She gave thought to her remaining options. She could say her goodbyes and slip into travel, allowing Samael to detain her, to sever the astral cord binding her soul with her body. Margery would find her in the morning, cold and dead. Her husband and daughters would mourn, wondering what strange occurrence had happened to cause the death of so young a woman. They would point to the trauma of Henry’s birth as reason enough, though Thomas and Ginny would certainly suspect something more sinister.
But Adelaide would never be reunited with her family. Would not meet them again in the next world, for her soul would be forever detained in the prison of the icy Void.
This she could not bear.
Which meant there was only one thing to do. Only one thing that would keep her family safe and allow her the hope of seeing them again.
She leaned back against the seat of the carriage, a numbing relief spreading through her veins as she began to plan.
There was much to do.
“Are you all right, Mrs. Milthorpe?” Edmund asked as he helped her down from the carriage.
“Quite.” Adelaide steadied herself against his arm until her feet were solidly on the ground. “I’m simply tired, that is all.”
Edmund nodded. “You’re still recovering. You shouldn’t be gallivanting about town. You should be resting in the warmth and comfort of the house.”
“I’m grateful for your concern, Edmund. Really, I am. But I’m fine. The fresh air does me good.” She hesitated, choosing her words carefully. “You’ve always been very kind to me. I want you to know that I’m grateful. Grateful for the care you’ve shown me and the care I know you will always show my husband and children.”
Edmund nodded. She saw the question in his eyes but knew he would not ask it.
She smiled. “You’re a good man, Edmund. It has been my good fortune to know you.”
She stood on tiptoe to kiss his whiskered cheek, catching the flash of surprise in his eyes before she turned to leave.
She left the carriage house without a backward glance. That is how this thing must be done, she realized. She must look only forward, or she would never have the strength to see it through.
She found Ginny sitting by the river. Ginny was always by the river. Had loved the sound of the rushing water, its gurgle as it wound its way over river stone, since she was a girl.
Adelaide stood watching her for a moment. It was strange to look upon her twin in such a way. Like seeing another version of herself. Like the first moments of traveling, in a way.
Ginny sat on the large boulder nearest the riverbank, her expression placid as she gazed at the running water. Her hair was tied back with a ribbon, and the gown under her cape was blue. But in every other way she and Adelaide were identical.
On the outside, at least.
That they were different on the inside had always been apparent. Adelaide did not have the strength of will to fulfill the duties that were hers, but neither did she have fortitude to deny them. Ginny, on the other hand, knew her duty and saw to it with calm efficiency, carefully watching Adelaide and attempting to keep her from the Plane just as she saw to Adelaide’s household, her children.
Perhaps if Ginny had been born first things would be different. Perhaps she would be the Gate with the strength to refuse Samael once and for all.
But they would never know.
Fate and the prophecy had dealt their hands. It was up to Adelaide and Ginny to play them however they must until Lia and Alice came of age.
She took a step forward, dead leaves crunching underfoot, and Ginny suddenly turned to face her.
“Oh! I didn't see you there, Addy. I thought you went into town.”
“I did,” Adelaide said. “It was a short visit.”
“To see Sarah Montrose?” Ginny asked.
Adelaide nodded. “I worry about her, with the baby, all alone in town.”
“That’s kind of you, Addy,” Ginny said, though they both knew it was more than kindness. Ginny had always been thoughtful that way, allowing Adelaide to keep her small dignities wherever possible.
Adelaide lowered herself onto the boulder next to her sister. “Sarah displays more strength on a daily basis than I shall have in an entire lifetime.”
Ginny reached for her hand. “You don’t give yourself enough credit. Ours is not an easy life to live, despite appearances to the contrary.”
Adelaide laughed aloud. It felt alien bubbling forth from her throat. She could not remember the last time she had laughed. “You do have a point.”
They sat in companionable silence for a while before Adelaide could bring herself to speak again.
“Ginny?”
“Hmmm?”
“You know I love you, don’t you?”
Ginny turned to look at her. “Well…yes. But why would you say such a thing?”
Adelaide turned her gaze to the river and tried to laugh off the question. “I know that I am sometimes…difficult. I want you to know that I love you.” Emotion clogged her throat, and she had to pause before continuing. “You’re my sister, and I love you.”
“And I you, Addy. But why are you saying this? Is everything all right?”
“Everything is fine. I simply feel the need to say that which is too often unsaid.”
“Look at me, Addy.” Ginny’s voice was uncommonly forceful.
Adelaide turned to face her.
“Speak honestly,” Ginny pleaded. “I’ll worry endlessly if you don’t. You know I will.”
Adelaide slowly nodded. “I have tried to be strong, Ginny. Am still trying to be strong. But it is no secret that I am losing the battle. I—”
“You are not losing it!” Ginny interrupted. “We will help you fight, Thomas and I.”
“I know you’re trying to help, but it only makes it more difficult to be told I am fighting and winning, as if I have no real grasp on the situation when it is in fact very clear to me. What I need now is truth, Ginny. To speak it, and to hear it. Can you do that for me?”
