She scoffed. “Is that what he told you?”
“Not exactly, I just …”
“I did not know that he had found you,” she said as if to herself.
“Who is he?”
“Let me tell you about Patrick Ladran Foley,” she said. There was a venom in her voice, all the more powerful for being quiet. “He was our foster brother.”
“Patrickwas …” I couldn’t even finish my sentence out loud. Patrick was the foster brother Mother had told me about?
“Father brought him in when your mother and I were sixteen and thirteen, to be his male heir. Even as a child, he was cunning. He stayed for barely three years before Father senthim away again, and he has never forgiven us.” She snorted. “Now, of course, they call him Ban Foley.”
Ban was the usual honorific used to address those of high rank.
“So he’s a nobleman, then?”
“Given a title and lands by the king, after he wormed his way into the royal family’s good graces. His own family is nothing. He plays at being a high lord, but he is no better than a merchant. He was using you, my dear, in yet another attempt to hurt our family. Nothing more.” She cupped my cheek in her gloved hand. “You must trust my judgement on this, child.”
“I’m not a child. I’m twenty years old.”
“Ah, but twenty years spent living in a ruin? With no one to speak to but your mother, whom I adored, of course, but I’m afraid to say was … eccentric, at best? My dear, you might have lived for twenty years, but your experience is that of a child’s. I must insist that you accept my guidance, as your aunt … and, I hope, your friend.”
She drew me into an embrace. My thoughts were swirling white, a blizzard that I couldn’t penetrate. Patrick had lived with Mother and Milady (I could not bring myself to think of her as Aunt Sibyl). If the story Mother had told me was true, something had happened to make him hate and resent them. He had betrayed them in some way. Why would he then have anything but contempt and malice towards me?
I was so tired of holding myself taut, of bracing myself for the next disaster. It was so tempting to trust her. I relaxed into her arms, inhaling her scent. I could still smell the heady scent of roses, but there was something else there: something that seeped from her skin, sharp and medicinal—like eucalyptus or witch hazel, but not quite.
I heard a distinct tap at the window now and looked over my shoulder. It was still pitch black and raining, but there was a smaller, blacker shape outlined against the sky. Baldbeak had found my room.
“Now my dear, I will leave you to get some rest,” Milady said. She held my face in her hands and kissed me on both cheeks. “Just one thing: I will give you a proper tour of the place in the morning. Please stay in your room until I send for you. I want to be there when you see your family home for the first time. Yes?”
I nodded.
“Good night, my dear,” she said, and finally, finally, I was alone. I waited a few moments after my door closed, long enough for her to be out of earshot, and then opened the window a crack. Baldbeak was there, shivering the light rain off his feathers.
“You can come in,” I whispered. “But you’ll have to leave before morning, just in case.”
He hopped in.
This room smells bad, he said.
“The flowers? I know, it is quite strong.”
Not just flowers. There is something else. It smells like old things. Bad ones.
He made araarkof distaste and started investigating the curtains around the bed.
How long must we stay?
It was a good question. I had barely had time to think about it, with everything that had happened that day, but Milady clearly thought I was here permanently.
“I don’t know,” I said honestly.
I lay awake for a long time that night, Baldbeak in the crook of my arm. Once again I heard the papery crackle of the flames that had engulfed the bookshop, saw those five perfectly formed fingernails lying on the stone floor. When I tried to turn my thoughts away, all I could picture next was Patrick in his bird skull mask, telling me he wanted to help me, while all along he wanted nothing but the downfall of my family. I rubbed my hand violently against my mouth, trying to erasehis kiss, light and quick as it had been. I might never see him again, but if I did, I would demand an explanation.
I wondered how often my mother had lain awake in this very house. I would have thought that I would feel closer to her here, in her girlhood home, but she had never felt further away.
When I woke in the morning, it took me a moment to remember where I was. The flowered curtains around the bed looked at first like a thicket of real roses, and I wondered if they had grown up around me while I slept, as if I were a girl in a fairytale.
