Page 121 of Mortdale

I could taste the bitterness of despair on my tongue, feel it poison its way to my chest, swell my heart until it crushed against my rib cage. The things he’d been put through…I couldn’t even begin to understand the pains of his heart.

“He’s been preparing for this for a while, Willow. I wouldn't worry too much,” he said. “We need to be patrolling. Who knows if Ulric will pull one last trick out of the hat. That idiot doesn’t know when to give up.”

Henry left the room, and Arthur sighed, glancing around us and sighing again as he handed me a huge swollen envelope. “The librarian scraped up all he could find. The rest of the documents I got from city hall and Alfred’s study, like you asked.” He blew one last heavy breath. “He’ll kill me for this, witch-woman.”

“Thank you, Art,” I offered, hugging the envelope to my chest. “You have been a great friend to me, vampire-man.”

He pursed his lips, swallowing hard. “I don’t want to hear any of it. Logan says you don’t die, then you don’t die. He’s managed worse things. Death’s scared shitless of him. Saints, don’t I know it. It wouldn’t have him no matter how much he tried.” He sighed. “It won’t come near you as long as he’s standing by your side. No one takes anything from Logan Duncan without consequences. Not even death.”

With that, he stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

Piper laid on top of my bed as I sat on the floor, going through the documents in the envelope Arthur brought me. Before she’d become Agnes Briar again, she’d once been Agnes Deveraux. Married to the Count of Deveraux. A man of great means and a close ally of the clergy, one of the most powerful donors to the Basilica.

“Who inherited the Deveraux fortune?”

Liam, who'd taken to chewing on a stick of metal by the window, said, “That bloodline died off with the last count. His properties were divided by the king and the parliament.”

“So, he had no heir?”

He snorted. “He has many heirs. Illegitimate. Neither the crown nor the parliament will accept them. As you know, the act of marriage is sacred in Mortdale. The crown will legitimize only those children who come from marriage.” He itched his neck. “Though…the king’s been pushing to fix that for years.”

“Fix?”

He pushed from the window, dropping on my bed. “Screw it, you might be dead by dawn.”

“That’s a lovely sentiment.”

He waved a hand. “Logan is the king’s son. Lu was actually his sister. The old sick fuck…hurt his mother. He cornered her drunk at a banquet and led her to his room. Logan’s father found them. But not before…you know.”

I covered my mouth as hot tears burnt my eyes.

Liam went on, “Ulric wants to force him to take the throne. Logan refuses to even accept the legitimisation and he’s denounced paternity several times—he’ll only accept Edmund as his father. And the parliament recognises that. Edmund Duncan was a well-respected, loved man. Can’t say the same for the king.”

“It was his father’s last wish,” Christof said, coming in with a tray in his hand and lowering a cup of tea and biscuits in front of me. “That he’d been born his son and die as his son. Logan loved him, and Edmund loved him more than his own. That cost the both of them a lot.” He sighed. “When Ulric sent Logan away to command the naval guard, that’s when his mother lost her sanity entirely—at least what was left from the overuse of suppressants over the years. She knew Ulric would want to claim Logan as his own, and she was terrified Logan would find out the truth about who he was. At least she died never knowing he knew the truth from the beginning. His lordship is a smart man.”

Goddess. Was it too late to string a curse around Ulric’s neck and watch him suffocate on it?

My bedroom door drew open again. Theodora cried as she crossed my room, hugging my head tightly against her big bosoms. “Oh, my kind girl. Who’d do something like this to you?”

She sniffled, sucking back all her tears. “I know her.”

She pointed at the photo of Agnes and Sybil, standing side by side, smiling at each other. I knew they’d been friends before they’d gotten married, but I didn’t know they’d been allowed to meet in Mortdale, too. Let alone attend social functions and parade before cameras for socialite periodicals.

“Agnes Deveraux,” Theodora said, settling on the floor next to me. “Everyone was talking about her back then. They say she could be heard from down the road singing a mourning song and crying day and night.”

“What went down with them? Agnes and the count?”

Theodora leaned in. “I worked in their county at the time, for an old statesman who was close to the count. Rumour was it she was in love with him. And that he was taken by her, too. It was almost thought to be a love match. Not something anyone found unusual; her beauty was talked about amongst us common folk. People would say she’d straightened him out.” She stuck a little bread stick between my teeth and put a teacup in my hand. “And then it came out he had a bastard with one of her closest friends. People said he’d given the mistress a mansion only down the road from them. The countess herself couldn't get pregnant even though they’d been married for years; it was only after the mistress gave birth that she found out what he’d done. The count wanted to move the mistress and his child in, but then Agnes fell pregnant. Next thing we knew, the poor mucker’s feet were pointing east. His mistress had drowned in some lake, and the countess was gone by morning back to Meridian.”

Agnes had loved the count?

Agnes Briar?

The Agnes Briar?

The Holy Mother I knew seemed to be someone far from whoever was posing next to Count Deveraux. She was known to have a revulsion to any kind of human contact. She’d never taken any lovers even though many had wanted her over the years. Nothing good had come from their infatuation with her either; all had ended up dead. Which, as unusual as it had been, no one had ever doubted. No one could doubt the strongest Holy Mother to have sat in the coven’s iron seat.

By the time I’d gone through half of the Devereaux documents, the room had grown more crowded. The house guards, the kitchen aides, his grandparents who’d travelled all the way from Galahad. Everyone was here. In this tiny room. Some were sitting on the bed while Piper mouthed off another ankle-bitting story from her dance class. Some were sitting against the walls. Others perched on any bit of furniture they could lean against or sit on. Only one was missing, and I imagined he was there, too, standing by the door. Braced against the frame with one hand in his pocket and the other holding an unlit cigarette.