Chapter Text
Alex
The pain came in waves, up and down his spine in lightning bursts of agony. It, at least, proved to Alex that he was alive. The rest of his existence was the slow ache of the minimal expansion and contraction of his lungs, barely enough to bring air in, and flickers of memories. There was the swift, pounding fear, whose echoes still rattled about in his bones, the remnants of the adrenaline and the flurry of punishing blows he had exchanged with his brother, Viktor.
The sound of Julien driving their father’s head against the desk with a soul-altering crack.
Verity’s sobs and shattered pleading ringing in his ears, pulling at him in the dark expanse of nothingness, from complete oblivion and towards life again.
They were as bitter and cruel as the blood in his mouth.
He had read stories where the dead relived their final moments over and over again, their shadows haunting the places where they fell. Murdered brides with rope around their necks and despondent wives with poison on their lips and tragic kings with knives in their backs. He was none of those things, and still, he lingered in that gray in-between space. The inexorable pain of his body knitting itself back together a tether, drawing forth his consciousness piece by piece. So he remembered, because there was nothing else left to do.
And eventually, like water through a fissure in a wall, other memories came bursting through.
⸻
The night Verity Thaumas arrived at Chauntilalie was written on his heart.
In retrospect, Alexander had not quite known what to expect. He had not met her sister, Mercy, but his mother had spoken of her favorably. (Such a lovely girl, and from such a remote clime! Clearly well educated and with such admirable comportment, a charming member of the Princess’ retinue and a credit to her family’s name.) It was high praise, and in Dauphine’s fashion, excessive. He was used to discerning the truth between her flowery descriptions and had arrived upon “a polite young woman with a provincial accent” as an apt description. Dauphine had similarly relayed how Mercy described her sister, the young artist, Verity. But a truth twice removed was harder to discern.
Arina help him, he had not expected the young woman who had stepped down from the carriage. She was slight, her dark hair drawn back, away from her face, resting at the back of her head in a low up-do. A few curls and sprung free, framing her face alongside the fringe of her bangs. Her skirt and blouse were creased from travel. The disarray was charming. She had a large messenger bag slung over her shoulder, and sensible flat-soled boots, the practicality of them a contrast to the typical frivolity of Bloem.
Her eyes were bright and wide as she took in Chauntilalie, and then him. She smiled, and it was a pleasant formality, but it was still kind. Her gaze was astute in a way that struck a chord somewhere deep within his chest. She took him in with the undisguised interest of an artist, but there was something else beneath it, as though she was not just looking over him but into him with striking discernment.
“Miss Thaumas?” Alex had asked.
“Verity, please.” She replied, and offered him her hand to shake, almost nervously. Her fingers were smudged with the remnants of charcoal, its color caught in the creases of her skin and cuticles, even under her nails. Soft, but firm. “And you must be–”
“Alex,” he had said as he took her hand, kissing it instead. He brought her fingers to his lips, and then, with a flourish, her palm. He delighted in the way her eyes widened and a blush crept over her cheeks. He let his touch linger, over the soft skin of her hand and wrist, where her pulse jumped under his own fingers. She was terribly pretty.
Her surprised expression settled back into a polite smile as he released her hand. He had filled the silence as the footmen retrieved her luggage with simple truth.
“Well, Miss Thaumas. Verity. Welcome to Chauntilalie.”
He did not know her yet, but he wanted to, and so it was true. Verity was very welcome, indeed.
⸻
Camille
The two priestesses stood before her, their nervousness evident. The younger of the two, who had been introduced as Sister Philomena, was unable to meet Camille’s eyes. She shifted uneasily from foot to foot, wringing her hands beneath lace sleeves in response to the scrutiny. The elder priestess, Sister Inès, rested one hand on the girl’s shoulder, as if the weight of her hand could instill resilience in her sister. Her delicate fingers curled over Philomena’s shoulder, her finger tips stained the sacred red of their goddess.
Camille’s annoyance grew in response to their hesitance.
“You want to disturb the Duke and Duchess from their recovery to report a corpse settling in a tomb? Or am I mistaken that corpses are prone to certain movements even after the spirit has departed?”
“Your grace,” Sister Inès began, a frown creasing her face, “we do not wish to impose. We simply feel, given the strange circumstances of the attack and these current…happenings, that someone should be notified.”
They were not wrong, as much as Camille wished that they were. She had managed to obtain a slightly coherent tale from Verity, but not without pressing her. Even then, she knew that crucial pieces were missing. Who the young men in the crypt were, for one. Verity had told her they were triplets, and that seemed to be the truth, or at the very least, the truth as Verity understood it. They were Alexander’s age, and the resemblance between the three was undeniable even in death. Particularly gruesome deaths at that. She had given six sisters to the salt but even the memory of those bodies, one with a gashed neck and the other, beaten and broken beyond recognition, sent cold racing up her spine. Other questions remained, looming in the periphery of her vision. Above all, she was concerned for Verity. She wanted to question her again, but knew that something integral had changed in their relationship the moment Verity had fled Salann. Camille would do what she could now, and hope that her sister would come to her when she was ready.
