While I move my hand in the dark space, a soft voice invades my concentration.
Amelia, I wish I could tell you why I can’t teach you, but you’d hate me.
Oliver? Why is his voice in my mind? Nothing of him belongs in my mind, not even his voice, so I wrest for control of the fire again and draw out more flames to follow the path of my hand. They send flaming sparks coursing through my veins, capturing my heart in a fiery inferno that threatens to burst through my being and set this entire barn on fire.
I should never have allowed myself to get so close to you, Ameila, but I suppose this was inevitable. I can’t say I wish it were another girl; I’d still feel the same way. No matter what, I am trapped in this cycle, and you’re the only one who can get me out.
Another girl. Trapped in this cycle. I’m the only one who can get him out. Free him from what? No. I cannot continue to allow this distraction to slow my progress. Fire! Fire! Beautiful fire!
Amelia, if I had a choice, I would have chosen to never come into existence. Or I would have chosen parents not steeped in the Seven Deadly Sins, so that way you and I could love without this obstacle between us. But would we have still met if I were not what I am?
I think. Fire. Fire. Beautiful. Fire.
Amelia, I love you. Do you feel the same? And would you still love me, even after what I must do?
I snap my eyes open, snuffing out both flame and Oliver. “Colette, what on Deus’s great green earth are you doing? I know it’s you doing that! I know you’re invading Oliver’s thoughts, trying to show me something. Why?”
“Because you won’t listen to me otherwise, Amelia,” she says, her face downcast.
I grip a fistful of hay and start tearing the pieces apart. “But why now? You said you’d let me do this with the implication that I could perform this in peace until I got it, and then we could talk afterwards.”
“Amelia…” She sighs, going silent. She plays with the straw pile, picking up a few pieces, letting them flutter from her fingers, and then propping herself against the slats of the stall. “Even if you could manage to control your fire, you wouldn’t stand a chance against the Shadowmen.”
“Not you too.” I breathe in, suppressing a sharp sigh. “Oliver said he was gathering forces to help. Even if I don’t stand a chance, at least I will be able to make a contribution, however small.”
Colette narrows her eyes. “You don’t understand, do you, Amelia? Oliver isn’t gathering any forces. Oliver isn’t going to stop this. Oliver wants this to happen, Amelia, don’t you understand that?”
My hand flies for the lantern with the desire to set this barn aflame and pretend Colette didn’t say what she just spoke. “Why would Oliver want this to happen, Colette? Is that what you wanted to tell me, that Oliver approves of the Shadowmen Alliance killing those who aren’t witches? That’s nonsense. You don’t know him at all.” I cross my arms and look away from her.
“Amelia, do you truly find it so hard to believe that Oliver would want this? If I died the way most of the Shadowmen died, I’d probably share the same goal, but I died by their hands, so I can’t.”
My grip tightens on the lantern, my face still turned away from her. “O-Olly’s not like that.” My voice sounds pathetic, my words even more so. “He’s not petty. He understands the way this world works. It’s not the fault of people. The Vulgate dictates our lives, Colette. People are afraid that if they don’t follow it, they won’t die into Paradise, and following it includes hating witches. They understand that much.”
“But they don’t, Amelia, and that’s what I’m trying to tell you. That’s why you have to do everything in your power to talk Oliver out of his choice. He may want what the Shadowmen Alliance wants, but I can sense part of him may relent to you.” Her voice softens. “I can feel his feelings for you, Amelia. He genuinely loves you. It’s this love that will allow you to change his mind and gather the forces we need to stop the Shadowmen Alliance. There are Shadowmen out there like me, Shadowmen who do not feel the same way. Those will be the ones eager to help our cause.”
Oliver does love me. I know he does. But there is something small and dark in me that says that if Oliver doesn’t help our cause, then he doesn’t love me. “Colette--” My breath catches in my chest. She sounded so certain Oliver would help if I were to beg him.
