CHAPTER 16
THE FRONT DOORS GREW LARGER and larger as Briony trailed Toven down the path. He didn’t glance back to make sure she was following.
He climbed the set of stone steps ahead of her and almost held the door open for her out of habit before he caught himself and went through first.
The entry hall was made of rich marble-and-gold walls stretching at least one hundred feet high. The candles were lit low, and the stairs turned around the entire hall, up to a second floor, then to a third. Above them was the domed ceiling, the most noticeable architecture. Grand paintings of Vindecci’s era adorned the high walls in gilded frames.
Briony stared left, right, and center as she met three carved marble archways leading to dark wings. She’d never seen this much marble in her life. It wasn’t native to the Moreland continent, so anyone who acquired it did so at a cost.
And he’d called her spoiled. Briony took in Hearst Hall, completely overwhelmed with the wealth. The marble floor was warm. She could feel it through her slippers. The chandeliers had no spiderwebs; the windows had no dust. It was marvelously taken care of, but by whom?
Toven flicked his fingers to close the front doors, and she ached to use that kind of simple magic again. He moved past her, and her stomach dropped when he started up the stairs.
She’d imagined a cell in the basement, or a nook near the kitchen. As she watched him ascend, she wondered if there were servants’ quarters on the third floor. Perhaps she’d have an unfurnished room like the one she’d been in at the groundskeeper’s cottage.
But when she followed him up the stairs, he turned off on the second floor. The family bedrooms, traditionally.
Briony gripped the marble banister and stopped on the landing. She braced herself there as remembered conversations flew through her head.
The Bomardi boys talking about what they’d do with their heartsprings once they got them.
The five thousand gold that she was worth because she’d been untouched.
Sacral Magic, which was foreign to her, but she at least understood that there was power to be gained by having sex in a heartspring bond.
“Where are you leading me?” she asked in a voice stronger than she felt.
He turned, several steps down a dark corridor. “To where you’ll be
staying.”
“Which is where?”
“A bedroom,” he said simply, seemingly frustrated with her.
She swallowed. “Whose bedroom?”
Toven Hearst stared at her, and she tried to hold on to the times he’d been decent. The way he hated when the other boys were crass. The way he flirted, rather than intimidated.
He blinked once. And his lips tightened.
“Yours,” he said, voice soft.
When he turned and continued down the corridor, her breath was still tight in her chest, but loosening. She followed him, letting her eyes drift over the tapestries and wall sconces.
He stopped at a door on the right near the end of the hall, turned the knob, and stepped aside to allow her in first. When she approached, he gave her plenty of space.
It was a comfortable room, twice as large as the groundskeeper’s bedroom. On the opposite wall were windows covered with thin curtains and a simple armchair. To the right lay a canopy bed and a wardrobe. The bedside
table on the right had a candlestick and a decorative box meant for jewelry.
To the left of the bed was a door that Briony could see would lead to a private bathroom.
She stepped farther inside and found that the wall to the right of the door had a bookshelf, though only three books were on it.
It was plain yet pleasant. It was the best she could hope for, really.
She turned to Toven, who was watching her closely from the other side of the door. For lack of anything better to say, she said, “It’s nice.”
He narrowed his eyes and puffed a scoff. “You’d prefer a cot in a closet?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know why it matters. I thought heartsprings didn’t need their tongues, much less a comfortable place to sleep.”
She watched him take that in. “The healthier the heartspring, the healthier the magic.”
“Ah, that’s good. For you.” She glared at him, and he matched it. “What does the heartspring bonding entail?”
“You won’t need to concern yourself with that,” he said, turning to the door.
She scoffed. Oh, of course she needn’t worry about it. It was just her magic.
“If you need anything within reason, you can ask the house for it,” he said. “Meals, blankets, pain elixirs. It will provide.”
He reached for the door handle, and Briony felt a spark of fear that she was about to be locked inside with no access to anything or anyone for the rest of her life.
“I’d like to know where everyone ended up,” she said, the words rushing out. “The Eversuns.”
He paused, then turned to lean on the doorjamb. “I thought you were tired and cold and hungry and your head hurt and your body hurt—”
She rolled her eyes, sighing at his petulance. “Bless the waters...”
“But if you’d like to chat more, perhaps you’ll tell me what Mallow found in your head.”
“I’m asking about people’s lives, Toven—their safety.”
“As am I,” he said. “My family’s safety.”
He was deadly serious about this, and she didn’t know why. Her gaze narrowed on him, and she crossed her arms.
“What are you afraid she found in my head?” Briony asked.
He stood from the doorway. “I’m not playing twenty guesses with you.
Sleep well, your grace.”
He pulled the door shut. Briony heard a lock click, and it echoed in her mind with finality. The walls felt too tight suddenly. She was locked in for who knew how long. Her breath caught, and she moved to the window to look at something that wasn’t four walls.
The curtain would hardly keep out light, but she supposed she wasn’t going to be worrying about getting beauty rest. She pushed it aside and squinted against the darkness. The room faced the front of the property, but she couldn’t make out the gates.
