I knelt down, searching under the beds. My heart stuttered when I saw dried blood on the floor.
I flipped the mattresses and found a long string of red hair, a button. A bit of a fingernail. Nothing I could recognize as Alice’s.
But it was when I pulled open the wardrobe that I felt my heart kick up a notch.
The clothes were still here—the servant’s uniforms—black dresses with white skirts, white lace collars. And between them were casual clothes: flowered dresses, simple cotton sheaths. A few personal belongings lay strewn on the bottom, a compact mirror, part of a lipstick tube, scarves. Nothing stood out as Alice’s.
When I’d finished scouring that room, I ran to the next one and flung open the wardrobe. I flicked through the clothes for signs of her. I searched each inch of the drawers on the bottom.
With the candle in my hand, I ransacked one wardrobe after another, in every room. Maid’s clothes, simple dresses, a few pieces of jewelry, handkerchiefs.
All these poor mortals had been murdered for reasons no one was letting on, and the little trinkets left of their lives filled me with a sharp sadness.
By the time I got to the last room, I was starting to wonder if Finn had been wrong. Maybe someone else had been carrying the red cloth into the castle. A little relief was unclenching my chest. Alice might never have been here at all.
Among the dresses, I found a simple brown one I thought could have been hers, but nothing for certain. Could be anyone’s.
I turned to the window, and my stomach dropped. Here, the glass was cracked a little, and brown blood spatters had dried on it.
Someone must have gone from one room to another, slaughtering them.
When I looked out the window, I saw the remains of an old bridge jutting out into the air to my right—about twenty feet long, three feet wide. At one point, it would have connected to one of the lost towers. Now, the stony promontory hung over the river like an enormous thorn on the stem of a dark flower.
I turned back to the room with the growing certainty that Alice hadn’t been here in the first place.
Except, just as I was starting to walk out, a little gleam of yellow in the corner caught my eye. A crackle of fear skittered up my spine, because I knew—I knew that yellow. Gripping the candle, I got down on my knees.
My breath left my lungs. There it was, Alice's little yellow sun charm.
With a shaking hand, I snatched it off the ground. Sadness carved me open as I stared at it. I wished I hadn't found a single sign of her, but now that I had, I knew I had to find out exactly what happened to her.
If she was dead, I would avenge her.
I held the charm up in the light of the candle, inspecting the metallic face with the chipped yellow paint. Then I curled it in my fist and stuffed it in my pocket. Once more, I crossed back to the window, and pressed my hand against the rattling glass. The storm sent the wind whistling through the panes. I closed my eyes, trying to envision her final moments here. I pulled my hand away, stricken by the thought that the blood on the window could be hers.
I was twelve stories in the air now. Could she have made it down, scaling the stone? Why wouldn’t she have come back to us?
As I stared out the window at the river, the sound of footfalls made my pulse race. I blew out the candle and dropped it to the floor, then yanked up the hem of my skirt to unsheathe my dagger. Holding my breath, I tiptoed closer to the door.
Through the closed door, I heard a voice bellowing out. But he was speaking in Clovian, so I had no idea what he was saying.
Bollocks.
I pressed myself flat against the wall. In the hall, I could hear them moving closer. My throat went dry.
Now to decide what to do—fight my way out of this? Or talk?
As the door creaked open, I hid the dagger behind my back.
A thin, reedy soldier with a sparse mustache gave a frightened yelp when he saw me.
I smiled sweetly. “Oh! I’m so glad you’re up here. I was getting a little nervous. With the ghosts.”
“You are the count’s new pet? But you are not allowed out of your room.”
I frowned. “Oh. I don’t think anyone told me that rule explicitly.”
The second soldier was a large, red-faced man with the dark curls of the Clovians. “And what are you doing here?”
“I just wanted to see the Tower of Bones. I heard it was haunted.”
“But how did you get past the guards outside your room?”
And there was a bit of a hitch in my plan. I didn’t suppose they’d believe … “They had a bit too much to drink, I think. They’re sleeping.”
Fuzzy Mustache grinned, showing off a row of rotten teeth, and stepped closer to me. “When the count said not to touch her, do you think he meant killing or fucking?”
Without waiting for a response, he grabbed me by the throat and slammed me against the wall.
The shock of the attack was so sudden and fierce, I nearly dropped my knife. But I managed to hang onto it, and my blade was in his neck within the next heartbeat.
Gurgling, he slumped forward onto me. I shoved him away. The second guard was already swinging for me.
His blade carved through the air. I ducked. He overextended, and one foot caught on his compatriot’s body. He stumbled forward, but righted himself.
I lunged for him, aiming for his heart, but he blocked it with his forearm. He grabbed me with his other arm, another crushing grip of my throat.
His sword fell to the floor, both his hands wrapped around my neck. The force of the blow against the wall was so powerful this time that I lost my grip on my dagger , and my heart sank as it clanged to the stone, the sound ringing in my skull.
“You want to die?” he asked. “Just like the others.”
The air was leaving my lungs, and my head swam with a vision—a sword carving through Alice’s neck. Those blood spatters on the window …
Two pauper sisters, dead in the same tower as the princes. Bones stuffed under the stairwell, forgotten.
I couldn’t breathe. My mouth tried to say her name, to call for Alice, for Mum.
Alice had wanted a butterfly garden. She didn’t know what it was, but she liked the sound of it. When I pictured her, she was in the sun, with orange and blue butterflies fluttering around her, landing on her arms.
That was how I wanted to remember her.
20
Lila
He was crushing my windpipe. This was how some men liked to kill women, up close, with their hands on your skin, breathing on you, pressed against you. My gaze flicked to the window, and the sight of the blood spatters filled me with a rage that sharpened my senses.
Come on, Lila.
When you grew up where I did, you learned how to get away from men like this. And Alice had taught me well, hadn’t she? She never let anyone fuck with us.
So I brought my hands up between his arms, and slammed them outward as hard as I could. He lost his grip on me. I sucked in a deep breath, then kicked him hard in the knackers. For a moment, he doubled over.
But before I could get my dagger off the ground, he slammed his fist into my jaw. I tasted blood, coppery in my mouth.
And yet I felt something sliding through my bones, a tingling darkness. A rage as ancient as Dovren. I was no prince, but the Raven King wanted me alive.
Maybe this man had no idea who he was fucking with. Like the nightshade, I was born from the ancient soil beneath the city. I summoned the darkness within me, one of moss and earth, fertilized with blood and bones.