you were a child. I am sorry for that.”
He pauses. “No, I am sorry you felt deprived, but I know that I was kind to you, and I did find time for you. It simply wasn’t enough. There was a hole that you needed filled, and I couldn’t do it. I still cannot.”
He steps forward. “Even if you take me, you will not have me. My ghost will remain, waiting for Bronwyn, so I may watch over her. If you kill her, I’ll end my life and join her. Either way, you will not have me. What you can have is peace and a place in my memory still touched with the love I bore for my sister. Let us go, and you leave me with that.”
Her figure wavers, and I think that’s done it. She finally understands, and she’ll take that and leave. But then she blazes back, brighter than ever, her face set as she says, “No.”
“Yes,” says a soft voice behind us.
I look over to see Eliza with Teddy beside her, holding her hand.
“Banish her, please,” Eliza says. “You’ve freed us. Now, banish her.”
Cordelia snarls and lunges at Eliza, who does not move.
“You can’t harm us now,” Eliza says. “For over a hundred years, you’ve terrorized us. Now, we have been named, and you can do us no harm. Your sins are named, too, and you have no reason and no right to stay here. So you will not.”
She turns to me. “Banish her.”
“I-I’m not sure how.”
“Just say the words. Only the living can do it.”
I take a deep breath. “Cordelia Thorne, I banish you from this house and from our lives. I wish you peace, but I want you gone.”
“No!” Cordelia says, tears evaporating as she snarls.
She keeps snarling, beyond protests, just cursing and snarling like a wild beast. I say the words again and again and again . . . as she fades. Even when she’s gone, her howling rage echoes through the room, and I stand there, paralyzed and tense, waiting for her to return.
“She’s gone,” Eliza murmurs. “May she indeed find peace whether she deserves it or not.”
She turns and points at the ring. “Take that.”
I shake my head. She grips my hand and, again, I faintly feel her touch, like a warm breeze brushing my skin. She propels my hand to the ring and presses it overtop.
“Yours,” she says. “You earned it. As you have earned . . .”
Her gaze turns to William, standing there, silently waiting, tensed to fight again. She walks to him, still gripping Teddy’s hand, and she looks up into his unseeing face.
“At least now I know it was not my fault I could not win you,” she says. “Your heart was already taken.”
“You’ve earned him,” she says to me. One last smile for William. “Now be sure you earn her in return.”
Teddy turns my way and gives a shy wave, and then they fade until William and I are alone in the room.
William stands there, confused and tense.
“Cordelia is gone,” I say.
After a moment, he puts his hands around my waist, and we collapse into the chair. We sit there, holding each other as the hall clock ticks.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “For what Cordelia did to you.”
“I believe that’s my line,” he says with a wan smile.
I shake my head. “What you went through all these years is far worse.”
He’s quiet. Then he says, “I won’t say it was worse, but yes, I’ve spent thirteen years tormented by thoughts of what I unleashed on the world. I could not bring her to justice, and I have regretted that ever since. Knowing now that she was never out there, never hurt anyone else . . .” He kisses my forehead. “It will be easier. So much easier.”
I take his face in my hands, and I kiss him. I pour all my fear and my pain into that kiss. Fear for how close I came to losing him and pain for what he’s suffered, that shadow cast over his life.
William says he was happy to stay here in self-imposed exile. I don’t doubt that given the choice, he’d have spent most of his life at Thorne Manor. But how much of it was a choice? How many times had he gone to London, heard whispers of how he murdered his fiancé, and been reminded of the person he suspected had really killed her? Reminded of the fact that his sister was out there in the world, possibly doing the