She turned in a circle to examine her surroundings. Moving to the bookshelf, she looked at the three discarded books. They were non-fiction, one a medicinal textbook. The jewelry box on the bedside table held nothing.
She tried the doorknob just to be sure she’d heard it lock. She had.
Briony peeked her head into the bathroom. It was sparsely decorated with marble and brass and a claw-foot bathtub in the middle of the room. She jumped at the sight of her own reflection. She was pale and thin, and her hair was brittle and unwashed. The silk nightgown hung off her bony shoulders.
Had she eaten since arriving six days ago?
She looked over the gold collar in the mirror, checking for anything she’d missed, but there was no way to open it.
Briony turned to the bedroom, about to ask for dinner. Before she could embarrass herself by requesting food from the walls, she spotted a side table that hadn’t been there before next to the armchair by the window. A steaming plate of meat and vegetables greeted her. Her stomach groaned.
The potatoes were scalloped much the way Eversuns ate their potatoes, and her nose recognized a spice from home on the meat.
Briony considered what Toven said about keeping the heartsprings healthy. There wouldn’t be poison in this food, but it still felt wrong to eat it.
What was Cordelia eating? Did Didion get a bed and a bathtub?
Rory’s face flashed in her mind, and tears pricked her eyes.
Briony dropped into the armchair, grabbing only the roll of bread and picking at it slowly.
What would they do now without Rory? Was there anything to hope for?
She chewed the warm bread and thought of Finola. If she was on the run and able to make contact with others, was that enough? Would Southern Camly or any of the other countries across the sea have anything to say about Mallow’s actions here? She’d ended the Rosewood line.
Briony’s heart ached. She tried to tap into the vein that connected to Rory,
but there was nothing there.
Why hadn’t she hugged him goodbye?
Tears fell down her cheeks, and she tossed the bread back on the plate.
There was an emptiness inside of her that had gnawed wider and wider since her father’s death. Helping Rory and setting him up for success had been her only goal for the past four years, and now he was gone.
Where was his body? Had Mallow truly burned it?
Briony’s eyes scrunched in pain: There was nowhere even to mourn him.
He wouldn’t be placed in the Rosewood mausoleum with their father and mother.
A shaking breath broke her chest, and she wept until the food next to her was cold.
When she finally wiped her eyes and sniffed back her tears, she turned to give in to the dinner plate, but it was gone.
In its place was a piece of paper, words appearing slowly as ink seemed to pull from below. She glanced over the first few lines as they were written.
Riann Cohle—Cordelia Hardstark
Del Burkin—Didion Winchester, Velicity Punt
Aron Carvin—Phoebe Rosewood
Briony gasped, snatching it up before it could disappear as quickly as it
arrived. She devoured the information, separating her emotions from the facts.
Was this what Toven meant when he’d said, “If you need anything within reason, you can ask the house for it”? Had the house listened to her request?
She watched the words fill out, all her questions being answered.
Liam Quill and his father had acquired Katrina and Simon, a young Eversun man they’d all gone to school with. She felt sick as she read that Canning Trow had bought Jellica Reeve, the woman he’d taken from the cell to test his elixir on.
The list didn’t include Larissa anywhere, but of course Larissa was now with Finn Raquin.
Her eyes skipped over the page; there was something missing. Neither Sammy Meers nor his father the general was on this list. But Sammy had been auctioned. He had been the first Eversun called onto the stage. Briony’s heart sank. If the Meerses weren’t on this list, were they even still alive?
Briony memorized the list of names until her eyes couldn’t stay open any longer. She didn’t know what she could do with the information, but having a sense of where her friends had scattered to the winds was good.
She crawled into bed with the piece of paper crunched between her fingertips and slept a deep, dreamless sleep.
* * *
In the morning, she woke to the smell of breakfast on her side table. Hot honeyed pastries, spiced sausage, and more fruit than she could eat in a week.
Briony picked at the tray and took a bath.
In the wardrobe, she found more empty hangers than occupied ones.
There were two plain wool dresses in the Bomardi style, built for the cold, and two clean nightdresses like the one she’d been in since yesterday. There was a dressing gown, pairs of stockings, plain undergarments in pale shades, and shoes for all weather.
She plucked up the underwear quickly as if it would bite her and tugged a pale dress off a hanger. She slipped into the clothes, wondering if they were magicked to fit the wearer perfectly. Magical fabric was a very expensive
luxury—but maybe the Hearsts’ wealth meant they didn’t even consider non- magical alternatives.
The sun had been bright through the thin curtains since she woke, but now she finally pulled them back. When the light greeted her skin, she realized she had not seen the sun since the day Rory died.
Hearst Hall was extraordinarily gorgeous. Where there had been gray shadows at night, this morning there were bright greens. She had a view of the front gates; the forest from which the fox had slunk was to the left. Her room was almost at the end of the wing. She pressed her face against the cold glass and could just see the end of the building to the left, perhaps only one more room at the corner. Briony turned and faced her room, letting the sun warm the back of her neck.
