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Both twins look away, and in the heavy silence, I realize whose room it must’ve been. Dyphena’s. I suck in a breath. In attempting to avoid one conflict, I’d sparked another. “You don’t have to,” I whisper.
“What do you think she’ll find?” Atticus asks Rona. “Evidence of how terrible Dyphena thought we were? Proof of our monstrosity?”
“Neither.” The brownie waves her hand, and books fly from the floor to the shelves where they’d been before Atticus pulled them this morning. “Dyphena didn’t fear you. Or jump to her death. I’ve told you a thousand times she was murdered. You not listening doesn’t make it any less true.”
Jace balls his claws into fists, and his jaw clenches beneath the indigo of his tattoo. “You weren’t there at the coronation. You didn’t see?—”
“Didn’t have to,” Rona answers. “Put down that guilt, and look to the future, lad. She’s a bright one.” The brownie’s gaze slides to me, and I can’t tell if she’s talking about a metaphorical future or me. Either possibility makes me fidget.
Atticus shuts the book with a soft thud. Sunlight shines through his wings, revealing veins streaking through them like ribbons in marble. “The key to every room is on my open desk. Look all you wish, Rosemarie.” His voice loses its grumpiness. “The tower’s yours.”
“Until coronation,” Rona adds.
“What if I want to stay here after?” I ask. Both gargoyles look at me like I’ve lost my mind.
Jace shakes off the stupor first. “Whatever pleases you, love.”
When he calls me love, the warmth he wraps the word in makes me believe he means it. “Thank you.” I reach to brush his hair off his forehead, the light catching on one of my crystals to throw rainbows between us. A tingling sensation pulses through me as the colors flash across his face. His face that turns to stone the moment before my fingers reach his skin.
A crash of splitting wood has me yanking my gaze to Atticus. He falls to the ground, a statue amid the splinters of what had been the chair he’d sat in. His wings prop him up as if he’d been carved in that awkward position.
Huey screeches and takes to the air.
Disappointment drowns out my earlier excitement. “They’re gone again,” I whisper, my chest too tight.
“Not gone,” Rona says. “Not even asleep.”
“I know. They told me.” But it hurts all the same.
“You tired?” she asks. “Too tired to go digging for secrets?”
While the twins don’t scare me, the brownie does a little bit. She comes up to my thigh, dresses as though she wears every stitch she owns, and bakes a killer honey bread, yet she radiates power like a magical energy plant. Still, I won’t turn down a chance to snoop now that Atticus and Jace have given me permission.
Huey flies ahead of me as I race up the stairs, but Rona beats us. Of course she does when she disappears and reappears as easily as breathing comes to me.
“I’ll get the keys,” I say.
“No need.” She vanishes in one second and opens the door to the locked room from inside in the next.
Confusion hits. “Why did you ask them for the key if you could already…beam inside?”
“Permission and privacy, my dear. I have free run of the tower to clean every nook and cranny. I asked so they could tell you yes. It keeps us from having to deal with your guilt when you inevitably broke inside. We already have more than enough misplaced guilt in this house.”
I don’t waste time arguing about her assumptions. Stepping past her into the room with Huey buzzing close behind, I don’t know what gothic horror I expected to find, but it isn’t this.
No cobwebs lurk in the corners. No creepy drapes cover the antique furniture. No dust crowds the surfaces. The walls are painted a pale pink, and the sun from high windows throws long strokes of light over the stone floor. Twice the size of the twins’ rooms, this one looks ready for a fairy tale princess who has two gargoyles prepared to take on the world to make sure she’s happy in her tower.
“Did the room fit her personality?” I ask quietly.
“It did.” Rona’s wrinkled face softens. “She was kind and giving, a lot like you, although maybe not as strong as you. She was a woman of her time much as you are of yours. She should’ve been queen. Would still be queen.”
And I wouldn’t have been needed. I wouldn’t have known this realm existed. I would’ve still been wondering about rent and roommates and graduate degrees I couldn’t earn instead of thinking I was worthy of stepping up to the task of serving the Bridge of Souls.
Cool wind brushes against my skin, and I tell myself it’s just Huey whipping up a slight breeze with his constant motion. The little lie doesn’t stop chills from racing over me. This space doesn’t whisper scary in its simple prettiness. Yet the fact that it’d been designed for a dead woman’s safety from the way it’s the farthest from the stairs, guarded by the rooms of gargoyles, with lovely latticework over the windows like bars to keep someone out rather than a loved one in—it all serves as a reminder that no one is safe in this realm no matter the precautions the twins might take.
Dyphena died, whether by suicide or murder, while my gargoyles believed her to be their rightful queen. While Jace thought she might be his mate.
Each thought dominoes in my head, stirring up mixed emotions that have my chest squeezing like I’m wearing a starched sweater two sizes too small instead of a billowing blouse.
