Page 244 of The Poison Daughter
“I thought he was going to make me jump, too. The whole time I stood there—maybe twenty minutes, my legs trembling with the effort of balancing while I sobbed, looking down at Aidia’s body. All I wanted was for him to make me jump, too.”
The memory of blood on the white stone, of the dread in my body mixed with shock and grief, is as real now as it was then.
“And then he did.”
Henry goes unnaturally still. “How are you?—”
I nod to the tree and bushes beneath the balcony. “I’m blessed by the Divine of Fortune. I suppose Harvain’s purpose for me wasn’t finished yet. By his grace, my dress snagged two tree branches on the way down, so I only fell a story. The last thing I saw before I lost consciousness was Aidia’s bloody body.”
I meet Henry’s eyes and a sob rattles through me. “She turned my scars into stars and now she’s gone.”
My body bows under the sorrow of the secret truth I’ve held alone for far too long. My knees give out. But this time, when I fall, Henry catches me.
58
HENRY
Ihave died many times, but I’ve never felt pain like I do now.
When Holly passed, I felt responsible, but I can’t imagine carrying this burden as Harlow does. I cannot fathom her grief, even as I can feel it swirling around her. I sweep her into my arms and walk back to sit on the bench.
With this one heartbreaking confession, every single thing about Harlow suddenly makes sense—the brutal, unforgiving violence toward abusers, the single-minded rage focused on Rafe Mattingly, and the barely veiled contempt for her parents.
I’ve lived my life on the edge of boiling over, but this kind of wrath feels cleansing, holy. I want to bathe the world in Rafe Mattingly’s blood—present Harlow his head like some macabre centerpiece.
When Kellan showed me Aidia’s grave last night, I was so angry at Harlow for using my own heartbreak against me. I felt like a fool, and I was stunned by her cruelty. But this is unimaginable.
I blame myself for Holly’s death in a relational way, but Harlow is so traumatized by her forced responsibility that she made herself forget it even happened.
I think of her in her rain-soaked nightgown, sleepwalking on the balcony railing, and it all makes so much sense now.
When I saw her scar and then again when I raised my hand in theboarding house and she flinched, I knew there was more to her. I wanted to know then, but I knew better than to outright ask another survivor where their fear came from.
She is more than a knife. More than a pawn to be played in someone else’s scheme for vengeance. Beneath the prickly exterior, Harlow is wounded in the most horrifying, humanizing way.
She blinks away the tears and meets my gaze, and her fear hits me in a wave. “Am I mad?”
Her voice is so small. This version of her is so incongruent with the woman who has been trying to find a creative way to kill me for weeks.
I shake my head, sliding my hands up to cup her face. “Love is a kind of madness, but you’re no more mad than the rest of us. You’re just heartbroken. Losing a sister is like being cut in two. If you can’t heal the fracture, it stays with you and it messes with your mind.”
I try to settle her by stroking her jaw with my thumbs, but she’s too agitated to sit still. In all the times I’ve spent with her, there have been so few moments where I could use my influence on her, and now her impenetrable defense makes so much more sense. The more emotionally closed off a person is, the less malleable they are to Polm’s blessing. Now she’s full of hooks and frayed ends. I could easily soothe her, but I think that she’s been soothing herself too long. Everything is too pent up, and it needs to come out.
“Grief is a strange thing,” I say. “I can’t tell you how many times I thought I saw Holly in a crowd.”
She shakes her head, her eyes manic. “But have you had full conversations with her? Have you sworn you could feel her hand in your hair? Have you been certain? Or did you immediately remember that she was gone?”
“You’re not mad,” I assure her.
“The well is making my father mad,” she says. “It’s not just not healing and revitalizing. It’s making him more volatile. I have been in those waters. What if I’m mad too?”
It was obvious that there was something she wasn’t saying before, but I’m thrown by this admission.
“Do you think he wants the Mountain Well?”
She throws her hands up and paces across the white stone. “I can’tbegin to know his motivations, Henry. He’s going mad. I have only survived this long by knowing how to read him in the moment.”
I stand and grip her shoulders to steady her, and she blinks up at me with tear-stained cheeks. “Let’s worry about one thing at a time. Let’s get you out of here and we can skip dinner?—”
