“Is this just another trick? Another ruse of yours, Silas?”
Silas knelt, unbuckling the straps around her ankles, first the left, then the right.
“I promise—”
Elswyth brought up her knee, driving it into Silas’s nose. He collapsed backward, falling into the dirt, and Elswyth ran. She dove for her knife, brandishing it just as Silas righted himself. Blood poured from his nostrils.
“I guess I deserved that, too,” Silas said. He stepped forward, and Elswyth pressed the knife at him, forcing him back.
“You knew. You knew all this time, every day you courted me, what had happened to my sister.”
“Elswyth—”
“I don’t want to hear your lies anymore,” Elswyth spat.
“I didn’t know,” Silas said, speaking over her. “Not at first. When my father poisoned Aranyani, I went straight to Gall and begged him to save her. I gave him the amberheart, knowing how powerful it would make him. He was able to put her in a suspended state—somewhere between life and death. He asked me if I would do anything to keep her alive, and I said yes.”
“So you helped him kidnap those women,” Elswyth said.
“No, I—I never touched them.”
“And you think that absolves you?”
“He didn’t tell me what he planned to do. When he took the first girl, he said that if I didn’t do as he commanded, then he would kill Aranyani. And I… I…”
Silas looked away. She thought he would cry, but then he set his jaw. “And I did what I had to do. For her.”
Silas looked over to where his wife floated in the flower pool. “I love her, Elswyth. It’s just like what you said. Everything I see, everything I do, it all leads back to her. A flower. A laugh. A song. I can’t live in this world without her and not be in constant pain. But don’t you understand? Wouldn’t you do anything for someone you loved?”
“Of course I understand,” Elswyth said. Tears stung her eyes. “I understand only because you took Persephone from me. But you never stopped to think of that, did you? All you saw was your own pain, and you didn’t care if you caused someone else the same agony. That makes you as much of a monster as Gall.”
“I had nothing to do with Persephone, Elswyth, you must believe me,” Silas said, stepping forward. “Gall promised me that it would only be criminals—”
“Criminals arepeople, Silas! And you of all people should know that the law is not the same as justice.”
Silas raised his voice then. “I did nothing! I did nothing to them! Gall was the one who took them. Gall was the one who wielded the knife.”
“Was it not you who said that sometimes evil is not what we do, but what we fail to do? You are a hypocrite, Silas.”
Silas actually laughed then. “What of you, Elswyth? You pass the starving in the streets, knowing they will die, and you do nothing. Who weaves the fabric of your fine gowns but the battered masses? Who plucks the cotton from their fingers? Ten million die in India to bring you the food for your fancy parties, but do you throw yourself into the gears of the empire in an attempt to slow it down? Do you fearlessly fight for the colonies that feed you and clothe you and make you rich? Or did you wear the fine gowns and attend the fine feasts, all because you knew they would help you find yoursister? That they would help you find a husband and pursue your education?”
“That’s not the same, and you know it,” Elswyth said.
“Isn’t it? You understood all along that what you wanted had consequences. You saw the starvation and the oppression laid bare on the streets. You saw the withered hands of the servants who made your food. But you wanted Persephone back, and all you had to do to protect the person you love was… was… just let it happen.” He choked on the last words. All the strength seemed to leave him.
Elswyth paused, even in her blinding rage. It was not the same. It couldn’t be the same.
Silas’s shoulders slumped, and his voice lowered. “Everyone in this city is a hypocrite. They take what they want, and they tell themselves a story that makes it all right. And they have taken so much from me.” His eyes went to Aranyani, and the pain there was more than Elswyth could bear to see. “Haven’t I earned a little hypocrisy?”
Elswyth nodded toward Aranyani. When she spoke, she spoke softly. “And what would she think, Silas? Would she want to see what you’ve become?”
Silas looked helplessly at her. “I—”
A vine flashed from the shadows, wrapping itself around Silas’s throat. Elswyth screamed, scrambling backward and colliding with the table.
Dr. Gall slowly rose to his feet—but not by his arms or legs. Instead, his body warped into a nest of vines. They snaked from beneath his clothes and sprouted from the red wound in the back of his head, lifting his limp body like a spider’s legs.
“That… was impolite…”said a voice. The words came from Gall, but Elswyth did not see his mouth moving. His face wascorpse-still, as if the vines sprouting from him were a parasite, operating his body like a puppet. There was something else in his voice, too, a second voice, layered over the first, that sounded like the groaning of ancient branches.
