Page 59 of The Beautiful Ones

I nodded.

“All of it?”

“E-enough.”

The word tore on its way out.

Behind the locked study door, Father said, “Someone has been in here.”

I stared at the brass keyhole. Until that moment I had assumed the men were alone.

Octavia’s eyes followed mine. A faint smile touched her mouth.

“Someone else reached the truth before you,” she murmured.

Elin.

Fear drove the next word past my stutter.

“Who?”

Octavia lifted one pale finger to her lips.

The gesture was playful, almost girlish. The cold that spread along the corridor was neither.

Through the narrow space beneath the door, three shadows moved across the carpet. A fourth shadow remained still near the far wall.

I stepped forward.

Octavia caught my wrist.

Her bare fingers were colder than winter iron. Frost whitened the blue silk beneath her touch, spreading through the weave in delicate branching lines.

“If you open that door,” she said softly, “you will not save her. You will only join her.”

“L-let me go.”

She released me at once.

From inside came Reuben’s frantic voice: “Someone was listening.”

Father moved toward the door.

I backed away, my skirt brushing the threshold. A narrow edge of blue fabric slipped beneath the door and vanished.

“Cécile?” Father called.

For one terrible instant, I nearly answered.

Octavia’s smile deepened.

I retreated into the bend of the corridor just as the study fell silent again. My breath came shallowly. The cold place on my wrist burned.

“Are you going to kill them?” I whispered.

Octavia considered the question as though I had asked whether rain might spoil the evening.

“Men are always disappointed when consequence resembles death.”