ago we’d been toasting the future, I saw great tongues of fire devouring the tables and the tapestries and someone who looked to be Saul. He’d been brought down just by the door.
I dropped my eyes to the floor, covering my mouth to hold in the screams.
She was right. Simply seeing that had made the entire thing that much worse. Now, instead of the collective group dying, I had a face, an image. I was never going to forget the blood, the smell.
I wanted to keep going. I could try to find Silas. But the fire was set in more places than we could see from outside . . . and there were no cries for help. If Silas had made a plan for me, one in which I survived, I would have to walk away now. Because seeing him in pieces or being consumed by flames would not be something I lived through. And if I walked much farther in, I might not make it back out.
I coughed, struggling to breathe, and ran back outside.
Lady Eastoffe took in the horror on my face and nodded once. I looked over at Scarlet and had to guess my expression was a hollow echo of hers. She was lost in what she’d just seen, and I could see all the ghosts in her eyes. I walked down and embraced her, and she held on to me tight for just a minute.
Taking Scarlet’s hand and mine, Lady Eastoffe turned toward the path they’d freshly laid out for my wedding and stared.
“Where will we go?” Scarlet asked.
“Varinger Hall, of course,” I suggested dully.
Lady Eastoffe pulled her chin up and started walking. “Come, my girls. It won’t do to look back.”
But I did look back. I watched as the curtains carried the fire up, up, up. She was right; we had to keep walking.
It was obvious to me now that this family must have seen at least one moment like this before. How else could they step away from it so calmly, as if it was only a matter of time before another moment landed in their laps? Why else would they map out how at least one of them should try to live if they could?
Silas had told me about the Darkest Knights in a way that put some distance between them and him. But there was no doubt they’d come face-to-face before. It was just that this time, he didn’t walk away from the meeting.
If we had been thinking, we might have gone by the stables for a horse. Instead, we walked in silence, trudging toward my childhood home. It ought to have given me a sense of security, knowing I was finally going to pass through the doors of Varinger Hall again. All I could think of was why I had to . . . I’d have rather stayed locked out forever. My ears were on high alert, listening for the sound of horses or screams or anything that might have told me to start running.
There were no horses, though. Or screams. Just us.
When we finally approached the front gate, a steward was waiting for us on the steps. He held out a lantern, seeing there were three shapes instead of two, that there were only female silhouettes, and that the fine carriage was nowhere to be seen.
“Wake up! Wake up!” he called into the house. By the time we were at the front steps, there was a small army of staff to attend our needs, including the sweet lady who’d brought me letters when I lived at Abicrest Manor.
“Lady Hollis! What has happened to you?” she asked. “Where are your parents?”
Instead of answering, I collapsed in a heap and screamed.
Thirty-Three
IT HIT ME THEN, THOUGH I’d been aware of it for hours. My parents were dead. My husband was dead. I was alone.
“They won’t be coming home,” Lady Eastoffe whispered to her on my behalf. Her face was steady but hollow, with two clear tracks down her cheeks where tears had washed through the soot and dirt. Even like that, she looked noble. She went to move up the steps and was cut off by one of the staff.
“We won’t shelter you,” he said, his chest puffed up. “Our masters hated your kind, and they—”
“Do you think any of that matters now?” Hester spat back. “They’re dead. And Lady Hollis is the mistress of this house now, so you’d better get used to taking your orders from her. These are her people,