Urvenon only stepped closer, far too close for propriety.
Evelyn couldn’t hear the onlookers’s reaction over the throbbing of her blood in her ears.
“We met you on the road. We apologize for distressing your horses.”
Horror.
Evelyn wrenched herself away, and this time Urvenon— Urvenon’s body—let go. The mockery of a frown turned to pain and grief, and as Evelyn ran for the door to the hallway, dodging around hemlines and couches, Urvenon let out an inhuman wail. Around her, the partygoers erupted in confusion, some running to Urvenon, some whispering frantically to their companions, some only watching Evelyn as she staggered out of the room.
Violetta was right beside her, taking her by the shoulders. Evelyn flinched.
“Get me home,” Evelyn whispered. “Get me home.” She didn’t dare ask if Violetta had seen what she’d seen, heard what she’d heard. The wail continued. If Violetta couldn’t hear that, then—
“Come,” Violetta said, slipping her delicate hand into Evelyn’s.
Evelyn let herself be led away, but took one last glance into the ballroom. Urvenon had collapsed and had been moved to Evelyn’s couch. Heads were bent together, maids thronging the room, Urvenon’s closest companions trying to smile and settle the party.
And six heads were turned towards the door, gazes riveted on Evelyn.
Evelyn froze, staring back. All of them were faces she recognized, and yet all of them looked like strangers, bright-eyed and wrong.
One stood just a yard away, a young man whose wife had come to her seeking a tincture to make her conceive. He looked griefstricken. He reached out a hand. “We only wish to talk to you, Evelyn Perdanu,” he said. “We can’t bear to lose you.”
Violetta tugged on her hand, and Evelyn stumbled after her, shaking, barely able to stay upright. The man didn’t follow.
Other partygoers tried to block their exit, closing around them, asking Evelyn what had happened. She shook her head, hearing dimly Violetta making excuses for her. Urvenon had been talking strangely, had said something distressing to Evelyn, and Evelyn needed the peace and quiet of home. No, she didn’t know what had happened. She wished Countess Urvenon all the best, and that the doctors could cure whatever fever had taken hold of her. She apologized for the hasty exit, but really, quiet was needed.
And then they were outside, the rain pouring, soaking them both to the bone as Violetta pulled Evelyn across the way to the rows of carriages, past identical cabs until she found the one that must have been theirs. She opened the door and tucked Evelyn inside, looking at her with normal, blinking, worried eyes as she lit the small oil lamp.
“Unnatural,” Evelyn whispered. Violetta nodded, wordlessly. “This is not some drug,” Evelyn continued. “This is something else. I can’t—”
“I’ll fetch the driver. Can you sit here alone?” She wanted to cling to Violetta and beg her to remain, but she remembered herself. She touched the black gauze of her veil, smeared the beads of water trapped in its weft. She took a deep breath. “Yes. Come back, though, quickly. Let him fetch the horses on his own.”
Violetta nodded, and was gone. The box was close and warmly lit, and Evelyn shivered, hunkering down on the floor, wedged between the seats. Her gaze remained fixed on the window, half-expecting a staring face to appear inside its frame. She could still feel Urvenon’s hand clasped around her arm, could still hear that wail.
What was happening? “We can’t bear to lose you,” Evelyn repeated through numb lips. This unnatural thing, this spreading horror—it recognized her. It knew her. It wanted her. Before the first mate of The Verity had fallen into his stupor, had he begged to see her?
Had Captain Reynolds concealed it because it was so horribly wrong?
She was sobbing by the time Violetta returned, torn apart by the idea that somehow, she had done this. It wasn’t just that her ship had brought something back, a drug, a sickness. It was nothing so passive.
Something had come back on her ship, looking for her. And it was spreading.
“Close off the house.”
They were the only words she could find on the long drive back up the hill, mumbled through her panic and her shivers. Violetta went into action the moment Evelyn was safe inside her sanctum, changed into dry clothing and bundled into bed. As Evelyn shivered and fretted, Violetta gathered the servants, sending some home and explaining to the others that nobody would enter or leave the house for the next several days. Evelyn expected there to be pushback, expected several of the servants to have been fired by morning, but she burrowed down beneath her blankets, clinging to the notion that Violetta would make her entire house a sanctuary.
It would not spread here. It could not spread here. She slept fitfully, waking five times in the darkness afraid that she would find the bryony girl standing at the foot of her bed, watching and smiling. But there was only Violetta, dozing in the seat by the door. To protect her, or because she, too, was afraid? It didn’t matter. Her presence soothed Evelyn back to sleep. In the morning, the rain didn’t let up. Violetta dressed Evelyn, then went to tend to the soldier. Evelyn paced the halls, forcing aside the memory of Urvenon every time it tried to surface from the mire of her thoughts.
She needed to pen a letter. She needed to alert Pollard. Then again, he likely already knew. If Urvenon had dropped into catatonia the way the others had, then the news would be fire, spreading across Delphinium.
And what if Evelyn was blamed for it? She stopped, staring at the door that led to the staircase down to the greenhouse. What if Evelyn was blamed for it? The fever had come over Urvenon when she had gone to Evelyn’s side, and Evelyn had fled into the night. Too many people in that room had known of her green thumb, had reason to suspect its blacker side, and Pollard himself knew that she was connected to the first cases through The Verity. And that did not even consider what would happen if, still possessed, one of the other guests spoke to the Judiciary about Evelyn Perdanu, we can’t bear to lose her.
Her wealth and the secrets of her supplicants had kept her safe so far, but Urvenon’s stupor might be one misstep too many. The closing snare of the traitor government had everybody on edge, a pile of gunpowder ready to ignite, to burn, to explode. If Urvenon’s collapse sparked that panic into full flame, if she were associated with it...
The Judiciary would come and break the defenses of her house far faster than any spreading horror. They would find the soldier. They would assume the worst.
She reached out a hand, steadying herself on the wall. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t breathe. She tore at her half-veil, scrubbing at her eyes, bending double to try to find usable air closer to the floor. None of it helped.
Evelyn staggered to her workroom. She’d mixed the wrong balance the other night, and she couldn’t afford to do that again, but she also couldn’t afford to stop breathing from panic. The quickest answer was the poppy juice she’d had imported three years ago, but it had crusted to dust as she avoided it. She stared at the vial, trying to think. Something to calm her, to remove all thought, to stop the panic where it stood.
To stop it where it stood. Evelyn stilled, hands braced on the workbench, breaths becoming fuller, deeper. To stop it where it stood. She could still fix this. She knew, now, that the catatonia was preceded by that wild fixation. What would happen if she cut the threads between obsessiveness and thought? What if she prepared a sedative that would free the mind from its fever, long enough for it to recover?