Page 13 of House of Roots and Ruin
Camille nodded. “Silas died the night of the fire…or sometime before. I don’t know exactly how it happened. But he was dead.”
“A ghost.”
Her stare confirmed it.
“But he didn’t…he didn’tlookdead.”
“They never do,” she said, fidgeting with the ties of her robe. “Not to you.”
I looked down into the tumbler, studying the way the lines of cut crystal refracted shards of light through the brandy. I could feel Camille staring at me, on the edge of her seat with concern.
When I dared to meet her gaze, I kept myself as still and small as I could, bracing myself for the storm to come. “I don’t believe you.”
Her mouth fell open. She’d not expected that. “Why would I lie about something as grave as this?”
I ignored her poor choice of words. “Because you want to keep me here. Because you’d say anything—doanything—to keep me at Highmoor.” I frowned, trying to remember the pair of girls on the stairs, trying to recall every detail as it had been, not as my tired mind had guessed at in the dark. “Those weren’t ghosts. Those were maids, dressed to look alike, dressed to look like our sisters.” A bitter laugh bubbled up inside me, bursting free like a boil popped. “No. Not maids. I bet you brought them here, hired them just for this. Actresses. To fool me. Oh, Camille.”
Her eyebrows drew together into a single worried line. “You think me capable of something so twisted?”
Slowly, I nodded.
Camille was the oldest.
Camille was the duchess.
And a duchess always got her way.
I’d been challenging her authority for months, slipping off on unsanctioned visits to the other islands, sending away for applications to Arcannia’s best art conservatories, begging to visit Mercy at court. She knew I wanted to leave and had concocted a plan to keep me here.
Yes. She’d do that. She’d do that and more to keep me from undermining her.
“You want me to stay here forever, a scared little girl jumping at shadows, because you need someone to take care of,” I said, triumph coursing through me as I began to see the threads of her motives woven throughout this entire mess. “You need to feel bigand important, to hear people fawn over you for your benevolence.”
She snorted. “You don’t get it. You don’t get it at all.”
“But I finally do. This was never about me. It has always,alwaysbeen about you. Your need for control. Your need to be admired. And look at the lengths you’ll go to get it.”
Camille set her tumbler down on a side table, staring off into the distance as if she couldn’t bear to look in my direction. “Everything I’ve done has been for you. Do you know what would happen if you ever left the islands by yourself? If you did go to court, go to school, go wherever? You…you…” She trailed off in a groan, balling her hands into claws of frustration. They trembled with pent-up kinetic energy, wanting to lash out and strike something. The table, the glass, maybe me. “You see them everywhere. Everywhere,” she repeated darkly. “When I came back for you at the tavern today, there you were. Introducing me to a serving girl who wasn’t there. I shudder to imagine what had happened before my return. What people thought. What people said. What they’re saying now.”
I remembered her strange avoidance of the girl, of Miriam, acting as if it was beneath her to acknowledge the server’s presence. I thought Camille had just been overplaying her role as duchess. But what if…
“Do you know how strange you look, speaking to them, carrying on entire conversations overheard as one-sided? You look mad, Verity, as though you’ve entirely lost your mind. If I wasn’t there, if you weren’t here, under my protection…you’d be taken away, thrown into an asylum. No one is going to believe a girl who talks to thin air.”
An icy line of worry trickled down my spine. For a moment, I could see it happening, could picture my hands gripping filthy iron bars, hear my cries for release. “You’d get me out, though…wouldn’t you?”
“To what end?” she spat, her anger rising. “News of your confinement would spread across the kingdom. Think very hard on how you’ll go on after that. No one is going to want a mad little fiancée, for a mad little wife, issuing out mad little children. You’d be ruined forever.”
I tried the brandy again but my throat felt too thick, too sick to swallow. It lingered in my mouth, burning.
“And then…it would all come back on the rest of us. People would talk. People would wonder. What do the rest of the Thaumas girls see? Do you want that on Mercy? Honor? Marina and Elodie? Everything we do always comes back round to those who love us. Think about them, Verity. Think about their futures. Please.”
I felt myself begin to nod, begin to acquiesce as I always did, but caught myself. “You’re the one who’s mad,” I whispered. “This whole scheme is insane. Those weren’t ghosts. They weren’t spirits come to warn me of impending doom. Things like that don’t exist.”
Camille watched me warily, as if facing down a wild animal capable of destroying her. “But they do.”
“How would you know? You say you can’t see them. If I’m the only one who can andIcan’t tell they’re ghosts—” I started to laugh again. The absurdity of the conversation had gone too far. It sounded as though we were actors in a badly written play, our dialogue too outlandish to bear. “You’ll have to do better thantwo girls in red wigs running about in Lenore’s old nightgowns. If someone was truly being visited by ghosts, they wouldknowit. There would be no question of it.”
Her body bristled and her stare had turned cold. “You’re so very sure of that?”
