by A. L. Tyler
Mrs. Ralston got up and left, and then brought back in some pajamas for Lena to change into.
“Is Griffin okay?” Lena’s voice was hollow.
Mrs. Ralston sat down next to her. “Well, yes, he’s going to make it. It’s very lucky that we have the doctors here for your grandfather. They say he probably wouldn’t have made it to the hospital, he lost so much blood.” Lena flinched, and Mrs. Ralston softened her tone. “But they’ve done what they can for him, and he’s been in and out since the surgery.”
“Surgery?”
“The bullet hit the bone and did some damage, and they’ve had to keep him decently drugged for the pain. He’s going to make it, though.”
They sat in silence for a moment, and then Mrs. Ralston got back up. “Now, get some sleep. Just give a holler if you need anything, and I’ll bring up breakfast in the morning.”
“Thank you.” Lena whispered.
And she was gone. Lena sat on the edge of the tub for a long while afterward, trying to make sense of what she was feeling, and finally turned the faucet on and let the tub fill with water. She undressed and lowered herself in, but felt sick after only a few minutes and got back out. She put on her nightclothes and tried to go to sleep, but she couldn’t.
Well aware that she still wasn’t supposed to wander up to the upper floors without permission, she found her way back to the library and climbed the stairs. She found her way up to the fourth floor, and made her way to Griffin’s room. Very quietly, she opened the door and slipped inside. She turned around and surveyed the situation.
There were instruments and machines set up everywhere; there must have been a rush to send them over. Griffin was asleep in the bed with an IV in his better arm. The arm that had taken the bullet was wrapped and splinted extensively, and was near four times its usual size due to all the layers.
There was a very old man sitting in a chair next to the bed looking over some paperwork. His hair was completely white, and though he had a considerable bald spot forming on his head, he had almost successfully hidden it using a comb-over technique. Very calmly, he looked up and over at Lena.
“I don’t believe you’re supposed to be here, young woman.” He said with a welcoming smile.
Lena walked over to the opposite side of the bed. They had him on a breathing tube, too. He was ghastly pale, and even though she knew he was sleeping, his lack of responsiveness was disturbing. “I just wanted to be sure he was okay. I mean, I’m the reason…”
The old man put down what he had been working on—Lena saw that it was a Sudoku puzzle—and folded his hands in his lap. “He’ll be fine. One of the worst open humeral fractures I’ve ever seen, but nothing we couldn’t handle—truly a blessing that we don’t have to worry as much about infection. That’s going to save a lot of time and energy in the long run. He won’t need the breathing apparatus much longer, but I figure it’s always best to be safe than sorry. And you must be the granddaughter? Eden is it?”
“Lena Collins.”
“Yes.” He smiled kindly. “Yes, you look exactly like your great-grandmother. A fantastic woman. Beautiful to a fault, but I’m told you act much more like your grandmother, Olesia. She was quite a woman, too, God rest their souls. A fighter. She would be proud of you for making it onto the Council—that never would have happened back in those days.” He picked up a bowl of hard candies that was sitting on the nightstand and held them out to her over Griffin’s sleeping form. “Would you like one?”
Lena sat down on the edge of the bed, bewildered. “No, thank you. I’m sorry, who are you?”
He smiled genially and put the bowl back on the nightstand. “Doctor Lyle Evans. I’ve been tending to your family for generations.”
Lena was taken aback. Lyle Evans—this was the man Warren Astley blamed for the death of his wife and the disappearance of his daughter? This man, with his comb-over and his sparkling white smile? He seemed too nice to be a murderer. Lena gave him a sidelong glance, and he just continued to smile at her.
“Can I ask you something? Something private?” Lena asked dubiously.
He shrugged. “Of course—doctor-patient confidentiality. I’ve kept a lot of secrets over the years, and I knew someday it would be your turn.”
Lena almost felt guilty for what she was about to do. Doctor Evans just didn’t seem the type. “I…well, I heard from somebody who would know…I think somebody told me that a while back you were working with the Astley family on a complicated pregnancy?”
