Page 73 of Holly & Hemlock
I am not afraid.
I reach for the words, for Anwen, for the heart of the curse. My lips move, and I do not recognize my own voice. It is too steady, too old. I shout into the maelstrom: “I release you. Your love was meant to protect, not imprison. Be free, Anwen. Let go.”
The wind cuts out, a vacuum. The rain ceases mid-fall, the last drops shattering on the rug like glass. The room contracts, then expands. I am thrown backward, sprawling onto the wet carpet, gasping.
Specters fill the air, hundreds of them, pressed flat against the walls like pressed flowers in a diary. Some are decayed, bone-thin, faces eaten away by centuries. Others are whole, beautiful, their eyes wide with longing or rage or peace. Each one flashes into view, flickers, then fades. The succession is too fast to count, but the afterimage persists, a film of ancestral ache that coats the books and the lamps and the dust.
Lane makes it to me first, scooping me up as if I am made of nothing. His arms are trembling, his face a mask of terror and awe. “Are you okay?” he growls, the words mangled by adrenaline.
I try to answer, but the voice in my throat is not mine. I open my mouth and out comes a whisper: “It’s not done. Not yet.”
Larkin kneels beside us, his hands on my face, cold and shaking. “What do you see?” he asks, as if I am the only one with eyes in this new world.
I see everything. I see Anwen, standing in the storm, her hair like mine, her face a mirror. I see the curse thread through every inch of the house, binding wall to window, door to floor, man to woman, past to present. I see the hunger of the place, how it could never be satisfied, how every act of love became a wound, every sacrifice a reinforcement.
I see the chain, and I see how to break it.
I push myself upright, my body rebelling. Lane holds me steady, his grip iron. I look to the hearth, the fire now low, the page in the grate glowing with a cold, lunar light. The ink of my words has not burned. Instead, it pulses, each letter alive, writhing.
I reach for Larkin’s hand, and he takes it without question. I reach for Lane’s, and he knots his fingers through mine, the heat of his skin a bulwark against the creeping frost.
Together, we face the fire. I speak, and this time the voice is wholly mine:
“What was bound can be broken. I release you, and you release us.”
The letters on the page shimmer, then burst into a thousand motes of gold. They drift upward, swirling in a spiral, then disappear into the chimney and out into the blue-black sky.
The silence that follows is absolute. No wind, no rain, no voices but our own rough breath.
The house holds still, as if stunned by its own emptiness. For the first time, I do not feel it watching.
I sag into Lane’s arms, weak, but lighter than I have ever been. Larkin’s hand strokes my hair, the gesture half-tender, half-disbelieving.
My own pulse is the only sound I hear, hammering in my ears, arrhythmic, stubbornly alive.
Lane sinks to the floor, with me in his arms. I try to sit up and fail. The world tilts, and I am horizontal again, Lane’s hands braced on my shoulders, holding me down with the gentle insistence of a medic triaging the dying. He speaks, but I only catch fragments, the words muffled by the blood in my head. “Stay down . . . you’re hurt . . . don’t move . . .”
Larkin is on my other side, his hair plastered to his cheek, water running from his chin like he’s just surfaced from a river. His hand cups my face, thumb sweeping across my brow, searching for a fever or a clue. His green eyes are enormous, frantic. “Nora. Nora, are you with us?”
I manage a nod. My throat is too raw for words. Instead, I drag in a breath—cold, bright, mineral. There is no more smoke, no more scent of burning ink. Only the sharp tang of rain and the loam of sodden carpet.
The men share a glance, a quick, fiercecommunication that is all worry and relief. Lane pulls me up, slowly, so that my head rests on his thigh. Larkin sits behind me, his arms circling my waist, anchoring me to the plane of reality. They are both shaking, but it is a sweet, post-adrenaline tremor, a vibration that feels less like fear and more like the beginning of laughter.
I look around. The library is a wreck—books everywhere, glass shattered, furniture broken and bleeding stuffing. The hearth glows with a nervous afterlight, the last ember flickering out with a sigh. Above us, the chandelier sags, its crystals bent but not fallen. The page I burned is gone, not even ash left behind.
“It’s over,” I rasp. My voice is a ruin, but the men lean in as if I am singing. “She’s gone. It’s over.”
Lane bows his head, pressing his forehead to my shoulder. The exhale he lets out is longer than a human breath should be. Larkin, always the dramatist, laughs—just once, sharp and startled—and then buries his face in my hair.
The house does not answer. It simply breathes.
I am bone-tired, every cell emptied and wrung out, but as I lie there, bracketed by Lane and Larkin, I realize that the cold I feel is not coming from the walls. It is something leaving me, a centuries-old fever breaking. The house is reset, emptied, new. The curse is broken, and in its place is only the echo of my own voice, small and stubborn and human.
I reach for the men, my hands barely able to close. Lane takes one, huge and callused and still so careful. Larkin threads his fingers through the other, elegant and sure. For a moment, we are a three-part chain, unbreakable.
Outside, the sun claws up over the horizon, lighting the rain in sheets of gold. For the first time, the dawn feels like a beginning.
“We’re free,” I say, and this time my voice is clear.
