. Cal could feel something in the air shift and his skin responded, prickling with a pins and needles sensation as if he’d just been shocked.
Cal didn’t believe in ghosts and never had—no one who did would ever be able to sleep at Ravensgate Manor—but he also understood with a prescience that was not rooted in any sort of logic that nothing between him and his brother would ever be the same as it was before. Not after this.
“Her sister.” Ben came to a predatory halt, causing his shadow to jerk violently. “Noelle’s sister. She came to you, too. I saw you both at the wedding.”
“And?” His tone was forbidding: a locked door Ben chose not to heed.
“Submission seems to come toherquite naturally, doesn’t it? I’m sure you noticed her lowered eyes.” Ben scrubbed a hand over his face. The back of it was red and scored. “What a pity that is,” he said, with a detached absence that was all the more disquieting when compared to his earlier furor from mere moments ago. “She’s so young, and now she’s all alone.”
He looked at his hand, and made a moue of distaste as he rubbed it, picking at the bleeding sores that had been irritated anew by the alcohol.
“I suppose we had better come up with something to tell her family. When the letters stop, they’ll be coming up here, demanding answers. God only knows what she told them.”
“Construction in the absence of nothingisyour strong suit, I suppose.”
“Be careful,BabyCal.” Ben stepped towards him menacingly. “You made the same error, if you’ll recall. And you didn’t even have the guts to rectify your mistake. I had to do it for you.”
Cal stiffened, his fists flexing at his sides. It was a subtle reaction but his brother was a hunter, and even he was not so entirely lacking in observation that he wouldn’t notice when he struck his mark. The tight line of his mouth relaxed into a sneer as he rammed his shoulder into Cal’s aching chest with the confidence of one who feared no repercussion.
“Same old Cal,” he said, taking the bottle with him as he weaved his way towards the exit from the library. “You’re still waiting in the parlor for the dead to come back to life.”
???????
But the dead didn’t come back. He knew that, now.
What he hadn’t realized was how thoroughly the effects of it permeated Ravensgate—not until Noelle was gone, and the house sank into lifelessness like a stone into brackish stillwater. The gloom that had settled over the interiors muted thought and sound alike, and the low wattage lights had a strange effect on the Chinese wallpaper, adding a liminal depth that was unsettling. Nearly interdimensional.