“No, Amelia. You have to listen to me. Even once you get Oliver’s help, he won’t be able to fight what is in his nature. It’s called an Exaltation, and we Shadowmen must Exalt ourselves to Deus if we want to find ourselves in Paradise when Deus decides to end all this Seven Deadly Sin nonsense.” She stops and pulls in a few shaky breaths. “You are Oliver’s Exaltation. He has to kill a person he genuinely loves that is not in his immediate family. That is the task Deus has set out for him, and he won’t be able to stop himself now that he has fallen in love with you. It’s in any intelligent creature’s nature to want to free itself from suffering--from its Malady. I’m telling you this so that way you will be more careful around him.”
My hand starts to shake on the lantern, my grip tightening even more, the metal handle piercing my flesh. Angry tears thump against the backs of my eyes, and my breath comes out short and ragged. “N-n-no. That’s a lie. A-a lie.” The lantern trembles as the quivering in my body deepens. “You’ve changed, Colette. You never would have said that stuff before. Is that your Exaltation? To lie to me?”
“Amelia, calm down. Just think for a moment.”
I pick up the lantern. “I don’t want to think!” I throw it against the wall adjacent to Colette, the fire immediately catching on the dry wood.
Before I let my emotions go any more awry than they already have, I burst out of the stall in a fit of livid tears, my breath so trapped in my lungs I feel like I will collapse upon leaving the barn. But I don’t, so I run, and I run hard.
I’ll run forever if it means escaping this pain.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Morning light crawls up dawn’s pallor, coaxing me to my feet. I stumble out of an abandoned shack in the poverty-laden backstreets of Malva, and make my way toward Comely’s Inn. My head pounds, my eyes are full of night’s sand, and my mouth tastes like whiskey and vomit. Now I understand my mother’s opium addiction. If opium is anything like whiskey, I’m certain it was a barrier against the painful beating of this world’s terrible heart.
A belch escapes me as I drag myself through the backstreets. The belch makes its way up my nose, and I lean against a shack to wretch out the contents of my stomach, which are nothing more than the whiskey some beggar left to rot. I’m trying to remember what happened, but last night is clouded in whiskey’s haze, at least for now. Each step is agonizing though. Every time I turn my head, a wave of nausea washes over me. Instead of dragging myself through the back streets, I’m now stumbling. Oh, Deus, just strike me now for allowing the divine taint of whiskey to infect my mind’s unwanted memories. They’ll soon come back in waves; although I can’t recall them at this moment, they’ll make me bitterer than absinthe.
After what seems like an hour, I manage to emerge on the busy main street, regain my balance, and struggle my way toward the inn at the end of the street, just past Cathedral Reims. I stay on the sidewalk to avoid being trampled by horse-drawn carriages and the pointed boot heels of the fine aristocratic ladies. I’ll be like them one day soon after I have my season and Father manages to find me some rich barrister who will dote on me with the finest furs and jewelries. Oh, how lovely, how joyous that will be! We’ll have beautiful children we can spoil silly. And why stop there? We’ll buy out of all Malva and get rid of the stinking streets that make this place the cesspit that it truly is.
“Miss…Miss!”
I snap my attention to a gentleman who hovers over me with a worried look on his clean-shaven face.
“Are you all right, miss? Do you need me to escort you somewhere? You seem out of sorts.” He sniffs the air. “You don’t look like the type who has been in those den
s on the back roads. You’re a bit messy, but I can still see your finery beneath that grime. Got yourself in a bit of trouble, have you? Oh, we’ve all been there. Nothing to be ashamed of.”
He proffers his arm to me. In my deluded mind, I forget what this simple gesture means, and stare at him as though he is some mythical creature with three heads. “Pardon?” I ask.
He proffers his arm again. Because nothing wants to make sense to me, I refuse his gesture and push down the sidewalk, taking in deep breaths of the frigid winter air to clear this haze from my mind. Comely’s Inn soon comes into view, and with it Father and his pipe. I remember so many warm evenings of nights spent by the fire, Father puffing on the pipe while Mother knits and Nathaniel and I study our day’s lessons. The nostalgia clears some of the clouds in my head, making me realize I need to apologize for never having come home last night.