Ginny sighed. “Yes,” she said softly. “I suppose so.”
“All right,” Adelaide continued. “I cannot stay away from the Plane—that is the simple truth of the matter. I cannot stay awake every hour of every day, and even when I manage to stay away from my chamber during the day, Samael and the Souls call me while I sleep. I tell myself I will fight them. I push the medallion to the back of my drawer. But every morning I awake with it on my wrist and know that I have ushered more Souls into our world. More Souls for my own daughters to fight.”
“You are not the first Gate to allow the Souls passage, Addy. They are almost impossible to deny entirely, surely you know this. As long as Samael himself remains in the Otherworlds, they can do us no harm here.”
“If I thought I could live my life in such a way, I might try,” Adelaide said. “But it is not to be, Ginny. Samael calls to me more urgently of late, even showing himself to me on the Plane to make known the ultimatum.”
“What ultimatum?”
Adelaide took a deep breath. “I must open the Gate or he will detain me in the Void.”
Ginny shook her head, her gaze drifting back over the river. “No…No, that cannot be. We have a choice. We all have a choice, always. That is part of the prophecy.”
“You’re quite right. I do have a choice. I can submit to Samael or avoid the Plane. Yet that is really no choice at all, is it? I cannot avoid the Plane. The truth is, I don’t want to. It is the only place I feel free of the prophecy’s burden.”
“What are you saying, Addy? That you will give in? That you will relinquish your soul to the Void?”
“No,” Adelaide answered. “No one knows what the future holds. I’m simply telling you what is on my mind, as you asked. The prophecy has placed us at odds, but you are my sister, as much a part of me as my own heart. I don’t want the prophecy to stand between us anymore.”
Ginny reached over, pulling Adelaide into an embrace. Adelaide smelled the rose water Ginny used to
bathe, the powder she used on her face. She closed her eyes, wanting to remember the feel of her sister.
Adelaide pulled away. “There is one more thing I must ask of you.”
“Anything.”
“If something should happen to me—”
“It won’t.” Ginny’s voice was firm.
Adelaide reached out for her hand. “But if it should,” she said gently, “will you care for my children? Will you love them and guide them in the ways of the prophecy?”
“Addy…”
There was pain in Ginny’s eyes, and all at once, Adelaide did not mind the childish nickname.
“Please, Ginny. Promise me this, just in case.”
Ginny nodded.
Adelaide smiled. “Thank you. You mustn’t worry. It will all be all right, you’ll see.” She rose, wanting to leave before her emotions got the better of her. Before she began to cry and cling to her sister. “I love you, Ginny. There is no one else I would have chosen as my sister.”
She turned and left, leaving Ginny on the rock by the river.
It was just as well that the girls were in the library taking their afternoon lessons. Adelaide needed some time to compose herself. She would use the next hours to attend to practical matters and brace herself against the coming evening.
She ascended the stairs to her chamber. Once there, she took off her cloak and sat down at the writing table under the window. Pulling a quill, an ink pot, and several pieces of parchment from the drawer, she considered the blank page, trying to gather her thoughts. Finally, she bent her head and began to write.
Mrs. Judith Schneider
Head Housekeeper
Birchwood Manor
Dear Mrs. Schneider,
It is my wish that you hire a young woman from town who goes by the name of Sarah Montrose. She is a fine young woman and can take any position you see fit. I have no doubt she will see to her duties with enthusiasm and the utmost of effort. Sarah and her infant daughter, Mary, should be given a home here at Birchwood as long as they require, and Sarah paid well and treated fairly, as with all our household staff.
Thank you for your attention to this matter, and for the dedication you continue to show the Milthorpe household.
Sincerely,
Adelaide Milthorpe
Adelaide signed and dated the letter below her name and blew on the ink until it was dry. Folding the paper into thirds, she placed it in an envelope bearing Mrs. Schneider’s name and set it aside.
She would not write to Ginny. She had said everything today at the river. Ginny knew she was loved. She would look after the children.
That was all that mattered.
Picking up the quill again, Adelaide wrote to Thomas. She did not know if her words would reach him. If he would be able to see past her treachery to the pain that had brought her to this dark and terrible place. She tried, telling him how much he meant to her, how she never thought to find someone who understood and loved her so completely that she could almost forgive herself every transgression. She begged him not to mourn her absence, though she knew this one request he would deny, and told him she would wait for him in the long grass of the Otherworlds.
She signed the letter, placing it in its own envelope, marked with Thomas’s name.
Her heart was heavy with sorrow, and she leaned back in the chair, trying to find the courage to continue. As difficult as it was to say goodbye to her sister, her husband, it was nothing compared to the task of leaving her children. She would not write to Henry, for she had no way of knowing the nature of things by the time he was old enough to read her missive. Perhaps Thomas would have remarried and Henry would not remember her at all. Perhaps he would come to think of another woman as his mother, and if he should find love and contentment as another woman’s son, Adelaide would not bring him sadness by dredging up the long-forgotten past.
She could not justify such a cowardly escape with Lia and Alice.