Was this her life now? She would eat, bathe, and sleep all in the same room, Toven Hearst would drain her from afar, and every now and then Mallow would slice through her mind for information.
She tried to think like Finola for a moment. Finola would be searching for an exit, but Briony already knew where the boundary line was.
Briony glanced down at her tattoo. Toven had placed his hand over it to transport her off the property. She could only leave with Toven Hearst.
The idea of using her womanly wiles to get off the property again made her laugh. Briony dropped her head into her hands and rubbed her face.
Perhaps she should have spent more time learning a thing or two from Larissa Gains.
Her fingers trailed down her cheeks to her neck, stopping at the metal there. The collar took her magic, and the tattoo kept her on the property. She didn’t know anything about either of these magics.
Her limited knowledge of heartspring magic came only from school rumors. Heartsprings hadn’t been common practice in Evermore, because mind magicians didn’t need them to fuel their power—and even their usage in Bomard had not been much spoken about until Mallow’s ascent to power.
As Katrina had told her years ago, heartsprings were actually a love-based magic originally meant for marriage. The two-way sharing of magic made each partner stronger. What Bomard had been doing was polluting the
purpose, creating a one-way taking of magic. She had surmised that the collar took her magic and funneled it into Toven, leaving her with no access to her own power. And Sacral Magic was another thing altogether—an added push of magic for two heartsprings who were bonded and wanted to share their bodies with each other. Canning had found a way to pollute that as well with his elixir.
As for the tattoos, Briony had no idea where to start. If she had the Eversun libraries at her disposal, she would work day in and day out to find the magic they’d used for the tattoos.
Suddenly she remembered someone who’d gotten around the tattoo.
Larissa.
Finn Raquin had removed her tattoo at the gate, but Toven must have known Finn’s plan.
Briony wondered if she could get that answer out of Toven.
Sighing, Briony went to the bookshelf across the room, grabbed a text on medicinal herbs and poultices, the least dry of her paltry options, and settled into her armchair for the rest of the day.
She dreamed about Rory that night. He was in formal black and white, with a rose in his lapel. She watched through a fog as Cordelia met him on the beach in a flowing Eversun gown, and they took each other in heart and mind under the sunset, marrying.
Briony woke up sobbing, unable to catch her breath. She turned into her pillow and screamed.
The next day she did it all over again, reading the second book on the shelf, a history of the Ash Wood in Bomard, meant for children.
And the third book on the next day: a biography of Vindecci’s biggest opponent, whom Evermore barely bothered to mention in their history texts.
On the fourth day, she started the medicinal herbs book again.
Every morning, she tried the door handle. Every evening, she stared at the list of names the house had given her. Every night she dreamed of Rory, of Didion, of Cordelia. She woke sobbing. And then she tried the door handle again.
She lost the desire to bathe or change out of her nightclothes, so she
simply stopped. When the food appeared, she glanced at it and went back to staring at a page or out the window.
Sometimes she pounded at the door, screaming to be let out, but no one answered her. She threw the candlestick and the incongruous jewelry box at the wall, and either she was incredibly weakened or the box could not be broken. She received no attention. She tried to heave her armchair at the
window, but the glass didn’t crack.
Toven didn’t disturb her again.
Was she just to exist like this?
She had no idea what the heartspring ritual entailed, so it was highly possible he’d already done it. The collar was already on her. She knew heartspring magic was different than boosting. Boosting was a quick pulse of power, but heartspring magic was sustained over time and distance—a long- term supply of energy, unless one became overzealous. Either way, Briony felt no change to her lack of magic. She still couldn’t access anything in her mind or her heart.
On the sixth day, Briony stayed in bed. She stared out the window with her head on the pillow, her tears leaving trails over her nose and onto the sheets. She wished to waste away. She could see Rory again, perhaps.
Her eyes were drooping closed against the sunlight when a harsh knock sounded on her door.
Briony jerked up, alert. She wiped her face and hurried out of bed. Before she could invite the visitor in, the door opened.
Serena Hearst entered, a displeased expression on her face. She wore a fitted blue dress, severely tailored in the Bomardi style of long sleeves and a tight bodice, and looked every inch the lady of the manor.
Briony was suddenly very aware of her unwashed body.
“You’re not eating,” Mrs. Hearst said plainly. “And apparently not
bathing.”
Briony swallowed, embarrassment rising.
“You must eat,” Mrs. Hearst said. “You are not allowed to waste away.
Your magic must strengthen Toven’s. The healthier the heartspring, the healthier the magic.”
Briony frowned, but before she could object, Mrs. Hearst flicked her fingers, and the wardrobe opened. The dressing gown flew out and landed on
her bed along with a pair of shoes.
“Come,” she said.
Briony slipped into the dressing gown and tied it around her waist.
“Where?”
“You’ll eat and get exercise. I’ll walk you like a dog if I must.”
Serena Hearst exited, leaving the door open.
Briony’s heart skipped as she tugged on the shoes. She was being let out.
