City of Ruin, page 17
Exiting through the archway draped in honeysuckle, I toss my apple core out toward the pasture, and wander wherever my feet take me next. Only when the fallen steeple comes into view at the end of the lane, do I realize I haven’t explored this area yet.
By the looks of it, decades have passed since the church fell, and I try to imagine its majesty in the glory days, instead of its leftovers consumed by nature thriving around its remains.
I stop outside the church, staring through the crumbled entry. Light breaks through the splintered rafters, making the shadows glow in a red hue cast by the stained glass above. What’s left of the old pews are rotted and covered with lichen, and though I would like to see what else remains, I take a step back instead.
The other night, despite my wanting to comfort Paige, I’d also wanted to run for my life. Everything from my accident instantly flared to life, and I’d had the urge to get out of the house before it collapsed around me—before I was trapped within the rubble all over again, or worse.
My heart beats too hard, too fast, knowing all too well what that fear feels like—the painful unknown and confusion. William’s lifeless blue eyes fill my mind, and a sense of helplessness surges up with it. Torture or any other horrible fate is far less terrifying than being trapped again, unable to move with death creeping closer, like hot, foul breath against skin.
I peer back at the manor house in the distance. Days ago, I’d thought I was trapped here. And now?
I think of Paige’s grinning face and the comfort of Prudy combing my hair.
I think of the crisp apple against my tongue, the garden, and I remember how life was before I came here. The scent of burning flesh, the blistered hands and aching limbs. The sleepless nights . . . Given my circumstances, I couldn’t ask for a life better than this.
Taking a step away from the ruins, I banish thoughts of the past. I must, I tell myself, or I will never find happiness. I must trust in Paige and this place—even in Blackburn.
As the restlessness subsides and my surmounting unease fades, I smooth my hands over my dress, determined to start a new day. Walking around the limestone rubble, I stop, clasp my stomach, and stare, unblinking with a held breath. A dark form lurks by a tree in the graveyard. I’m about to call to the creature I’ve seen in the shadows, when it moves. It’s not a creature lurking at all, but Blackburn.
He stares down at a grave, his back to me. Both relieved and curious, I take a step closer, but immediately reconsider in fear of trespassing. A twig cracks under my foot as I turn to leave.
“Miss Sinclair?”
Slowly, I pivot to meet his gaze and tuck a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “I didn’t mean to intrude,” I tell him. “I was stretching my ankle before Paige wakes.”
His eyes shift to my foot. “How is it healing?”
I shrug, letting out a deep breath, and clasp my hands behind my back. “It’s only a little sore now, thank you.”
Blackburn hums in thought. “Very well.” He turns back to the grave.
I’m about to leave him again when his voice reaches my ears. “Is it strange that a graveyard gives me solace?”
Staring at his back, I shake my head. “No, not at all,” I admit.
He’s quiet for a moment, then looks at me again, this time with curiosity.
I take a step forward to explain. “There was a graveyard at Bedlam. Even after we dug up all the bodies, and the bones were crushed for fertilizer, I found my thoughts drifting to the people who had once lived there. To the lives they led and the horrors they were lucky enough to escape . . . I envied them.” Realizing how gruesome that sounds, I shake the thoughts away. “I know that’s different from solace,” I admit, “but it was diverting nonetheless.”
Blackburn watches me, his black hair catching in the breeze as he picks at the top of the headstone next to him. “You have seen much in your twenty years,” he muses. “This life isn’t easy for anyone, but I know the city is full of hardships even I cannot fathom.”
“It should have felt normal, I think, since it’s what I’ve known for so much of my life . . . But it never did,” I realize. “I was terrified it would be all I’d get the chance to know.”
“And now?” Blackburn asks, picking a twig off a nearby branch as he draws closer. “Are you still terrified?” Though it’s a logical question given my blatant disdain for this place, I forget to feel the mortification of my actions, hanging instead on the unexpected chord of hope in his voice.
