All Chapters of THE HEIRESS BEHIND THE MADNESS: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

Wren Julian's torch came bobbing back through the dark, and Kael snapped the laptop shut so fast the blue light vanished like a blown candle."Nothing," Julian said. "The passage lets out behind the old chapel. Silas is gone."I didn't look at Kael. If I looked at him, I would say it out loud, you were the only one who knew about the sugar pills, and Julian would hear every word. We were back in my room. Julian locked the door behind him and I heard the key turn.I sat on the edge of the bed in the same damp nightgown and stared at my own hands. They wouldn't stop shaking. Part of it was cold. Most of it was Kael. Four seconds, I kept thinking. Four seconds between his thumb on that screen and his face going white. Four seconds in which a whole man I thought I knew had turned to glass.And then the post. And ask the doctor who knew.I told myself he hadn't written it. I told myself a hundred things, lying there with the curtains drawn and Lyra's perfume still hanging in the pillows.

Wren I didn't tell Kael about the folder.That was the first real lie I'd ever told him. I stood in my room with Julian's bruises still blooming on my arm and the name Edmund Vane sitting in my chest like a swallowed stone, and I let him believe I had nothing else to give.He said, "Thank you for not running," in a voice so ragged I almost broke. I said, "I'm still deciding," and he nodded as though that was more than he deserved.By evening we were at dinner, because Julian had decided we would all be civilized.The dining room at Ashford Manor seats twenty-four. Tonight it held three. Julian sat at the head with his jacket draped over the back of his chair, since he couldn't stand a crease, and Kael sat across from me with his hands folded beside an untouched plate. Lyra was in London. Her absence felt like a held breath."To a quiet week," Julian said, lifting his glass. His eyes slid to Kael. "Though I hear quiet is your specialty, Doctor.""I find people tell the truth when I s

WrenFor when he comes.Three words and two dots, like she had started to say more and changed her mind. I held the card so tightly the edge cut into my thumb.Behind it, tucked into the fold of the deed, was a thin cream envelope. One word on the front, in my grandmother's perfect hand. Kaelen.Kael didn't take it. He looked at it the way you look at a dog that might bite."Open it," I whispered."Not here." His voice cracked in the middle. "Not with all of them watching. If it says what I think it says, I don't want to be standing in a dead woman's perfume when I read it.""She isn't dead.""She is to me right now."He slid the envelope inside his jumper, against his chest, and pressed his palm flat over it. I wanted to put my hand on top of his. I didn't, because I was already too close to something I couldn't take back."Give me a minute," he said. "Please."So I turned back to the drawer and gave him his minute. I could hear him breathing behind me, slow and careful, the way you

WrenOne hour. She's with me. She doesn't suspect anything.I read it once. Then I read it again, because the first time the words just slid off my head like rain off a window.Every kind thing he'd done came back at me at once, and every one of them looked different now. The tea he made me. The night he stayed until sunrise and said it was for my blood pressure. The way he looked at me over his coffee, like I was the only quiet thing in a loud house.Was any of it his own? Or was it all just a job, written up in a text and sent off to my grandmother?"Take your time," Beatrix said kindly. She leaned back in her chair. "This is the part I've always enjoyed, Emerence. When a person finds out what they're really standing next to."I didn't look at her. I turned to Kael.He hadn't moved. He hadn't tried to explain, either, and I think that was what held me still. A guilty man talks. He rushes. This one just stood there with his hands open at his sides, white to the lips, like he was wait

LyraI don't sleep in this house. I just lie still and wait for it to be morning.At twenty to four, I gave up and went to the window. My room is at the back of the east wing, the smallest one, with the sloping ceiling. The Duchess gave it to me at fourteen and said, "It has a lovely view, dear." It has a view of the bins and the east gate.Tonight, the gate had company.A man was standing out there under the dead lamp, in a long coat, next to a grey car with its lights off. I knew the other shape coming across the lawn without a torch. Nobody else in this house walks like he's carrying a coffin on his back. Dr. Vane.I put my forehead to the cold glass.Everyone talks about how Wren looks at him, but nobody talks about how he looks at her. I've watched it for weeks. He looks at her the way you look at the last lit window on a dark road. I once saw him fix her cardigan collar when she wasn't looking. Nobody has ever fixed my collar in my life.At the gate, the man put his hand on Kael