“Very well.” She stood, and smoothed her skirt. “Show me, then.”
Sister Inès nodded sharply, and guiding the trembling Philomena by the crook of her elbow, led the way from the manor and into the gardens toward the entrance of the Laurent family crypt.
The story Philomena had told was too strange to ignore, as much as Camille wished she could. Corpses days dead did not grasp the hands of the living. The least she could do was spare Verity whatever distress she would surely experience if told the same story. Of course, she was also more familiar with physical corpses than her younger sister, even if Verity was the one who saw and spoke to the dead. Perhaps this priestess did too, if she were to be believed.
The tale Camille had wrung out of the girl was uncanny enough. The imaginings of a fantastical mind, driven on by stories from penny dreadfuls. Or maybe just those of a particularly disturbed one. Camille was not certain what was worse. Though if she were to be believed, and as much as Camille desired unbelief, she would be negligent not to examine the body with her own eyes. Yes, she would bear witness to the alleged twitching fingers that had locked around the priestess’s hand, beseeching. She would feel for a pulse herself, and when she found none, set this all to rest.
Camille was already preparing herself for the waxy sheen of skin five days dead and the cloying scent of perfumes used to disguise the decomposition that had already begun when Inès pushed open the wrought-iron gate to the crypt, guiding Philomena through, and then pausing for Camille, expectant. The sun had not yet set, casting golden light slanting through the trees around them. It would have been peaceful, if not for the apprehension emanating from Camille’s companions. The entrance to the crypt swallowed that light, gaping toothlessly at her. Camille paused on the topmost step, stopped by the oddest premonition that she would not see the sun paint the sky in rosey reds and bruised purples that night.
She was right.
⸻
Sister Inès led them along the hall, past dusty alcoves, curiously empty, and into an atrium, the beating heart of the crypt. Light filtered into the space from skylights far above their heads, the glass a dusty pink that softened the hard stone lines of the tomb. Curiously, a garden grew in the center of the atrium, fed by the light far above, and a small channel of water fed through grooves in the floor into a central reflecting pond. Within the garden were six marble plinths, upon each a slab of quartz inset for a bed of dirt, and a body, covered in pale silk, to rest. Five plinths were occupied. They passed the smallest body, the grandmother, and Camille felt no remorse. Then three other plinths, before coming to where three priestesses huddled in waiting. The silk was pulled back from this body, pooling around his waist and covering his legs. He looked as if he was in repose, face relaxed.
He did not look like a corpse days dead.
Inès and Philomena joined their gathered sisters. Inès nodded to her, and spoke with a hushed voice, as if she worried about disturbing the rest of the bodies gathered here, “Duchess.”
The other priestesses nodded, a collective movement. “Thank you for coming, your grace,” one said. Camille did not know her name.
“Of course.” Camille inclined her head gracefully in acknowledgement, and then turned to examine the body. She had no interest in exchanging niceties with the sisters.
The last she had seen the corpse, he had been beaten beyond recognition, body broken across marble. She knew what bodies days dead and dropped from great heights looked like. The odd angles of them, limbs akimbo, like a discarded and trampled doll. That was not this body. His skin, while pale, was not the pallor of a corpse. Bruises that had bloomed purple across his ribs and face had faded along the edges to a sickly yellow. There was no swelling across the planes of face, and while bruising bloomed under his eyes from his broken nose, the nose itself, once shattered, had righted itself somehow. Camille noted the wounds along his neck, burns mottled with a ring of bruises half healed. Welts of burns rose along his arms and chest as well, distinctly hand shaped. Dread coiled in Camille’s stomach.
He was an impossibility.
Leaning forward, Camille suppressed a shudder and brought her fingers to the pulse point of his neck. Nearly too faint to feel, life jumped under the press of her forefinger and middle. Drawing her hand away from his neck, she brought it to his face, and rested a single finger over his lips. Sure enough, she felt the faintest movement of air, breath moving from him. It was then that she noticed the insistent tapping.
Camille stared down at the movement. She should not be incredulous, but she was. The corpse’s–but he was not dead–left hand moved with alarming intentionality. Fingers rhythmically tapping with a staccato urgency, as if trying to convey a message. He was sending a message she realized belatedly, to the gathered priestesses and now to her: I am here, and I am not dead yet.
She rested her hand over his, stilling its movement. The silence of the crypt bore down on them, and Camille hesitated. Questions unfurled in her mind, an endless rush. She had so few answers. How best to obtain them when the man she wanted to question seemed unable to speak?
