Page 47 of Darkest at Dusk (Revenant Roses)

Chapter Twenty-One

I sabella’s head tipped back, eyes rolling white.

“Isabella!” Her name tore out of Rhys, raw and useless.

The pull fought him, talons hooked deep, raking her toward the dark.

Terror scored oozing runnels in his soul.

He had thought he understood pain, fear—fire melting his flesh, nights locked away in St. Jude’s, years listening to the whispers gnaw his bones, helpless to free those he loved.

But none of it touched this. To lose her was to be gutted, unmade.

Catrin rose, her form dripping black ooze that stank like rot, long hair oily and dark, her face an eyeless mass. Her laugh curdled into words. She opened. She called. She is mine now.

Rhys roared, the sound scraped from deep in his lungs, unholy and raw. Defiance melded with grief, hate with desperation. He hauled at the unseen tether until every muscle burned, and it did not matter. He could not wrench Isabella free.

But he would not let go.

“Take me,” he shouted. “If you want blood, take mine. Take me, Catrin. Leave her.”

You? she crooned. I’ll have you as well. But not before I hollow her out. She is the key. She is the door. She is the willing one.

Isabella’s lips moved, faint and soundless.

His heart lurched, savage and stunned. He had thought her gone, her soul already stripped away, her body but an empty shell. But she was still here, still fighting.

He bent close, caught the ghost of her breath against his jaw. The terror and grief that had hollowed him a heartbeat ago surged into wild, aching hope. He clasped her hands in his, bowing his head, willing his own strength into her veins.

And around them, the smell of rotting roses and smoke and ash grew stronger until it was more than just a stink in his nostrils but a taste burning his tongue, a burn eking through his pores.

“I…choose…” Isabella whispered.

Her eyes opened, black threaded with fire. Her fingers twitched in his grasp and then tightened, hard, answering his hold.

Catrin screamed, sharp and high. Soot bled down the walls in black ropes that writhed and twisted. Isabella arched in his arms, spine rigid, neck extended, the gate tearing through her as if she were hinge and threshold.

“Together,” he said, hoarse. “Always.” An oath. A prayer.

The dark recoiled as if seared.

Plaster split with a crack, long seams crawling jagged across the walls. Catrin ballooned and unraveled, her shape bleeding into every corner. One moment, she loomed vast, ceiling to floor, her gown dripping black ichor like blood, her face flickering through child, maiden, crone.

The next, she flattened thin, a smear of teeth and eyes that slithered toward them, the chamber itself her skin.

Door. Door. She is the door. Open, and all is mine. Her voice pricked his skin like shards of glass, tearing at his ears, gouging his thoughts.

He curled his body over Isabella like a shield as he felt the pull wrench through his arms. Her wrists burned beneath his palms. He braced her with both arms and still she slipped.

“Isabella, no—” Panic split him raw and he glanced at the hearth. He would wreck the book. He would fire the wing again. He would damn every name he had begged as a boy if it kept her breathing under his hand.

She turned her head the smallest fraction, her mouth brushing his ear. The voice that threaded out was thin but steadier than his. “Rhys…let me.”

“No.” The word broke in him. “Not you.”

Her eyes shone with tears and with courage, steady and true.

Love. She did not speak the word for it; neither did he. She gave it in the pressure of her hand. He gave it back. He would follow her into the fire, into ruin, into death itself.

“If I let go,” he said, his voice rough, “she takes you. If I hold, she drains you.”

“Don’t let go,” she whispered with all the trust in the world.

Light woke along the grimoire’s brass seam, unfurling from glow to blaze, searing through the dark like a brand holding heat. The split arc found its mate and the newly formed whole sang a note that struck him deep, shivering through his teeth, his bones.

And then he saw them.

For years he had heard only fragments of coughs deep in the walls, sobs woven through floorboards, a lullaby splintered by the wind.

Now, he saw them in truth. His mother, her hair braided down her back, eyes alive with recognition as she lifted her face to him.

Ned, hand outstretched, lips curved in that sweet grin, two front teeth missing.

Will, still a boy just starting to go gangly.

They were not shadows, not stretched and hollowed by Catrin’s hunger.