He stared at her for a while, and then jumped back to attention. The skin between his eyes crinkled as he thought back. “Yes, yes. But that was over a decade ago. I did everything I could to save the poor woman, but she bled out. It’s a common risk for human women pregnant with Silenti babies. But how would you know about that?”
Lena swallowed, trying not to let her gaze wander. “What happened to that baby?”
Doctor Evans sat back in his chair and scratched his head, looking at Lena like he wasn’t quite sure what to do with her. For the conversation they were having, though, the mood was awfully calm; Lena was asking him some tough questions, and the man didn’t seem defensive or intimidating at all.
“The baby…”
“I know about your deal with Master Darius Corbett. I just want to know what happened to the baby. I promised someone that I would find out.” Lena whispered.
Doctor Evan’s eyes narrowed. Then he leaned forward, a very serious look on his face. “Between the two of us, I don’t think your grandfather has much longer. A few more years, and this would have died with me, but your family continues to be a wonderfully well-kept box of secrets. I won’t ask who you’ve been talking to, because it would get that person in a lot of trouble, if you promise to keep the secret.”
Lena nodded.
The doctor nodded as well. “As you said, over a decade ago I was asked to help with a difficult pregnancy. An extremely difficult pregnancy. And as far as the Astleys go, I’m sure you’ve noticed that they don’t quite fit in around here. They have a penchant for human religions and decently extreme political views, and while I don’t care about any of that, some people do. All of this,” he gestured to the machines, the IV, and all of the other medical equipment lying around, “Costs money. Research and education cost money. And as such, now and more so as a young doctor, I’m at the will of the person that funds me, and that person is your grandfather. So when he approached me one day and told me to tell the Astleys that their daughter had died in the delivery or shortly after, I didn’t have much of a choice. I asked him what he wanted the child for, and he said he didn’t—only that Darius Corbett would be in contact with me. Well, he was, very shortly, and he told me to either keep her or give her away; he didn’t care, so we kept her on with our other housekeepers.” He gave Lena a saddened look. “I’ve saved a lot of lives over the years with that money, and I saw to it that she had a good upbringing.”
Lena could hardly believe her ears. It had been Pyrallis Daray, and not Corbett, who had paid Doctor Evans off for the deed, and he hadn’t killed Mrs. Astley at all; it must have been a creative embellishment on Master Corbett’s behalf. But if Daray had been in on it, then what about the rest of Astley’s story?
“So, you’ve had her the whole time?” Lena asked.
“Almost.” Doctor Evans raised his eyebrows. “A few years back, Master Daray asked me to have the child sent here—I guess your uncle had volunteered to take a few children, so an explanation was conveniently unnecessary.”
Lena’s brow furrowed. “What? Who?”
“My wife named her Cheryl, after her grandmother.”
“Cheryl…”
She had arrived at Waldgrave just after Warren Astley had been turned out of the Council and the community; Daray must have been afraid that he was going to go looking for her. Since Astley was especially not to be around Lena, it was only too convenient to keep his lost daughter in the same house. The timeline, and the bigger picture, were slowly
coming together in her mind. Kelsey Astley—Cheryl—was stolen just before Thomas was killed. The reason Kelsey had been stolen was to blackmail Astley for information on Aaron and Lena’s whereabouts.
Master Daray had been lining up to claim his granddaughter after the death of his grandson, when he would have the legal recourse to call for custody of her. Master Daray had been behind Thomas’s murder the whole time, even if he was using Darius Corbett to carry out his actions from behind Waldgrave’s walls.
Lena broke out in cold sweat. He had killed her grandfather, her father, and her brother. And then he had killed Master Corbett to get rid of the evidence when he threatened to out his secrets for stealing Griffin. She felt sick again--sick, and angry. Somewhere, he was dying—probably blissfully drugged out of his mind. But Lena still had questions, and she wasn’t going to let him take the answers with him.