“We see that you are…not dead,” she began, her voice strangely resonant in the vaulted space. “And will move you somewhere more amenable to recovering from your injuries. However, I find that I have questions I need answered, to the best of your ability.”
She paused, considering. “I assume that if you were able to speak, you would have by now. That if you could move your head, or any other part of your body for that matter, you would have by now. I am not unaccommodating. I am going to ask what questions I have, and if you are able, tap once for no and twice for yes. Then we will move you. Do we have an understanding?”
She removed her hand from his, and watched intently as he flexed his hand then tapped once, twice, against the soil.
“Very good. Were you involved in the attack on Gerard Laurent?”
One tap.
“But you witnessed it?”
Two taps.
“Can you tell me your name?”
He hesitated for a breath, fingers splayed wide, and then tapped twice.
“Then tell me.”
He drew his finger through the dirt, a curve into a line upwards, then a sharp descending line brought back up across the first line with a flourish: a capital A.
Camille felt her stomach drop, dread coursing through her. “Alexander?”
Two taps, his finger landing over the center of the letter he had drawn.
“Very well.” Camille exhaled, forcing the breath through her lungs slowly.
If this Alexander was telling the truth, then who had married Verity? One thing was clear, the man in front of her was in no condition to answer any further questions. The crypt, even with its faint sunlight and plant life, was frigidly cold. His hand shook slightly, as if with exertion, and while he didn’t have the coloring of a corpse, his skin still was sallow and wan.
Camille turned to the sisters, who stood huddled together. They were wide-eyed with shock. She did not want him in Chauntilalie, it would disrupt Verity’s recovery. Besides, he easily could have lied to her, and had the incentive to do so, considering he was at risk of being interred alive. Separation would be ideal. “Sister Inès, can he be brought to your goddess’s halls to recover?”
Admittedly, she knew little of the role the priestesses and acolytes of the goddess Arina played in Bloem beyond wedding officiants and death attendants. However, most temples welcomed those who sought healing or some sort of restitution from their patron deities. Arina, as goddess of love and beauty, would likely have the same.
“Of course, your grace.” Inès appeared faint, but offered no protest.
“And you have healers among you?”
She hesitated for a moment and then nodded. “We do.”
“Very well,” Camille repeated, and brushed her hands over the fullness of her skirts. “Have him brought to your temple, but please do so with great discretion. I do not want word of this leaving this crypt. Not a word of who he may be or where he came from. Cloister him if you must. Do you understand me?”
Inès nodded again, her face grim. “We will handle this with the utmost discretion.”
“You have my gratitude.” Camille paused, “Is there another entrance to this crypt that you can use? This estate has eyes.”
Sister Philomena spoke up, “There is a gate we use after the rites have been concluded, so that we do not bring their spirits with us.”
“Use that then. Under the cover of night.” She considered the body before her, he was quite large–tall, long limbs limp across the dais. He would be unwieldy to move. “Do you have a way to move him?”
“We have a litter.” Sister Inès smiled faintly. It was meant to offer comfort, Camille realized, but the effect was incomplete. Her smile did not meet her eyes.
“I plan to remain at Chauntilalie for some time. Please write to me once all is well. I will visit your temple as soon as I can to see this resolved as swiftly as possible.”
“Of course,” Sister Inès said.
“I will leave you to it then.” Camille inclined her head to the priestesses. “Words cannot express my gratitude for your discretion. Trust that I will return the grace you have shown me in this… difficult time.”
Understanding flickered in Inès’s eyes. “It is the least we can do, your grace.”
Camille nodded, satisfied. Glancing from the priestesses, then to the body, she nodded once more. “Have a good night, sisters.”
Pontus help them all.
⸻
Verity
Verity let her head slip below the surface of the water, her arm with the plaster cast extended awkwardly over the edge of the tub so that she did not get it wet. She knew it was reckless of her, and that if Camille or any of the healers found out she would be scolded, but she needed the clarity only water could bring her. She exhaled slowly, watching as the bubbles of her breath drifted to the too-still surface of the tub. Verity missed the sea dreadfully in that moment, and wished for the sting of salt water and a tumult of waves to buffet her body. All she received was an ache in her ribs.
She felt as though she was steeped in wrongness. It had sunk into her skin with an itching insistence that she could not contrive to abate. She wanted to believe what she had been told, and wanted to believe the man she had vowed to before the altar of Arina. She ached with the want of it, but still there was that intangible doubt. A question she did not want to ask, not to herself or to her husband. She could not even formulate it in her mind, and it left her insides twisted in knots, anxious beyond words. She knew what she had seen, no matter how she tried to convince herself otherwise. Never once had Alex, her Alex, crossed his ankles in such a way without having to arrange his legs himself, not an absentminded movement but an intentioned adjustment for comfort.
