AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“It doesn’t make sense yet,” Jessamine said.
“It will. Be patient,” and it wasn’t any of them. The girl that stood before me had a face both familiar and strange, and I knew her—the other Helen. Helen Beaumont, the first to die, whose name I carried, the meaning of which I couldn’t fathom.
“Lie to me then,” I said, my voice a distant, fragile thing.
“Your name is Helen Vaughan,” the dark soul said.“And you were born here, at Harrow.”
MY NAME ISHelen Vaughan, and this is a lie. I was born at Harrow, and this too is a lie. Yet both are true.
My name is Helen Vaughan because some scrap of the dark soul remembers being Helen Beaumont. It was the first name given to it—to us—and the one I chose over a century later when I made myself out of bones and leaves and damp soil and gave myself a voice. When I walked up to Rachel Vaughan and slipped my hand into hers.
Only a Vaughan could take the dark soul—or a fragment of it—away from Harrow, subverting the binding that had held for over a century. Rachel Vaughan believed I was her daughter because I made her believe. She was the unwitting tool of my escape.
But I must reach earlier—to Haley Cotter, who died so that her father could become Master of Harrow. She was meant to be scattered, but love stayed the hand that wielded the knife. She was buried instead, tenderly and with regret, at the foot of the Harrow stone. And because she was not scattered, we were not scattered. We continued to heal. We continued to grow in power and in sentient thought until, one day, we were able to name ourselves and give ourselves aform of flesh and blood—not the crude dolls that were the shadows and the Folded, but a real body, one that could house our soul.
Only... not all of it. And so we who had been cut and divided so many times by brutal hands turned that violence on ourself, and the dark soul severed itself from me. From Helen. It shrouded the minds of the family, so they believed I was real, had always been there, and it whispered to my newfound mother until she fled with me, never to return. It made me forget, too, so that at least part of us would be free of even the memory of this place.
The part of the dark soul that remained in Harrow was wounded, bitter, feral. The things the dark soul made now were horrors. It had put all its love and all its intelligence into me, and there was little left but rage and the twisted urge to create things as angry as itself.
The part of it that could still hope, hoped that I would find freedom. But however deep the cut, we were connected, two halves of a wounded whole. I could never be free of Harrow, and the dark soul could never be free of me.
And then we were discovered.
30
I STOOD AMONGthe graves of the girls who had died to keep me bound, and I trembled. The figment was gone, but I could feel the Other all around me—all through me. We had been severed, but we were two halves of the same being. The same soul.
I turned to Bryony, searching for words—she would be horrified. She would hate me. But the look in her eyes was not one of surprise. “You knew,” I said. “How?”
She stepped toward me tentatively. “When we spoke to the figment in the folly, I saw something,” she said.
“You said you saw me.” Her words echoed. So did Kendra’s, all those years ago, the day I attacked her—no. The day she tried to gouge out her own eyes. I had buried the memory deep, but now it surfaced. How I’d tried to stop her, to grab the scissors from her. How she’d screamed.I saw her. I saw her.
“I didn’t understand it then,” Bryony said. “I thought I could see the dark soul within you because of your bond to Harrow. It wasn’t until you got sick that I started to think it might be more than that.”
“Because Roman could make me sick by scattering the bones.” I shut my eyes. “Desmond knows, doesn’t he?”
“He does. I don’t know how,” she said. “He doesn’t really trustme. He thinks that I’ll try to—to get rid of the Helen part of you, to fix the dark soul. But I won’t, I swear I won’t.”
I shuddered and looked away. “So I’m not human. I’m somethingthe Other made.”
“No,” Bryony said. She surged forward and wrapped her arms around me, tucking her chin on my head. I listened to the steady beat of her heart. I should have been panicking, but I just felt numb. I couldn’t even breathe.
“Hush, Rabbit. You aren’t like the Folded Ones. You aren’t like the shadows. The Folded Ones are rage, and the shadows are fear, but you arehope. The creatures of Harrow are made by the dark soul. Youarethe dark soul.”
“No,” I whispered. “I’m not that thing. I’m not evil.”
“You’re right. You aren’t evil.” She stroked my hair, holding me close.
“I’m a person. I have my own thoughts. I’m not—I’m real,” I told her.
“You are real. Of course you’re real. Of course you’re a person.”
Her words came from the distant end of a tunnel, and I was deep within it, in the dark, alone. Memories unlocked within me, things I had buried in graves shallow and deep.
Kendra, screaming because she had looked into my eyes and glimpsed the black stars and the thing that moved within them.
My mother, twentysomething and restless, looking down at the small hand in hers with a ghost of a frown. Asking me who I was. Then her features smoothing, breaking into a smile.Hey, Scout. Let’s get out of here.