“No,” I admit easily enough, and that I don’t have to think about my answer in the slightest seems to please him. “I think I might even feel at home here . . . As well as very foolish,” I admit, shaking my head. “The things I’ve said to you and done—all the trouble I’ve caused.” Though I’ve thought the words a dozen times, I need Blackburn to hear my regret. “I’ve come to realize I don’t enjoy feeling trapped,” I explain.
“That much I know about you,” he muses quietly, and stops in front of me.
I smile sheepishly.
“But I don’t think you can shoulder all the blame. You didn’t receive the warmest of welcomes, nor any reassurances from me,” he concedes. “I have never been allowed to question my life and what path has been laid before me. I sometimes forget that not everyone will simply accept what’s given to them without question.” Blackburn stares at the headstones behind him, and though I can only see the back, I’m certain the stately one, less battered by time, is his wife’s. I notice the newer one, smaller but well-kept, with daffodils resting against the headstone beside it. Miss Knightly, I assume.
“Truly, I didn’t mean to interrupt your solace.”
Tapping the twig against his palm, Blackburn tears his gaze away and gestures for us to walk toward the house. Assuming Paige is awake, I fall into step beside him.
“You may walk wherever you’d like, without apology,” he says.
“Save for the castle,” I jest, and immediately, I squeeze my eyes shut. The vehemence in his eyes the night he found me in there during the storm flashes to life, and is all the reminder I need that there are two sides to this man. “Apologies. I know it’s not my place to question you.”
Blackburn shakes his head. “I should not have shouted at you,” he says softly. “I’d had too much to drink and was angry.”
“With me,” I add. “I called you names and accused you of many things. Though I hate to admit it, your anger was deserved.”
Blackburn glances at me. “The castle is unsafe,” he says, his voice not unkind. “But if you wish to go inside, that is your choice. Be warned, though, you were right about one thing. If this is a place of death, then that castle is the breeder of it.”
“Still, you go in there,” I whisper, and though Blackburn’s eyes meet mine, he says nothing. It’s quiet as we draw closer to the pond, and I feel the need to reassure him. “I won’t go in there again,” I promise him. Even if the room he frequents with the slashed painting of his dead wife calls to my relentless curiosity.
Blackburn stops at a thicket of trees. One of the willows is uprooted from the other night’s storm, and though it’s a small one, it’s singed and gnarled and ominous nonetheless. We stare at it in silence before my eyes drift to the largest willow, where I’ve seen the figure standing. As I open my mouth to ask him about it, he speaks.
“Thank you,” he says, “for taking care of Paige the way you do. She’s—” He clears his throat. “Paige has never had someone to look after her, not a—well, not a maternal figure anyway. Since Constance, I’ve given up finding a wife and fear I’ve denied Paige what she needs most. She’s never had a mother, and I know she yearns for one desperately.”
I don’t know when I will have another chance, so I risk angering him and ask, “Will you tell me?”
His eyes are somber when he looks at me.
“What happened to your wives, Master Blackburn?” I hold my breath, my lungs tightening the longer he’s silent.
“I thought we’d agreed you would call me Greyson?”
I swallow under his gaze. Calling him by his first name makes my palms sweat, like it’s a trick. “It takes some getting used to.”
His gray eyes shift to my lips before he looks away. “Rebecca died when Paige was born,” he says, his voice grim. “So did my son, Paige’s twin brother.”
“Henry,” I recall.
“There was a quake,” he continues, his voice sharper than before. “She was injured, and there were . . . complications when she went into early labor. And Constance . . .” He clenches his jaw, his eyes unfocused as he’s pulled to another place and time. “It was an arranged marriage of sorts, put together by the Council, but we were never married. We never had the chance before . . .” Greyson snaps the twig in his hand and tosses it aside. Only self-loathing could paint such misery on a man’s face.
“Did she take her own life?” I ask, assuming he might want to keep something so tragic from Paige. “Your daughter thinks she changed her mind and left.”