Feeling a bit more sober, I hasten toward Father with a hug at the ready. But as I come upon him, I see he is not in his usual mood. His eyes are red, and his pipe is not filled with tobacco. Perhaps I worried him too much with my absence. I tend to forget what a fuss this world makes over privileged women such as I.
“Father,” I say, looking up at his face as I did when I was a child, “it’s all right. I’m here. I’m so sorry for not coming home last night. I guess I just became so consumed in my own thoughts I walked around forever.”
Father pulls the pipe out of his mouth and throws his arms around me. “Oh, thank Deus, Amelia, you’re all right!” He squeezes me much tighter than my corset ever has. Sobs overtake him. “Amelia, Amelia, my sweet girl, Amelia. I was so afraid….I paced our room all night and said to myself ‘Not both my children, not both my children. If you can’t give me both, Deus, at least give me one.’”
I pull away from Father, the winter air pushing away more clouds. “What are you talking about, Father? Where is Nat?”
“Nat has been gone since last night. But he never left, or so I thought. Maybe--”
The clouds part entirely, leaving not a sunny day but a day drowning in rain and thunder and lightning and hail. “Nathaniel is missing? Where did he go? Where was he last?”
“He went to bed after you left. I went outside to clear my mind. When I came back, he was gone, nothing left behind. I searched the main road of Malva, but there was no trace of him.”
“And I haven’t seen him!” I try to think of the myriad of places in Malva where Nathaniel could have gone, but he had no reason to run off last night. After the burning, all he wanted to do was curl up in darkness and sleep. “Father, you stay here. I’m going to search for him.”
“Amelia, no. I’ll alert the authorities.”
“It might be too late!” I doubt Nathaniel would go off anywhere dangerous, or do anything awful to himself or anyone else, for that matter, but I refuse to wait around for him to come back, and I refuse to let Father to do the search himself. If Nathaniel truly is missing, then I know the blame is to lie with me. “I’m going to look for him, Father. You stay here.”
Without another word, I hitch my skirts and hasten down the sidewalk, my mind torn to pieces over where I should even start looking. Then an obvious thought comes to my mind: Isis. Of course! He might have gone off to see her, which means he might be in her dormitory. He hasn’t seen her in a while, and we’re in Malva, so why wouldn’t he chance to get even a glimpse of her? After all, she might prove to be more comforting to him than I have lately. I’m a wretched big sister. To the back streets again, I suppose.
I pick up into a full sprint on the dirt roads. The only inconvenience is the slush that splashes on the hem of my dress, shooting icicles through me that make my bones feel like they’ll splinter from the chill. The more I run though, the warmer I become, so the chill no longer courses through me but becomes a lingering nuisance on my skin.
The plum orchard comes into view. I breeze through the cemetery and run to the north transept, which feels like a mile, eventually coming upon Isis’ dormitory, with its single rose window set into a gothic facade. As I come upon the building, Oliver is exiting the dormitory in his white priest’s robes. His simple presence brings back the sickening words Colette told me about him: How he means to kill me because of some ridiculous Exaltation. And of course she wants me to seek help to cease the rebellion the Shadowmen Alliance has planned. But then Colette has never lied to me. But then she is also a Shadowmen. But then--
I groan inwardly and take heavy strides toward Oliver. I block his path. “Olly, my brother is missing. Was he in that dormitory?”
His eyes widen. “Amelia!” He scoops me up in his lanky arms, and though I want to pull away, I can’t. I can’t even refuse the deep kiss he captures me in. He pulls away. “I was worried you were angry with me, that you hated me for last night. I--”
“Not now, Olly. My brother is missing!”
“Oh, yes, right. No. He wasn’t in the dormitory.”
His calm response maddens me. Nathaniel is as much a younger sibling as he is to me--at least he is supposed to be. “Have you seen him at all? What about Isis?”
“Isis is in class now. I saw her just this morning, so he can’t be with her.”