She looked squarely at Doctor Evans. “Where is my grandfather?”
Evans checked Griffin’s pulse and his IV, and then made for the door and gestured for Lena to follow him. He brought her to a door a ways down the hall and went in with her; Lena had only been in the room one time before, after Astley had tried to strangle her. Despite the fact that he was dying, he actually looked much better than Griffin did. He wasn’t hooked up to anything, and he was actually looking quite comfortable in his bed with his cat curled up near the footboard. He was awake, labored in his breathing, and looking extremely tired. As Evans went over and started taking his pulse and asking him questions, Daray’s eyes darted over to Lena.
Did you find it?
Lena looked over at Evans. “Can I have some time alone with him?”
Evans looked up at her. “He doesn’t have much time…” And then he glanced very suddenly back at Daray, who must have communicated something private to him, and excused himself.
Lena walked over next to the bed. “Why did you tell Astley to kill me?”
Daray stared at her, but his eyes didn’t look exactly focused. He wasn’t surprised, and figuring that he was about to die, he thought it best to go out with a bang.
Because I needed to watch over you, and Howard never would have trusted Griffin unless he had proven himself under incredible fire. Consequentially, it also made him paranoid to let you leave the house, which was an unexpected perk. You’ve all played out my plans very well.
Lena bowed down over the bed, bracing herself on her fists as they clutched the bedspread. “I know all about your plans. I know everything, and I hope you’re suffering.”
For a moment, Pyrallis’s eyes went wide. I take it that you found it.
“You’re a wicked man, and I want you to know that no one here will mourn your passing.”
You’re the wicked one here, Eden…I had always hoped to see the promised lands before my passing, and now we both know that it will never happen, thanks to your stubborn attitude.
Lena straightened back up, still feeling sick to her stomach. “You’ve ruined a lot of lives.”
I have no regrets.
She shook her head. “I want you to know I’m never having children.”
Daray only stared at her, his eyes still glistening with the destiny that he had evaded for so long. He coughed slow and deep, and turned away.
“I win, and there’s nothing you can do about that. This religion dies with you. But there’s one thing I have to ask you, to save the future of this poor, backwards society because there’s no use fighting over it anymore.” Lena felt her voice shaking in anger. “I want to know who stole it from you.”
He turned his head slowly back to face her. He was suddenly grimacing and wracked with a fit of coughing so severe that it looked like he was going to suffocate as he gasped for breath, and she didn’t care. But then, as he looked up into her eyes for the last time, she heard it—he was laughing. He reached out and grabbed her shoulder to pull her down towards him.
His lips were smattered with the phlegm that he had just coughed up, and his voice was so hoarse that he was barely audible. In a rank breath, he whispered in her ear, “I was a better Daray than you’ll ever be!”
And then he went into a fit of convulsions; the cat leapt up and off the bed, and then watched with interest from mere feet away. Daray’s whole body went rigid and shook; his eyes looked as though they were going to pop out of their sockets, and his tongue lolled out of his mouth as his head pitched sideways. Still caught in his grasp, Lena was pulled down so that her head was pressed to his chest, and she heard his heart go from a regular beat to a frantic, erratic pounding, like a small animal had been trapped in his ribcage and was fighting to get out. He finally went lax, and Lena pulled herself free and backed away into a corner of the room.
When she finally got up the nerve to look back at the bed, she was horrified to see that his eyes were still wide open and looking in her direction; for the first time, they didn’t contain the look of death that had resided there for so long. Master Pyrallis Daray was dead; he had taken the secret of the portal with him.
Lena got up and half ran from the room like a scared child, afraid that the old man would somehow resurrect himself and come after her. Once in the hall, she closed her eyes and took a moment to breath and steady her pulse. The noise of a shattering glass and water splattering on the hardwood floor broke her concentration, and she opened her eyes toward the sound. Howard was standing just down the hall, his hand still poised to hold the cup of water.
He had a look of utter disbelief on his face. “He’s…gone, then?”
