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“He was mine long before he was yours.” The words strike exactly where he means them to.
I lift my chin. “Then you should have held on to him better.”
The Collector’s face empties a dangerous, dead calm spreads across him, I think he will strike me again.
Instead, he smiles. “I understand now.”
“What?”
“Why he lost his mind over you.” He reaches into his coat and withdraws a narrow velvet ribbon. “You do have a gift for making damaged things believe they are men.”
I recoil as he stands. The guard behind me grips my shoulder, forcing me still. Then The Collector comes around the table, slowly. Every step matched to the rocking of the ship.
“You will become one of my collectibles now,” he says. “One of my very own dolls.”
My stomach turns as he touches the side of my face where he struck me, almost gently. I do not give him the satisfaction of pulling away.
“You will learn stillness. Silence. Obedience. And when Edward comes for you, if he even comes for you, he will see what becomes of treasures kept by a better owner.”
“You are no better owner,” I whisper.
His smile widens. “No?”
“No.” Blood coats my tongue. “You are just another frightened boy dressing his burns in power.”
For one second, the mask slips, rage and agony. Then his hand closes around my jaw, hard. The guard shifts behind me and the ship rocks beneath us, carrying me farther from England with every breath. The Collector bends closer, his burned cheek catching candlelight.
“Careful, little sister.” The words break something open inside me.
Little sister.
Not by blood. By marriage, by fire. By nightmare.
“You have already taken my family from me,” he whispers. “I am going to enjoy taking yours from you.”
My eyes burn, but not with tears with fury. He releases me and steps back, the cabin feels smaller than before as the sea presses against the hull. The candlelight flickers over the silver, the untouched food, and the face of a ghost I failed to kill. The Collector returns to his chair.
“Now,” he says pleasantly, as though we have merely settled a minor matter of etiquette, “shall we begin?”
I stare at him across the table. He thinks the ship is a cage, the sea a wall, my past a chain, and my guilt the key. Let him. Men are always most vulnerable when admiring their own cleverness. He is wrong about one very important thing, I did not survive the fire because I was innocent. I survived because I was willing to burn and if he insists on making me his doll, then I will be the one with a match hidden in her porcelain hand.
38. Grief Does Nothing – The Darkness
Malice
Grief is inefficient, that is the first thing I decide. The second is that Edward has become unbearable as he paces. He still bleeds through bandages and mutters Olive’s name as though repetition might conjure her from smoke. Lazarus pins string to walls and speaks to photographs, as Alcott sits behind his eyes, trembling so badly I can feel the shudder in our bones.
All of them useless. All of them drowning. Pretending their sorrow is strategy. Well it is not. Sorrow does not open locked doors, it does not loosen tongues. Sorrow does not cut through the soft underbelly of a man’s fear and pull out the truth by the root. That requires me. So I take the body, he resists, of course. Poor thing.
A tightening behind the eyes, a flutter of panic in the hands, and a little internal cry of no, not now, not this, not again.
I soothe him, but not kindly. Kindness is not my trade. I press him down into the dark and take the mouth, the hands, the spine. Then my world sharpens.
How lovely.
Lazarus’s library glows around me, all green lamps, red string, maps, and desperation. Edward stands near the murder board with his broken hand hanging at his side. Lazarus is bent over a shipping manifest, his hair loose, his face carved hollow by two days without sleep. Neither of them notices immediately, but men rarely notice the monster entering when grief has already invited it to the table. I reach for Alcott’s coat.
Edward turns. “Alcott?”
