The world became just a little quieter.
He’d be dead soon. He’d be dead, and Evelyn would be trapped. She had taken his secrets at last, and they had been exactly what she’d hoped for—but now it was too late. Too late by far.
She should have acted sooner. Laid herself bare, ready to destroy him if she’d been wrong. From the moment he’d arrived, she’d known, overwhelmingly, that he must have been sent for her, but what if she’d been wrong? He’d come too early. He’d come not under his own power, cast up helpless on the road. She’d been waiting for a man who would come and give her a message. She’d been waiting for a spy who would never give his secrets to somebody whose face he’d never seen. But she’d thought she could untangle who he was, prove that her hopes were right, find the truth by cunning, safeguard against every possible mistake and ensure that she won without having to offer trust first.
She’d been a fool.
An emetic. There was a chance, if she could make herself go to her workroom, that she could give him a strong enough purgative to save him. And then what? She had tried to kill him. She had blinded him. Why would he help her?
He would follow orders. And could he get her out swiftly enough, to save her from the spreading affliction?
And what of Violetta?
Violetta had known nothing of the deals, made at neutral ports, brought back in coded messages by her captains. Arrangements made, bribes paid. An invitation from the traitor government, a seduction, an offer—extended only to Evelyn, and no one else.
Help us strangle Delphinium, and when it is close enough to death, we will lift you out of it. They had asked for her knowledge, her capital, her ships and her relationships. And she had agreed.
She had agreed to keep herself safe.
And she never told a soul, not even Violetta. Violetta, who had been afraid at finding a soldier half-dead on the road, who had brimmed with suspicion but had trusted her judgment. Violetta, who had nursed that man day by day, and who had never known the right questions to ask.
Violetta, whose salvation had not been included in the bargain.
Evelyn did not move, fixed fast by her guilt, and soon the soldier lay dead on the floor. He looked no different than he had when he had been brought into her house, save for the stillness of his chest and the color of his bruises.
No sound came from the rest of the house. The drum of rain upon the roof softened, fading into the background once more. The soldier did not move. Violetta did not arrive to rid her of the body. Had she earned abandonment, too? Had her hesitation to trust in Violetta, born of her own desperate self-interest, finally turned her away?
No, Violetta would not do that to her. She would be hard at work in the garden, perhaps, or elsewhere in the house preparing for Pollard’s arrival. Evelyn would go to her, and tell her it was done, and they would move forward.
She had to believe that Violetta had been right. That the timing of the soldier’s arrival was still no coincidence. He had come the day The Verity had brought the first infected; surely that meant something, even if he had come at her invitation.
A punishment. She had already suspected as much, after all.
Gathering up her skirts, she forced herself away from the sickroom. She listened for any creak or footstep that might lead her to Violetta, but heard nothing. The garden was still and empty, as was the kitchen, the main hallway, the room she had met Pollard in. Frowning, Evelyn mounted the stairs, checking small side rooms, parlors that went unused.
Nothing.
Heart falling, throat closing, Evelyn came at last to her public study. She hesitated outside the doorway, afraid of what she wouldn’t find.
She went inside.
And Violetta stood there, a vision in white. Evelyn nearly cried out with relief. But she was reading through pages Evelyn had left reviewed three days before. Evelyn frowned, going to her, footsteps softened by the plush rug beneath her feet. Violetta was not prone to nosiness. If she felt she needed to know something, she asked Evelyn to show her. She did not scavenge, she did not spy.
A spy. Her stomach twisted. She thought of the dead soldier, come to her deliberately, and she wondered—but only for a moment. If Violetta served some other power who had ordered the soldier dead, she would have done it before tonight. And Violetta was hers, hers entirely. She was the only good thing in Evelyn’s life. Evelyn had betrayed her, but it could still be righted. This paranoia could only hurt them both. She needed to stop it where it stood.
Evelyn made herself breathe, her inhale sharp enough to be audible.
Violetta turned to face her, eyes bright and wide and staring, lips curved into a small, delicate smile.
“Our lady,” she murmured.
Blankness flooded her. She could only return that stare and fall back one step, two.
Not Violetta. Not her Violetta.
“I killed him,” she whispered. “No, they can’t have taken you.”
“Him?” Violetta’s face was manipulated into the semblance of thoughtfulness, followed shortly by surprise, then understanding. Sadness. “One of your patients! Here, in this house. Dead? We would have loved to meet him, first.”
Evelyn could not take this. She could not bear it. She crossed the space between them and seized Violetta’s narrow shoulders, snarling, “Get out of her! You are not welcome here.”
“But you prepared the way.”
“Give her back to me.” Her voice cracked. Her heart could not decide whether it wanted to pound or give up entirely. Evelyn saw the vacant eyes of the bryony girl, of the first mate of The Verity. She could not bear to lose Violetta that way, could not bear to see her stolen in an instant. She shrieked, shaking Violetta, hands clawing against her sleeves.
Violetta only reached up and touched her face, gently, fingers sliding up beneath her half veil. “We apologize,” the thing inside her said. “We did not realize it would hurt you so much, to take this one.”
The words cut through her, stilling her fury. She stared into Violetta’s unblinking eyes, searching for any hint of her left inside. She found only the horror’s unfocused delight.
“Liar,” Evelyn whispered.
Violetta’s thumb stroked across her cheekbone. “Your poison is in her veins, in her muscle and her bone. We thought you could not love her.”
Evelyn pulled away, lurching for the desk. The creature watched, patient and unafraid, as Evelyn pulled open the drawer and groped for the letter opener. When she spun back to confront it, makeshift dagger clutched in her fist, Violetta’s face looked only curious.
She should have been afraid. Just like the soldier, she should have been afraid.
The thought tore at her, but Evelyn made herself walk forward, feet digging into the rug. She could not let this thing take Violetta. She couldn’t let it keep her. And she couldn’t let it leave her unseeing, unfeeling, a barely alive husk.
But she quailed at the thought of what she had to do. The blade was awkward in her hand. Was it even sharp enough to end a life? It was not good enough to take Violetta, her closest companion, the closest she had come to a friend in all her lonely years. But Evelyn had failed her. She’d failed the only other person in this miserable world worth protecting.
This was the only option left.
“I’m sorry,” Evelyn whispered, and lunged. Violetta’s body didn’t move, didn’t recoil, and Evelyn crashed into her, bearing them both to the floor with a force that surprised her. But when she should have thrust the letter opener home, she faltered. The metal slid harmlessly against Violetta’s ribs, slammed into the rug. Tears stung her eyes and blurred her vision, and she flinched as Violetta’s hands wiped them away, sliding beneath the veil once more and then up, to the pins that held it fast. She keened, broken, as Violetta’s fingers bared her face to the open air.