Ghosts pull at my mouth, forcing my lips into a smile as I respond, “And the lily blooms again.”
Kairos hums to himself. Eric takes another step forward. His bicep brushes the locks framing my face. “Any significance?”
I don’t look at him. “It means someone always comes next.”
Sheffolk pretends it’s poetry: one bloom dies and another grows. Fresh. Fragile. Unwarned. Both brothers await an explanation, but I don’t know how to tell them what it truly means.
It’s my turn at last.
No illusions this time.
10
WHAT SHE SAW
ERIC
The chamber they’ve given me is old, which I expected, considering that the castle was pulled from a medieval painting. But this room is ancient, almost disconcertingly so. The bed looks as if it came with a dowry—a four-poster frame the size of tree trunks with a heavy velvet canopy and sheets that smell of lavender. I tried to lie down in it, but only felt like a corpse being prepared for viewing.
Walking across the stone floor, I can almost feel how ancient the bones of this place are, but somebody tried to drag it into the modern century by force and faced rebellion for their efforts.
There’s a flat-screen television above the fireplace, but it’s been shoved into a gilded frame, and it took me a full ten minutes to even realise it was a TV and not some scenic painting. I wouldn’t have noticed at all if Kai didn’t sit on the remote and change the ‘view’ to a toothpaste commercial mid-conversation. The ceiling evokes memories of visits to cathedrals as it rises high, almost offensively so.
And the bathroom is having an architectural identity crisis. The door still creaks like it leads into a crypt, but inside are allpolished marble, modern light fixtures, a gilded bathtub and a showerhead that Kai says has heavenly water pressure.
There’s a painting right opposite my bed of a woman in mourning. To her chest, she clutches a missive, but her face is veiled and turned away. The plaque beneath it depicts the wordsLady Athena Sheffolk, 1725. Either she’s actually watching me from the corner of her eye, or I’m just jetlagged as hell, but I avoid giving her my back. I make a mental note to ask somebody to remove it.
Everything in this goddamn room feels like if they had a voice, they’d whisper. The wood creaks quietly, the drawers close with a human huff, and even the bed exhales softly when I sit down. For that reason, I choose to pace. Quietly. Like I’m trying not to wake the furniture.
Kai shifts in the chair close to the fireplace, flicking through the channels without a care that there’s a chance we’re stuck in some haunted fantasy. Wildlife doc. Cooking show. Some modelling competition. That British Bake Off show.
“She’s not what I expected.” Kai doesn’t look away from the TV; he just continues clicking the remote.
I don’t answer.
“The duchess,” he clarifies, like I’m fucking dense. “A bit of a tragic beauty, isn’t she? If she asked, I’d help dig my own grave. Poor Gabriel, he probably thought that haunted look was foreplay.”
“You sound like a failed poet. Shut up.”
But he’s right. She’s not what I expected. Francesca is unreadable; that’s the issue here. I expected presence. Some polished little heir with a superiority complex, whose veins bled history. I’ve met power; I’ve met poise. She has both, yet there’s a softness to her gaze that doesn’t match the tension in her posture.
Again, I try to assign a font, but how do I categorise someone who looks both regal and heartbreakingly vulnerable in the same breath? She’s a walking contradiction.Her smile didn’t fully reach her eyes, but so help me, it tried. Like she was protecting something fragile. Then there was the cut on her cheek, that crack of red creeping across a pane of glass, hinting that something beneath it is capable of bleeding.
I bounce between Baskerville and something nameless again.
“You’re rattled.”
I shoot Kai a glare. “I’m not rattled, just overwhelmed.”
He repeats his words. “You’re rattled. I know you are; you do that thing where your lips go all pursed. That holy one. Literally, that’s the exact face Father Bariston made when he caught me drawing tits in my Latin textbook. Do you remember?”As if I could forget.“It’s that whole ‘I’m better than this’ expression when deep down, you know you’re interested.”
“Why are you still talking?”
“I’m justsaying, you watched her walk away like she was carrying salvation in her bra.” I’m going to castrate him. I am. “Say it. Admit you want her to step on your fucking neck, and then you can get on your knees and beg for forgiveness from Father Bariston.”
I pause by the bedpost and try to rein in my irritation at the alien who shares my face. Honestly, I preferred him all uneasy and on edge. After that encounter with Hamish, I thought he’d be begging to leave this place as soon as possible. But then Francesca says one soft thing, and suddenly he’s relaxed again. I’d rather he wasn’t. We haven’t earned ease here.
Not yet.
