Chapter 144: Chapter One Hundred-Forty-Four: Pebble

//CLARA//

My body wouldn’t stop shaking. Each tremor sent fresh pain radiating through my ribs.

A stabbing reminder of the weight Bartholomew had used to pin me down. It felt as if his knees had left permanent indentations in my lungs.

I stripped the dress off me, letting the ruined silk fall in a heap at my feet. My fingers, stiff and slick with my own blood fumbled with the buttons.

I stood there in my chemise, staring at the map of myself in the mirror.

A dark flower was blooming across my jaw, and my lip was a mess of crusted crimson. I reached back, my fingers playing along the gold chain at my neck.

"He didn’t find you," I whispered, kissing the cold ring. "He didn’t touch the only thing that matters."

Rage boiled in my stomach. I wanted to scream. I wanted to find him and drive something sharp through his smug, aristocratic face.

But I forced my lungs to expand, forced my jaw to unclench. One breath. Two. The shaking subsided by fractions.

My fingers traced the ring’s circumference again and again, a prayer without words.

I’d temporarily dealt with Bartholomew, and men with bruised egos always needed time to lick their wounds.

He was probably hiding beneath his mother’s skirts right now, plotting his next move. But he would strike again. That was inevitable.

I would kill him for what he’d done. The thought settled in my chest with strange calm. Once Casimir returned—when he saw what Bartholomew had done to me—he would fly into a blinding rage.

He might murder Bartholomew outright, and that would be too merciful. I wanted Bartholomew to suffer first.

And Aunt Cornelia. My fingers tightened on the ring until the metal bit into my palm.

I’d already imagined a thousand ways to end that vicious old woman.

I would wrap my fingers around her throat and squeeze until the light left her eyes, and I would feel nothing but satisfaction.

I rehearsed it in my head. The way her face would go red, then purple, then gray. The way her tongue would swell. The way her body would go limp.

The letter opener on my desk had never looked so tempting.

Days passed.

Casimir hadn’t return yet.

I sat by the window until my eyes burned from searching the horizon.

The wound on my hand closed to a raw thin pink line. The bruises on my face faded to yellow shadows I could conceal with powder.

Then came the faint tapping against the snow-covered wall of my terrace.

My heart lurched in my chest. For one wild second, I thought of Casimir.

But no. Casimir would skillfully scale the wall and appear in my room without announcement.

I pulled my fur robe tight over my nightdress and crossed to the terrace door. The cold hit me like a slap, stealing my breath. The snow crunching beneath my bare feet, and scanned the darkness.

Something whistled past my face.

"What the?"

I jerked back, felt the displacement of air against my cheek, and heard the soft thud of a pebble hitting the wall behind me.

I leaned over the baluster.

Below, in the snow-drifted garden, stood Hattie.

Even from three stories up, I could see her shaking, thick wool coat notwithstanding, her nose burning red in the moonlight, her breath coming in visible clouds.

"Hattie?" I whisper-yelled, cupping my hands around my mouth. "What are you doing? It’s the middle of the night. You’ll freeze to death."

She looked up, her face pale oval against the dark.

"Miss Eleanor!" Her voice barely carried over the howling wind. "Someone wants to see you!"

"What?"

I leaned lower, dangerously low, straining to catch her words. The cold burned my ears, my exposed fingers.

"Someone wants—"

Hattie began again, but movement behind her interrupted.

A shadow detached from the bushes. A man’s shape, familiar in its proportions, also shaking with cold. He tipped his head back, and moonlight caught his features.

My breath stopped.

"Cl—Eleanor," he called up, voice cracking with cold. "Please. We need to talk. It’s urgent."

"Gary?"

I stared down at him, mind racing through implications. Gary was supposed to be hidden away. Yet here he was, sneaking through my garden in the dead of night, using my maid as messenger.

"How did you get here?" I demanded, keeping my voice low. "The gates—"

"Climbed the wall near the stables," he interrupted, teeth chattering audibly. "Please. I can’t stay long. I’m freezing my balls off out here."

Stupid. He’s so fucking stupid.