Greyson exhales his displeasure. “Better that than the truth. Constance hadn’t lived here a week before I was told she died.”
My heart bleeds for him and for Paige. I can’t imagine the struggle of losing both wife and child, then taking the leap to do it all again, only to have your betrothed meet such a terrible end.
Greyson is too thoughtful for too long. As a storm stirs in his eyes, hardening his features, I know I’ve ruined this quiet peace between us by drudging up the past. Abruptly, he strides past me, his gaze fixed on the ground.
“I’ve angered you,” I blurt. “I’m sorry. It’s just—I thought—” I take a frazzled breath. “I’ve heard many rumors and my mind runs away on me. I needed to ask.”
“It’s natural you would ask,” he says, but he continues walking away from me, the coolness wafting off of him.
I take a few hurried steps after him. “Please, I—”
Greyson turns to me, his eyes shifting from my lips and over my face as his jaw works in frustration. “I am not angry with you,” he says, though his voice says otherwise. “I’m—” He shakes his head and looks toward the castle. “I’m angry with myself.” Exhaustion washes over him, his shoulders sagging under the weight of all he holds.
When Greyson realizes I’m staring, he straightens. “I’m sending you and Paige away for a day or two,” he says, and continues toward the manor. “Somewhere you will be safe while the Council’s proxy visits.”
Though Greyson’s words are surprising, they do the trick and quickly change the subject. “Safe from the Council?” I hurry after him.
“There are reasons I don’t have time to explain, but it’s safer for you—for all of us—if they don’t see you. Collins will be with me, but Gibson will see to your safety.” His pace quickens toward the manor. “I will come for you when it’s safe to return.”
There’s a tightness to his voice, and suddenly, I’m worried not about myself, but for him. “What about you?”
Greyson chuckles without mirth.
“Master Black—”
He spins around, and I stop short, his chest only inches from mine. “Please,” he says with irritation. He rubs his brow, squeezing his eyes shut. “I can explain more another time, but I must meet with them, and you must not be seen.”
As I open my mouth, he booms over me. “Tell me you understand,” he says. It’s a grave command, and the look in his eyes is hard as stone, like the day he came for us.
Reluctantly, I nod, anxious about the truths I have yet to learn.
“Say it,” he says tersely. “Say you will listen and not disobey—”
“I understand,” I grit back.
His eyebrow arches the slightest bit before he turns for the manor. “Come then. The proxy will be here any day now. Collect your things, enough to last a few days. And see that Paige is ready as well.”
I try to keep pace with him, nearly slipping in a patch of mud before his hand grips my arm. His fingers are firm, the heat of his body unexpected as we stand chest to chest.
“Thank you,” I rasp, and his gaze shifts to my mouth again.
Greyson swallows. The cedar and woodsmoke lingering on his clothes fills my nose, and I release my grip on his shoulder.
Greyson blinks and lets go of my arm as well, taking a step back. “I’ll send for the carriage to be readied.” And without another word, he retreats into the house.
29
SELENE
We’re on the carriage road for a quarter of an hour before I realize we’re leaving the estate and perhaps the entire Manufacturing District behind. As the morning thickens with a misty haze, we drive through forests I haven’t seen and roads I haven’t been on. The coach creaks and groans as we ride over pits in the narrow lane, following a small river deeper into the trees.
“What is this place?” I wonder aloud. Wild hops cling to low-hanging boughs and mosses consume the rotted logs scattered around the forest floor. It isn’t long before the sunlight is consumed by a foreboding, dense fog.
“The old woods,” Paige says, and continues her humming.
“Old woods?”
She nods. “Yep. They surround Briarwood, even Master Draven’s estate.”
Remembering the bandits on the road during our journey to Briarwood, I understand the reason for the pistol I’d noticed on Gibson’s belt, and I grow more anxious. I don’t doubt this forest is equally dangerous, and if I didn’t trust that Greyson would take every measure to ensure his daughter’s safety, I might worry a little for my own.