And had she had a chance to truly look into his eyes? No, not even on their wedding night (not that it had been much of one, all things considered). Not that it mattered as much, they had already consummated their love.
Well, she and her Alex had.
But she was tired, and injured, and didn’t the eyes play tricks? She had only just awoken, and from a fitful sleep at that, fraught with nightmares. Had she been fully awake? But she had known when the body went over the balcony, hadn’t she? She had cried, she remembered that much (although much of that night was a haze, even if the healers assured her that was normal after receiving a head wound).
Surfacing, she brushed the water from her eyes with her good hand and reached for the bath oils nearest to her. The lavender would be best. She paused, catching movement out of the corner of her eye. Certain it was a strand of her hair, she turned her head, angling it slightly to shake it free, and instead her line of sight landed on a young man standing in her washroom.
Verity cried out in alarm, somewhere between a squawk and a shriek. With a splash, she brought her good arm down to cover her breasts even as she sank lower into the water, as if it could hide her very naked body.
“Calm down, it’s just me,” he said. His voice was blunt, as flat and impassioned in death as it had been in life.
“Julien?” Verity squeaked.
“Who else would it be?” There was a note of derision in his voice.
Verity flushed, and felt the warm spread across her neck and chest, an embarrassed tightness. In the shock of the moment the only thing she could think to say was a hissed: “Julien, I’m naked.”
“I’m well aware.” He arched a single brow, his version of amusement. Verity noted that his gaze did not stray from her eyes, intense. His eyes were more gray than green, she noticed. Wholly different from Alexander and Viktor’s eyes, which were a striking green. “It’s a body. We all have one. Well, did, in my case. Regardless, how else was I meant to get you alone.”
It was not a question. Verity felt a cool certainty collect in the pit of her stomach. “Then he’s not…” She found she could not finish her question.
But why else would Julien be here now? Unfinished business; his murderer still lived. She was married to—
“Neither he is dead if that’s what you’re asking.”
“What?” Verity sat up, any pretense of modesty forgotten. She gripped the edge of the tub with her good hand, pressing with such force that her fingertips went white.
“Do I need to spell it out for you?” Julien crossed his arms, a flicker of annoyance on his face. His words dripped with condescension. “Aren’t you meant to be clever?”
Color filled Verity’s face again, anger stinging across her cheeks. Rarely did she ever feel the need to bite back, but frustration and fear welled within her. “Your half answers are not quite as helpful as you seem to think they are, Julien. You may have missed it, but your dear grandmère nearly killed me.”
She gestured toward her head with her plaster-casted arm for emphasis, where she knew the edges of a bruise crept over her temple. Perhaps she wasn’t following to Julien’s standards, but she was concussed. His eyes widened slightly, as if her rebuttal had surprised him. Maybe he had thought her spineless? Verity was kind, but kindness and meekness were not the same thing.
Julien sniffed. “That was rude of me. I am sorry, Verity. We have both had difficult weeks.”
An understatement. Julien was dead, after all.
“I am so sorry, Julien—” Verity began, her anger dissipating into remorse. Of the two of them, he had received a far worse treatment. Julien held up his hand to stop her.
“It cannot be helped. And, anyways, for the first time, it’s quiet.” A ghost of a smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. Lifting his hand, he tapped the side of his head, “For once, it’s just me.”
Verity wondered at his statement, the seeming absence of his powers in death. His relief in the void that they left. How strange Julien was, and yet how similar he still was to his brothers. Their resemblance to each other was the very definition of uncanny—identical triplets produced through the machinations of their mad father, seeking to surpass the gods. And yet, in death, Julien was wholly something of his own. She saw him more clearly then, not a shadow of Viktor or Alex, but his own person. Still, Verity found herself, however selfishly, searching for traces of Alex in Julien. If he was…she could not even think the word in her mind, but if, then why was he not also here now?
“It’s of little importance to our current situation. I won’t be able to help you in the way I once might have. However, there may be advantages to my state.” Julien brushed past her silence. “Make no mistake, Verity. You are in danger.”
Verity nodded, she had feared as much. Her nightmares had echoed with the sound of Viktor’s laugh and Alex’s shouts every night since the deaths. Those dreams had been a warning then, that she had not truly escaped her waking nightmare either. Had Kosamaras sent the nightmares to her? Or had she always known, somewhere deep within her subconscious, that something was wrong? She could not ask the goddess now, but she could confirm her suspicions with Julien at the very least. She would be brave.
“If you are here, then Viktor is…” She couldn’t finish the question, swallowing down the bile that rose in her throat.
“Masquerading as your husband.”
“And Alexander?”
Julien cocked his head to the side, studying the apprehension in her face. His gaze was not unkind. “You need to ask your sister.”