I made my decision in the space of a heartbeat.

"Hattie," I called down. "Bring him to the servant’s entrance. I’ll meet you there. Give me five minutes."

Hattie nodded, already moving to guide Gary through the shadows. I pulled back from the baluster and ran.

I stepped back into the room, my mind spinning. The door was a solid slab of oak, bolted from the hallway, a one-way barrier designed.

I didn’t have a key, but I knew the one thing that would make the guard move faster than a direct order. The fear of a scandal they couldn’t cover up.

I crossed to the washstand, grabbed the porcelain basin and carried it to the center of the room. I hoisted it high and slammed it onto the floorboards.

The sound was a cannon blast in the dead silence of the night.

I didn’t stop there. I grabbed a chair and upended it, then threw a stack of books against the door.

"No!" I screamed, pitching my voice into a register of panicked terror. "Get away from me! Help! Someone help!"

I dove toward the heavy velvet curtains, wrapping myself in the shadows beside the wardrobe and held my breath.

Seconds later, the heavy iron bolt shrieked.

The door swung open with a violent thud. A startled guard stumbled into the room. He saw the shattered basin, the overturned furniture, and the open terrace door letting in a gale of snow.

"Miss Eleanor?" he stammered, his gaze darting toward the balcony, convinced I had either jumped or been taken.

He rushed toward the cold wind of the terrace, his back turned to the darkened corner of the room.

I didn’t wait. I slipped out of the shadows, darting through the open door and into the dimly lit hallway before he could even reach the balustrade.

My feet found the back stairs by memory, the narrow servant’s passage.

The kitchen lay at the bottom, cold and silvered by moonlight through the high, barred windows. I pressed myself against the wall beside the door and waited.

It opened a moment later. Hattie entered first, her eyes finding me immediately in the darkness.

Gary followed, ducking his head beneath the low frame, his coat dusted with snow that melted immediately in the warmer air.

I stepped out of the shadows, smacking him in the chest.

"Do you want to get yourself killed?" I hissed. "You’re supposed to be in hiding, Gary. And you’ve dragged Hattie into the middle of this."

"I know and I am sorry, but I have to tell you something."

Gary’s hands rose, palms out, in a silent plea. In the pale moonlight, he looked like a specter. His face was gaunt, thinner than when I’d last seen him, dark circles carved beneath his eyes like bruises.

He looked at Hattie, then back to me, his eyes wide and fractured.

"It’s bad, Eleanor," he rasped. "I haven’t closed my eyes in days. Every time I do, I’m back there. But it isn’t me, Eleanor. It’s him. The older version... of me."

Elias. He meant Elias.

My fingers were numb from the kitchen’s chill, but the cold that settled in my gut was worse. I curled my hands into fists to stop the shaking.

"What do you mean? You’re seeing his life?"

"It isn’t just seeing. It’s remembering," Gary whispered. "I’m dreaming his memories. I know where he put it. I know where to find the ledger. But I can’t do it alone. I need Casimir."

"Casimir hasn’t returned," I said, the panic I’d been suppressed for days finally surfacing. "He went to the Velvet Noose to find a lead on you and—"

Gary stiffen as if I’d slapped him. His breath hitched in a gasp, his eyes snapping to mine with a wild, wide-eyed terror.

"The Noose?" he choked out, the last bit of color draining from his face until he looked like a goddamn ghost. "No. No, no, no. Not there. Anywhere but there."

"Gary what are you talking about?"

Fear crept up to my chest. He started pacing the small kitchen, his hands flying to his hair and tugging at the roots.

"I saw it, Eleanor. I saw it in that... that fever dream, or memory, or whatever the hell is happening to my brain. The cellar with the red door. It’s not just some upscale gambling den for the elite to lose their shirts. It’s the nest. It’s where the syndicate keeps the things they don’t want the world to find. It’s a slaughterhouse."

He stopped abruptly, his eyes fixated on a point somewhere over my shoulder, trembling so hard I could hear his teeth rattling.

"If he’s at the Noose... if they’ve got him... Casimir might never coming back. Not in one piece, anyway."