“Do you think there are really spirits in the forest, like the stories say?” I ask, pulling my gaze from the window. Paige is lost to her humming again, and fusses with her doll that’s crudely stitched together, though not without care. Its head of coarse, crimson hair is wild and resembles Paige’s when she first wakes in the morning, and the doll’s button eyes are crossed in the center, as if she’s smiling. While I don’t think the doll is meant to be frightening, it looks rather odd.
The wind howls, a moaning cry barely audible as it meets my ears, and I peer out the window again. Of course, there aren’t spirits out here, that would be silly. But what of the eerie whispers on the wind I hear when the manor is silent? And the shadowed form I’ve seen roaming the estate? It’s hard not to believe such superstitions could be real when these lands were once inundated with the dead. That hordes of them were brought in on the death trains from the overpopulated city of the sick and dying. The truths of the past give the stories of screaming banshees and haunted happenings in these wildlands more credence than I’m comfortable with, and the farther north we drive, the rest of the world is swallowed away.
“Paige?” I say more firmly.
She looks up from her doll.
“Where are we going?” She must know to be so at ease.
Her lips part in a wide grin. “To see the witches.”
I blanch. “The what?”
The carriage lurches to a stop, and I peer out the window. There is nothing, only mist-shrouded trees.
“Gibson,” I call. “Why are we stopping here?”
His reply is lost in the whispers emanating from the woods and he disappears into the mist. “Paige,” I say calmly, not wanting to give weight to her talk of witches, but the hair on the back of my neck and arms standing on end is anything but reassuring. “The trees,” I say, straining to listen. “Why does it sound as if they are breathing?” Moving boughs, I tell myself. That’s all it is. That’s all it could be. Despite my feeble reassurances, however, my heart stops when I notice an outline in the fog, taking a blurry form as puffs of air move around it. I shout for Gibson again, only to be answered with silence. I’m afraid to look away from the window as the form draws closer. “Paige—”
An old woman materializes, stepping out of the mist and into full view. Her gray hair blows in the wind, silver against her baggy, black cape.
As the realization of what I’m looking at—of who—dawns on me, my entire body trembles. Like always, a chill shimmies down my spine, and as the witch’s gnarled fingers clutch the staff in her hand, her mouth widens in a smile.
“A witch,” I breathe in utter disbelief. “It was a witch outside my window—”
Paige leans over, finally setting her doll aside, and squints into the mist.
“Stay behind me—”
“Grandma!” she calls, then throws the carriage door open, bounding through the forest and into the woman’s arms.
“You—” I gape, my surprise making it impossible to breathe. “What?”
Gibson reappears through the fog, walking toward the coach, as if he’s the one who summoned her, but I can’t tear my eyes away from Paige and the old woman as they embrace.
Her grandmother’s light-colored eyes watch me over Paige’s shoulder as she murmurs something into her granddaughter’s ear. Finally, Paige turns, pointing to the carriage.
My cheeks flame with the heat of utter confusion and fear as they stare at me, waiting. I realize I do have to move my feet if I’m to exit the carriage, but I blink at them, trying to understand what’s happening. Why does Paige’s grandmother live in the woods? And why has she been haunting me the way she has been?
Gibson opens the door wider for me to climb out.
I silently laugh at my inability to think straight, and exhaling a ragged breath, I lift my dress and finally step out of the carriage.
The ground is soggy beneath me, and twigs and leaves crunch beneath the soles of my shoes as I step forward, watchful and hesitant. There is no path. There is no road or safe house or estate. We are literally in the middle of nowhere, in a haunted forest that moans around me as if it has a heartbeat.
Gibson nods to me. “I’ll bring in the bags, miss, after I tend to the horses.” He doesn’t skip a beat as he shuts the carriage door and goes about his tasks, like it’s a normal day in Briarwood.
I shake my head. “Tend to them where? Where are we, Gibson?”
