Page 71 of Court of Shadows
“For Mary,” he said, blushingly. “The real one.”
“She’ll love it,” I replied, tucking the fish away. “You will know the moment we find her.”
Nodding, Chijioke gave me a quick kiss on the cheek, then leapt up into the driver’s box. “We can say good-bye at Malton,then I can do my weepies on the way back without you there to tease me.”
I was about to take the fish and the spider cage with me into the carriage, but I heard a soft scuffle on the stones behind me. Like a shadow, Lee had come, emerging from the foyer headfirst, as if peering out to see if I had already gone. I lifted my things up for Khent to take, my hand on the door, my body twisted around to face Coldthistle.
Lee walked over to me slowly, eyes darting. Foolishly, I had thought that we were even, that now that he had decided my fate we would share some kind of intense and unique bond. But it was not so. And it was unfair to expect parity, especially when his resurrection had come with a price and so much pain, and mine had resulted only in greater power and understanding. It simply wasn’t fair, and my heart ached for the things that could have been between us were life kinder.
On a whim, I reached out my hand toward him and he took it, his fingers cold, his posture careful. I had no idea what to say, the immensity of feeling swelling in my heart almost too much to bear, choking me. There is what the heart wants and what reality demands, and they are often as incompatible as snow and fire.
I took the spoon out from the chain around my neck. It had been repaired by Chijioke only recently, but I pulled the necklace off and placed it in his palm, closing his fingers around it.
“This has brought me such exceedingly bad luck,” I toldhim in a whisper, tears making my voice ragged. “Please chuck it off the roof or bury it in a deep, dark hole. For both our sakes.”
Lee gifted me a small smile and nodded. “I thought I was so gallant, stealing that thing for you. My first act of larceny. No wonder it’s cursed.”
“Take care of yourself, Lee, please. I’m sorry.”
He shoved the spoon into his pocket and pulled his shoulders back. “Don’t be, Louisa. I’m not sorry we met, but I am sorry to see you go.”
Then he hugged me, as suddenly as he had in the library, and I sank into that feeling for as long as propriety allowed. When it was over, he left in a hurry, disappearing into the house with a shadow’s lively, cunning step.
It was time to go.
Khent helped me up into the carriage, holding out his huge hand for me to take and then following me inside. It was humid and quiet inside, Mab the spider sitting between us in her cage. Chijioke cracked the whip. I sighed and sat back in my seat, and watched Poppy chase us down the drive as we at last left Coldthistle House behind. I closed my eyes, listening to the gravel crunch under the wheels, feeling as if the mansion was watching me go, feeling as if it was giving a silent scream of frustration that I had managed to escape.
I did not know if I was free of the place, but I was on a path, and that was something. The sprawling parapets and long blackwindows of the house grew more distant as we made our way along the lawn.
The farther we went, the better I felt, as if a fog were lifting from all around me. I leaned against the window, memorizing the last of it, wondering if the melancholy weight in my heart would ever lift.
My eye caught on something as we passed from field to forest and turned toward the main dirt road. They had burned Father’s body, a tiny black sapling already sprouting where the ashes lay. A black mist hung around it, and as I looked, the clouds brought on the wind opened up and a hard rain began to fall, a rolling roar of thunder threatening from a distance.
Epilogue
The driving wind and rain whipped hard at our faces. Even without Bennu’s journals, my feet would have carried me to this place, a path I knew in my bones now that Father’s soul was entwined with mine. To other eyes, human eyes, the road would not reveal itself, hidden as it was by tangle upon tangle of thick trees and shrubs, the path rising from the forest floor up to a long rock causeway carpeted with water. That water became falls, the rushing sound at our feet as noisy as the storm above.
“Watch your step!” Khent called over the commotion. The stones were slippery, treacherous, but I navigated deftly, as if I had walked the way a hundred times or more.
Through the wall of the downpour I saw a shape emerge, taller and grander than the trees to our right. To our left, the falls plunged toward a roaring froth of foam and sharp boulders.
The shape rising above us looked like a giant wicker basket, just like the one described by Bennu in his journals. Khent had not arrived at the city through this route, but he had taken a similar path when he fled, and his bare feet hopped across the wet stones with more grace than mine. He took my hand as the path ahead widened and became steep. If I squinted past my scarf and the rain, I could just see the outline of a pair of huge silvery doors.
“Do you think more people inside will have woken up?” I asked him. We spoke in his native language, but his English was improving by the day.
Khent shook his head, his face obscured by a sturdy hood and cowl. “I have no idea. Who can tell what Father’s death and resurrection will have done?”
That felt like the repeated refrain of these recent days. Chaos. Uncertainty. Outside the walls of Coldthistle I felt almost naked, as if some vital part of me had been stripped away. I wondered if my confidence would ever really come. Whatever the case, I pushed on toward the doors, helped by Khent’s steadying grip.
We reached the entrance to the city, the silver doors choked with vines and moss, the intricate carvings almost completely obliterated. I put my hand on the doors, expecting nothing, only to feel at once the old mechanisms engage, a loud, long creak rattling through my body. My instinct was to duck, but I held fast, breathing hard, pushing just a little and finding that the door gave inward. We dodged inside, and the moment we did, the storm abruptly ended.
Within, the air was warm and moist and fragrant, stifling but beautiful. Birdsong echoed off the round walls, the open courtyard similar to the shape and size of a coliseum. I gazed about, awestruck, feeling at once terrified and at home.Home. I did not intend to stay, and I did not know if I belonged there or if Father’s soul was simply reacting to the familiar grounds, butfor a moment, I relished that warm and welcoming sensation.
“Louisa?”
I turned at the sound of her voice. It was a little thing, but so, so comforting. Mary called my name again, stronger this time, and I ran toward her across the green stones. Archways splintered off in every direction, leading to what I could not see, and in the middle of the courtyard were the stairs leading downward that Bennu had described. The city felt utterly empty, as if only we three existed inside of it. Mary stood from where she had been sitting, her skirts dirtied and torn. When we met and embraced, my face was wet now from tears and not the rain.
“You came! You’re here! How could you be here?” she cried, squeezing me hard.
