Page 34 of Beneath the Haunting Sea

Wind stirred through her hair, and she could still hear the echo of hoofbeats, away down by the ocean.

“You don’t believe in the gods,” said Wen, watching her. “Why would you care about the Tree?”

“How doyou know I don’t believe in them?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Do you?”

The challenge rankled her. “Not really.” Her mind went back to her conversation with Hanid down in the ship’s galley. “I want to be in control of my own fate.”

He glanced at the door and she followed his gaze, staring at the weeping woman carved into the stone. The glints of light were gone. “You’ve never experienced anythingthat you can’t rationally explain?”

She thought of the whale in the storm, the eerie music echoing among the waves, the feeling she’d gotten when she first saw the sea. Like it belonged to her. “No,” she snapped.

He shrugged. “Well, I have.”

She wished he would stop looking at her with such intensity. It was driving her crazy. She turned and started down the path again, but he grabbed her armand pulled her back.

“Please don’t go down there. The sea is unpredictable, and that makes it extremely dangerous.”

For a moment longer she held his gaze, not challenging his half-answer. “Ahdairon choke you,” she muttered, then pushed past him, walking back up the path. She scrambled over the gate and paced through the garden-that-wasn’t-really-a-garden, and went inside, so frustrated withher situation she didn’t know what to do with herself.

Gods above. It was hard to believe she’d only been in this awful place aday.

Chapter Fourteen

RESTLESS AND FIDGETY, SHE DECIDED TO EXPLOREthe house. She paced through the back hallways, avoiding the music room in the event Wen might go there. She found the kitchen (Dairon ordered her out), the stairs to the cellar (Lyna did the same), and a small, vacant sitting room.

She climbed the stairs in the vestibule, not turning left to where she knew the boys’ rooms and theBaron’s suite were, but continuing on past her own room and to another, narrower staircase. This one twisted upward for a while, a worn, red runner curling down the center of it. The stairs spilled out onto a little alcove, with a window cut into the wall. It looked down over the garden, the sea glimmering beyond. From there, another staircase wound further upward to a green door at the top. She triedthe handle—surprisingly unlocked—so she opened it and stepped through.

She found herself in the modest foyer of a dusty suite—a handsome private sitting room that led into a dressing room, with a bedchamber beyond. She paced through the sitting room first, peering at the portraits on the walls, all dusty, all faded. Several were of a dark-haired young woman with smooth brown skin; her eyes staredout of the painting and straight into Talia’s. In one she held a dark-haired baby, her lips curved into a smile, contentment radiating from her face. In another the baby was older, and the woman wasn’t smiling anymore. Her expression looked strained, her eyes haunted.

The next series of portraits showed a blonde young woman, laughter in her bright blue eyes, a baby in her arms. In one of thepaintings, a dark-haired little boy stood with her and her baby. The painter had depicted the boy smiling, but unhappiness came through in his eyes.

It was Caiden, Talia realized. Caiden and Wen and the second dead Baroness. The dark-haired woman had to be the first.

She felt like she was disturbing a mausoleum.

She walked quieter after that, passing through the dressing room and into the bedroom.Sheets were draped over the furniture, transforming couches and chairs, bookcases and mirrors into unearthly shapes. Cobwebs clung to bedposts and the corners of the walls. The whole place had a tinge of sadness to it and smelled like dead flowers.

Talia circled back to the dressing room, tugging open the doors of a large cedar wardrobe that stood in the corner by a tightly shuttered window.The wardrobe was empty, save for a bright blue gown she knew immediately was a wedding dress. She fingered the silk. There was silver stitching around the neckline, and a crown of dried flowers tied to the hanger with a ribbon. It seemed the servants had given Talia all the late Baronesses’ gowns save one. This suite had clearly belonged to them, and she wondered if her own mother would have livedup here, too. Somehow, she didn’t think so. These rooms ached with longing—things lost, but remembered always.

She was the only one left to remember her mother.

Talia shut the wardrobe in a hurry.

She left the suite, stepping back through the green door and onto the landing, then up a third set of even-narrower stairs, patches of bare stone showing through an ancient blue rug.

The air grewcolder as she climbed, and she felt uneasy. She knew she shouldn’t be up here.

At the top was another landing, another window. This one was small and round, the colored glass showing an image of the white Tree with three flaming Stars caught in its branches. Talia stared at it, her mouth going dry. The glass looked very old.

What was tucked away up here?

A plain door stood to the right of thestairs, and she pulled on the handle, pulse jumping.

But this door was locked tight.

Ro came to help her dress for dinner, cinching tight the laces of the despised corset, and buttoning the back of a pale yellow gown. The waistline was embroidered in green and studded with pearls; the sleeves were poufs of confectioner’s cream, showing the length of Talia’s brown arms. She wondered which Baronessthe gown had belonged to—Caiden’s mother, or Wen’s.

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