Lena nodded in a manner that might have been mistaken for serenity if one did not know everything that she had gone through; then she closed her eyes again.
She was the last Daray. Her only relation in the world standing feet away. The last twenty-four hours had been quite a day, and while she finally felt compelled to lock herself in her bedroom so that nothing else could happen, she knew there was one last thing she really needed to do. She walked down the hall and gave Howard a brief hug before continuing on to Griffin’s room.
Doctor Evans had resumed his place beside the bed, but excused himself when Lena entered the room to meet her by the door. From beneath wrinkled, sagging brows, he looked into her eyes and she gave him a curt nod. He left the room as Lena walked over to the bedside. Griffin’s eyes were open and dilated; they wandered away from the ceiling and onto Lena’s face when she got close enough.
“Griffin, I’m so sorry…” She whispered.
What little expression he had mustered didn’t change. I’ll be okay, it doesn’t hurt. It didn’t hit anything—
She tried to keep her voice as soft as she could, but she could hear herself quavering. He would want to know immediately, but it wasn’t fair that he had to find out like this. “Um, no…Griffin, I mean, I’m sorry. Um, Master Daray just…he’s gone, Griffin. He just died.”
His unfocused gaze returned to the ceiling. What?
“He’s gone, Griffin. I thought you would want to know before everyone else does.” Lena took a deep breath and exhaled it sharply. “You’re in charge now. Waldgrave belongs to you. He died.”
They were both quiet for several long minutes; Griffin finally looked back at her.
You shouldn’t be here.
Lena reached out and touched his hand very gently, careful not to move his arm. There was a pounding in her head and an aching in her throat. “I’ll come up and see you tomorrow, then, okay? And thank you…thank you for everything, Griffin.”
She turned to leave. When she opened the bedroom door, Daray’s cat ran in and past her. She turned in time to see him jump up and curl into a ball near the foot of the bed; Griffin didn’t even notice. The cat was looking at Lena quizzically, as though questioning why she was there—or if she even was there to begin with; it was, perhaps, the friendliest sentiment it had ever shown her.
*****
CHAPTER 19
Lena hardly slept that night. She had somehow found her way back to her room, and then collapsed onto the
bed. She couldn’t bring herself to turn off the lights, and stared around the room for hours, afraid that Rollin was coming for her. She had no delusions where he was concerned—they were not done with each other. He had underestimated her once, and he wasn’t going to do it again. And Lena wasn’t going to make his mistake; she wouldn’t be underestimating him. It took hours for her to wear herself out enough to subdue the panic and adrenaline in her veins, and she finally passed out from exhaustion just after dawn.
Mrs. Ralston opened the door as quietly as she could around ten that morning, intent that she would not wake Lena up if she was still sleeping. Lena sat bolt upright at the sound of the clicking door latch and leapt to her feet.
Mrs. Ralston was wearing a startled expression. “Oh, I’m sorry—you need to sleep. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
She went to close the door again, but Lena stopped her. “I’m not tired. I’m not going to sleep again. It’s okay.”
Very hesitantly, Mrs. Ralston’s face appeared again, topped with her signature hair bun. “Would you like something to eat?”
Lena didn’t even need to think. She settled into a sitting position next to the bed. “No. I’m not hungry.”
“Is there anything I can get you? Anyone you want to talk to?”
Lena laid her head against the side of the top mattress. “I don’t think so…”
Mrs. Ralston straightened up and came fully into the room. “Howard would like to spend some time with you, if you’re feeling well enough. There are some other members of the Council, too, who would like to take your story for the record—but don’t worry about that now. It can all wait for you, until you’re ready.”
She buried her face into the mattress for a moment. How her head hurt today…but she wasn’t going back to sleep. She didn’t know what she was going to tell the Council, either; telling them the truth about Ben Collin’s murder, and the possibilities of where the portal could be, was a risk she wasn’t sure she was willing to take. She got to her feet. “Is Griffin awake? Is he okay since…?”