His negative answer makes the nerves in my body stretch to the point of tearing. I’m so panicked I can’t even think to cry over a situation that seems so futile. Where else could Nathaniel be? He will turn up. He has to.
“Olly, you have to help me find him, please.”
“Amelia, I will. You know I would do anything for you.”
His lack of hesitation, his eagerness to help me, brings back those warm feelings I had for him last night before our fight. In fact, his warmth brings tears to my eyes, and I throw my arms around his neck, shouting apologies. “I’m sorry, Olly! I’m so sorry for fighting with you last night. It was silly and selfish of me, and I know you’re only trying to protect me. Thank you so much. Thank you.”
“Amelia…” Oliver gently pushes me away and stares deeply into my eyes with his silver ones. “As I’ve said, I will do anything for you. Now where do you think we should start?”
“I can only think to travel back to the main road. I thought Nat would want to see Isis, so this is why I stopped here first. But there is a toy store on the road, isn’t there? I’m just trying to think of all the places he would go to comfort himself.” I start ticking off my little brother’s hobbies on my fingers. “Toy stores, sweets, book stores, probably the florist because he loves flowers…We’ll check all those places.”
Oliver nods and laces his fingers through mine. The gesture is scandalous, especially because he is dressed in his priestly robes, we’ll be doing this in public, and he could be suspended from the church for such a gentle gesture. I should pull away and tell him I don’t want to risk his position, but after last night, after what Colette told me, I want to do everything in my power to prove her wrong. Oliver doesn’t want to kill me. His Exaltation is not me.
I nod in return, and we take off running toward the main road, which I soon discover is more crowded than it was this morning. More carriages pack the road, more people dressed in winter garb are crammed against one another, and the confusion of people moving to and fro has me stumped on where to check first. A gentle touch on my shoulder, though, reassures me that I am not alone.
“We’ll find him,” Oliver tells me. “We’ll spend all day, all week, all month…we’ll spend forever looking for him if we have to.”
His words stay with me until after we’ve searched all the places I mentioned. Nathaniel is nowhere to be found in any store. I slump down on an icy bench outside the florist’s, and bury my head in my hands, holding the tears back with the pads of my fingers. Oliver sits next to me and pulls me toward him. Though he is a cold-blooded Shadowman, he brings some life into my glacial body.
“Olly, where on earth could he be?”
“What if he’s back at the inn?”
I pull my hands away. “I suppose he could be, but I don’t want to get my ho
pes up that he is.”
“Then we’ll go there together, Amelia. You’re not alone in your feelings. I’m just as worried about Natty as you are. He is our little brother, after all, and perhaps my future brother-in-law.”
This comment brings a small smile to my face. “But you can’t marry, Olly, and in any case, Father will foist me on someone else. That doesn’t mean I can’t cuckold my husband though.” My smile turns into a smirk. “He’ll probably be doing the same to me anyway. That inevitably happens in arranged marriages.”
“Except you’ll be considered an adulteress for it, and he’ll just be considered a man.”
“As if I care.”
He kisses me on the cheek. “Well, marriage is a social construct, an institution. What matters are the feelings we have toward each other. Who knows? Maybe your Father will marry you off to some man near death. It’s socially unacceptable to re-marry once one is widowed. You’ll be free.”
I laugh. “I suppose I will be.” Talking of our future sends a bit of hope through me. I pull myself off the bench, and hold out my hand to him. “Let’s check the inn, Olly. Then we’ll go to Parson Hill, and if we can’t find him there, I’ll have to re-trace my memory, and possibly some steps.”
We do check the inn; I leave Oliver outside and check our room. Nathaniel isn’t there, and neither is my father. I do, however, find Father at the back of the inn in the smoke room all by himself. Instead of smoking his pipe, he has a tin of cigarettes clutched in hand. Ten come with those tins, and Father appears to have smoked about half of them. He usually smokes his pipe because he enjoys tobacco--now he appears to be using it as a form of escape.
“To Parson Hill it is,” I tell Oliver upon exiting the inn, doing my best to find cheer in this simple sentence.
When Stars Die (The Stars Trilogy) Page 19
