Yes, I killed Gabriel; no, he doesn’t know, and yet he offered me the courtesy of suspicion all the same.
How refreshing it is to meet a man who tramples over the eggshells that have been carefully arranged around my feet, not out of malice, but because he simply finds the rumour of my so-called fragility insulting. His absence of pity is the closest thing to respect I’ve been given since the boating accident.
And I suppose that’s the insult, isn’t it?
That it comes from him, the inheritor of the hand that murdered my duchess. It stings to drink delight from poisoned veins—but alas, he’s here. All gorgeous hair and a pressed shirtwhilst his ancestor prowls on my heel. I could weep at the injustice of it, or I could use it. Puthimto use.
For what am I if not my grandmother’s heir?
So I show him the castle grounds, clinging to this warmth for as long as possible before I’m dragged back to reality. His phonepings, and he grumbles something about irritating little brothers. Room by room, I hand him stories, pieces of Redford I still don’t fully believe belong to me. He follows in that quiet way of his, never two steps behind or ahead. Always at my side.
And for a time, I forget about what came first, before his arrival. I forget about the fog-drenched lake that hid history’s hands. I forget about how they tried to reach for me, how they shoved that locket down my throat and made me choke on the words it concealed. Somewhere between the steps of the music room and the kitchens, I forget that the locket still lay on my dresser and that the note turned to shadow.
I forget.
Until the whispering begins.
I hear it again outside the corridor by the old nursery. Beneath the carpets in the private sitting room. And inside the ancient pianoforte that hasn’t worked since Gran was a girl.
Atherbourne, the voices coo.At long last.
Another voice laughs wetly.Such a beautiful vessel. So tall. So still. Just like his ancestors.My chest grows tight. I move us to the gardens, tell him that we should take advantage of the sun, and he doesn’t object. I lie through my teeth and keep walking.
The truth is, they can’t follow me out here. The family ghosts are bound to stone; at least that’s what Gran says. Their grief has walls and boundaries. Whatever curse binds them to Redford, whatever blood-inked oath keeps them tethered to the stones and floorboards, they don’t pass into soil. They’re born of the castle, and the castle can’t breathe out here in the sun.
The strange ghosts I stole from the lake, however, follow. They’re the quieter ones. Not like my bloodline’s voices and screeching laughter. They’re older things. Darker things. They never rattle the doors or sigh from behind curtains. Even now, I can feel them like bruises beneath my skin, just watching Eric.
Listening.
I feel them rouse when I smile at his question about the statue names in the garden. And they lean forward.He made her laugh;they whisper to one another in the quiet of my bones. Their curiosity ripples through my limbs, nearly causing me to stumble. They’re used to sorrow. To stillness. Now they’re circling Eric, like wolves scenting fire for the first time.
They don’t know what he is, only that he caused heat.
We pass by a row of statues, some decapitated, others worn by time. Eric stops after five more minutes of walking, halting us before one of the older statues. She rises out of the ivy as though rain nurtured her from its depths. It’s a woman carved in pale stone, and she holds an ornate key—as long as her forearm—in her left palm, almost hidden against her heavy skirts. Her face is turned over her shoulder, watching for an unseen threat.
There’s no inscription, but I recall a lesson on it during one of my more boring history lectures.
Eric doesn’t look at me when he speaks. “Does she have a name?” He studies the curvature of the veil she wears.
I step closer, hands brushing the long and brittle grass that has grown wild around the base. “We call her‘The Keybearer’.” My throat is thick with the words. “It’s not official or anything, just what’s been whispered as the years pass. I heard it from my tutors.”
He hums. It’s a sound of discontent rather than satisfaction. He’s unimpressed with my answer, and it almost makes me grin. The ghosts are pressing again.
“No inscription. Not even a mark of the sculptor,” he notes.
I struggle to match his curiosity; this statue has always been here. I’ve passed it a million times but never paid too close attention, like we do with many of the old things here in Redford. She’s easy to ignore if you want to. I never asked why it was here, but Eric stares at it like he’s trying to remember the face of somebody he’s never seen before.
Without thinking, I move to stand beside him, closer than I mean to at first. I lean forward slightly, trying to fit his perspective, to see what he’s seeing. Our arms touch—barely, briefly—and he turns to look down at me, as though just realising I exist in his field of vision.
Then I feel it, that slow, cruel thing he does with his eyes. The watching. The weighing. He doesn’t stare at my mouth or my throat but directly into my pupils, analysing something I haven’t even said yet.
“She frightens you,” he says softly.
I can’t look at the statue, so I look at him. “I don’t know her.”
Eric smirks. A little too crooked and a little too wolfish. “That’s not the same thing,” he murmurs.
The statue blurs in my periphery. Am I afraid of her? She doesn’t whisper from afar, taunting the inhabitants of Redford the way the others tend to do. Pale stone just stands there, clutching the key like a lifeline, as though she has better things to do than spook the living. She’s an unassuming thing, and perhaps that’s where the fright comes from. Even when I reach forward to run my knuckles down her arm, she gives me nothing.
