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Back in my room, Lily threw open the curtains and started to air out the corset and underclothes I would wear beneath my wedding dress.
“Look at that sun,” she said, even though the sky was mottled with clouds. “I told you the storm would break, eh? But the vicar sent a note he can’t make it. Had too much to drink last night, the rumor is.”
“McKenna’s offered to take his place presiding over the ceremony,” Moira added while raking her fingernails through my hair.
The girls spent the next hour toying with my curls and rubbing lotions into my hands and face, peppering me with compliments about what a beautiful bride I would be and speculating who would be next. Lily voted for Lucy, and Moira thought McKenna and Carlyle would discover they’d been passionately in love for years. When I suggested Elizabeth might marry, they only burst into laughter.
“Speaking of Lucy,” I said, managing to extract myself from their primping, “I haven’t seen her all day. I really should go find her.”
“She came down for breakfast,” Lily said. “Grabbed the entire basket of scones and ran back upstairs. Said she shouldn’t be disturbed.”
It wasn’t until McKenna called the younger girls down to help with the cooking that I was able to give Moira and Lily the slip and race up to the attic.
I knocked on Valentina’s door. “Lucy,” I whispered. “It’s me. How is he?”
She threw the door open and looked both ways to make sure I was alone, then pulled me into the room. Her entire face glowed as radiantly as mine, and she hadn’t used a single salve. It was amazing how sheer joy could transform a person.
“Ask him yourself,” she said with a grin.
EDWARD COULDN’T STOP STARING at his hands.
Lucy had helped him move from the bed to a reclined chair by the windows, and he sat upright as casually as any gentleman, though his skin was still clammy, and his muscles trembled as he took a glass of water that Lucy offered him. He drank it greedily.
“I keep expecting the claws,” he said in a rusty voice, clearing his throat. He held out his hand, flexing his fingers. “Even when I was in control of my body, I could still feel them. Now they’re just . . . gone.”
His brown eyes met mine. Not even a hint of gold in them.
“He’s gone too,” he added. “The Beast. I could always feel him before. Now there’s nothing.”
Lucy took the glass from him. He looked over with a smile and rested his hand over hers. “Lucy explained to me the basics of the procedure you performed, but I still have questions.”
“And I’ll answer them all,” I said. “But you should rest first. You’ve been through so much.”
He flexed his hands again, marveling at them. “All I’ve wanted is to be a normal person with a normal life. I didn’t know I just had to die first.”
I smiled. Even brought back from the dead, Edward still had a sense of humor. Lucy grinned as well.
“As far as I’m concerned, you’re quite normal now,” I said. “Your breathing is slower, as is the rate of your blinks, but it’s nothing to be concerned about. Hensley’s levels are slower, too.”
“Hensley?” Edward asked.
“Oh—I forgot. You never met him.” I tactfully avoided mentioning that Hensley was the one who had ripped out the Beast’s heart. “Hensley is the professor’s son. You’ll meet him soon enough; he likes to crawl around in the walls and play with rats. He’s like you—brought back.”
Edward’s eyebrows raised. “There are more like me?”
“Only the two of you.”
His dark eyes shifted to mine. “Where’s Montgomery? He helped with the procedure, I imagine. I should very much like to thank him.”
Lucy and I exchanged a look, and when I didn’t answer straightaway, he guessed the truth. “He doesn’t know, does he? That’s why you have me hidden away up here.”
I leaned forward to take his clammy hand in my own freshly washed one. “Lucy and I brought you back ourselves. We’ll tell Montgomery soon, and he’ll be delighted. Today, though . . .” I glanced at Lucy again. Right now, Montgomery would be dressing in his suit, perhaps sharing a drink with Balthazar to calm his nerves. “Let me worry about what Montgomery thinks. You worry about getting used to being alive again. Now, open your mouth. I want to run a few more tests.”
I prodded Edward with a metal tongue depressor, then checked inside his ears and nose, and jotted everything down in a notebook at my side. On something of a whim, I handed him the tongue depressor. “Take this. See if you can bend it.”
He raised an eyebrow. “It’s made of half-inch thick steel.”
“Humor me.”
He took the metal depressor in both hands and gave it a slight jerk, no more effort than breaking a matchstick, but it bent like it was hinged in the middle. I stifled a gasp.
“Unnatural strength. I’m not surprised. All humans have powerful latent strength, but normal bodies are conditioned to respect limits so we don’t harm ourselves. Because of your condition, you can’t harm yourself, so your body doesn’t register those usual warnings.”
“Can’t harm myself?” he asked, confused. “I thought I was normal now.” His dark eyes found mine. From the day he washed up on the Curitiba, all Edward had ever wanted was a normal life.
“You’re better than normal now,” Lucy said tactfully. “You can’t die.”
This news made him stand up anxiously, but the effort was too much and he had to sit back down. “How do you know this?”
“Hensley is the same way,” I explained.
He rubbed a hand over his face. There was a heaviness to the lines around his eyes and mouth that hadn’t always been there. I could imagine a small part of what he was going through—when I’d cured myself in London, the wracking pain in my joints was gone overnight. My hands—like Edward’s now—were mercifully still. Cured. And yet the Beast had seen straight through my supposed cure.
“Lucy, could you give us a moment alone?”
She hesitated only a second. “Of course.” She left the room, closing the door behind her.
Maybe the serum cured your physical afflictions, the Beast had said, but it didn’t cure the illness of your soul.
“I can’t imagine what you feel like,” I said softly. “But I hope you don’t hate me for bringing you back.”