They knew her. Would remember her. More than that, she was a link to the prophecy that would bind them all their lives, as it had her and Ginny. Ginny would guide them as they grew into young women, but Adelaide had to give them what knowledge she could. She owed them that much.
Leaning forward, she picked up the quill.
Dearest Alice,
By the time you read this you will know who and what you are—an identity I can only assume in this place and time. If I am right, you feel the call of the Souls as I have felt them all my life. If I am right, they have been whispering to you since the cradle, summoning you from the warmth of your bed at night, offering you solace and acceptance.
And yet by the prophecy’s edict you should be the Guardian of all we hold dear. I don’t know how or where such a twisted path will end. I can only offer you my own experience, my own failure, as caution.
The Souls are not to be trusted. They will tell you that they will protect you, that they will grant your every wish, that your rejection of your role as Guardian is due to the nature of your birth and that the role was never meant to be yours. They will excuse you for shirking your duties and give you cause to excuse yourself from them.
But it is all lies.
The Souls work only to their own gain and their eventual return to the physical world—the world in which your sister and brother and father live and breathe in sunlight and love. The Souls seek only to open the gate to Samael so that he may usher in the darkest days of mankind, an abyss from which humanity will never recover.
It is quite possible that my words are for naught. That you are as lost to the Souls and Samael as I am in the moment I write these words. Yet I must try, for the life of every person in your world—and your own life, dear daughter—depends on the decisions you and your sister make.
As for me, I can only tell you that I have loved you since the first moment I laid eyes on you, though you may, in hindsight, doubt my claim. If I have ever seemed apart from you, it is only because I come too close to myself when looking in your eyes. Too close to my own lost soul and the darkness that consumes me bit by bit, day by day.
The prophecy will further unfold in your lifetime, as it has in mine. I hope only that you remember—that you know—I loved you with my whole heart. I will carry that love into the next world, and any other that I travel.
Mother
Tears trickled down her face, falling onto the paper as she folded it and placed it inside an envelope marked with Alice’s name. She would have to write to Lia as well, but her chest constricted painfully at the thought, her throat tight with the tears she tried to choke back.
She rose, crossing the room to the wardrobe and resolving to write the last letter later in the evening. There were other things that needed attending, important things.
She removed her day gown before choosing a new one, in beautiful lilac. She put it on, the gown falling to the floor in soft folds. She relished the brush of silk against her skin as she made her way to the looking glass over the bureau.
Gazing at her reflection, she was surprised that one could look the same, day after day, no matter the circumstance. She looked exactly as she had this morning, when she had believed there were still answers to be found, courses of action left to take.
She knew now that there were not, but her melancholy was tempered with something she did not want to admit was relief. At least she had found a resolution to the pain from which there seemed no escape, pain she visited upon those she loved most through her inability to renounce the Souls. Tonight would be difficult, but thereafter, she would have peace. That was something.
She traded the amber cuff for an elaborate silver bracelet encrusted with emeralds, making sure it covered the mark on her wrist before taking one last look at herself in the glass. She was glad she had chosen the lilac gown. The girls had always loved her in it, and it was important that they remember her well.
The night was only unusual in its normalcy. Thomas’s eyes had taken on a loving shine when she entered the dining room.
br /> “You’re a vision,” he said, raising her hand to his lips.
For the first time in many months, she felt something warm and sensuous hum under her skin at the feel of his mouth against her hand. She smiled into his eyes.
They took supper—a fine roast goose with cherry sauce—in the dining room. Adelaide insisted that the children join them rather than taking dinner early, as they often did. Thomas was lively, recounting an incident in the stables with a filly and the determined if misguided stable hand trying to break her. They laughed as he painted a picture of the young man, cursing a blue streak with one boot stuck in the stirrups and the other leg flailing wildly about as he tried to sit astride the spirited horse.
The children laughed, too. Even Alice, usually somber and calculating. Only Ginny was quiet, her eyes full of sorrow that she tried to hide behind a forced smile.
Still, it was a lovely dinner, and Adelaide ate slowly, wanting the meal to go on and on.
When at last her glass was empty of wine, she bid the children good night, promising to look in on them later. Thomas had work to do in the library, but Adelaide could see that he was torn, wanting to take advantage of her good humor. She reached up, touching the soft hair at the back of his neck, looking into his eyes.
“I’ll look in on you later as well, my love,” she promised.
He grinned then, a boyish smile that gave her a flash of memory. Thomas showing up at the door of Birchwood Manor after their meeting on Altus, saying that he could not live without her, that same grin melting her heart as it had from the first moment she saw him.
Everyone was gone when Adelaide pulled her sister into an embrace, holding her for a long moment at the bottom of the stairs. Ginny’s body, the feel and scent of her, was as familiar to Adelaide as her own. Despite their occasional arguments, their competition for the affections of their parents, their roles in the prophecy, which should have made them enemies, they had been one since the very beginning. Even now, it was Ginny who would see to her final wishes. Ginny who would care for Adelaide’s children as if they were her own.