They were his. For the first time in over a decade, they were his.

Catrin’s laugh shattered on stone. You see them because of her. Without her, you are nothing. And when I have drunk her dry, you will be nothing again.

Isabella convulsed. Her hand slipped for one beat of his heart. In that beat he saw the life that would remain to him if he lost her: the endless silence of her absence. He would be a husk, a shell, his ribs empty, his breath an echo.

He shouted, a sound that rattled the scorched rafters. He crushed their hands together until bone ground on bone.

“You will not have her,” he said.

Catrin reached. Shadow-hands plunged into Isabella’s breast. Heat ran up his forearms as if those claws held his pulse, too. He shoved his arm between them, useless meat between hunger and the thing that wanted.

“Take me,” he said through his teeth. “Take me.”

You are already mine, cousin. You always were.

Isabella’s fingers crushed his. She found his eyes through smoke and light. “Rhys…do not listen to her lies. Hold fast. Only…hold….”

Truth hit like a post driven clean. He tightened until their joined hands went bloodless, set his brow to hers and felt the shaking and under it, the steadiness that did not break.

The room convulsed. Fire bent inward as if the hearth had a mouth. Catrin went to pieces, shadow tearing from bone, teeth to dust. She clawed and wailed; the pull did not heed her. It heeded the circle they made, and the hinge of Isabella’s will.

“Let them pass,” Isabella whispered, and the air rang as if a bell had answered.

They came. They brushed him like cool breath, his mother’s sleeve, Ned’s small fingers catching his, Will’s thin shoulder resting, a remembered weight against his chest.

Then they were gone.

Catrin’s shriek broke and dropped away. The blaze sank to coal, then ash. The pull slackened. His arms found he was holding a woman again, warm, breathing, living.

He sank with her to the blackened boards. “Isabella—God?—”

Her cheek turned into his shirt. He felt her mouth shape the words against him. “I am here,” she whispered, fragile and defiant at once.

Silence fell, heavy and whole.

Not a pause before the next harm. Not the breath the house took before the whisper began again. Silence like a shore after storm the air clean.

He had forgotten its shape.

He set his face in her hair, lavender and salt and smoke.

“It’s done,” she said at last, as if the words might wake something. Her voice was dry and parched. “Rhys, it’s done.”

He listened for any small tap. Heard only their breathing. A laugh came up in him. “It’s done.”

She tipped back. Even streaked with soot and blood she was the most living thing he had ever seen. “You did not let her take me,” she said.

“I would have burned the world,” he said. “I would have damned them all if it kept your breath.”

Her palm found his cheek. “I could not have left you with that.”

Relief and grief tangled until he could not tell one from the other. He let himself see what he had not let himself hold… his mother’s mouth shaping thanks, Will’s cough softening into nothing, Ned’s hum fading.

“They’re gone,” he said, and the word did not mean loss. “Free.”

“And Catrin,” she murmured, her gaze on the ash where a monster had stood. “She will never harm another soul.”

He had lived so long with Catrin that the absence of her felt hollow. He would fill it with light and joy and love.

He bent and kissed Isabella’s brow. His mouth shook. “I have nothing left to ask of you.”

“Then ask me for myself,” she said, quiet. “No snares. No tricks. Only ask.”

He would. But not here. Not in this place, not in this moment. She deserved better than a vow made in the aftermath of terror. But perhaps she heard them in the way his hands held her face, the way his lips traced her brow, the way his heart beat for her.

They stood together, unsteady. His leg flared and he did not care.

The ruined chamber stayed behind them as they walked away, arms wrapped around each other, bringing the quiet with them.

They walked corridors that no longer listened, down a stair that remembered its work and not its malice, through a hall without eyes in the corners.

The silence held as they climbed the stairs, not fragile but whole, filling the house like balm poured over an old wound.

In Rhys’s chamber, the fire had been stoked high, flames casting a steady, unblinking light. A steaming bath waited, summoned by his command. Isabella stood at the threshold, trembling, unsure if her knees would hold. Rhys’s hand steadied her.

Her gown sagged, streaked with soot, stinking of smoke. Her hair hung in stiff tangles.

“Sit,” he said quietly, his voice ragged from shouting her name.

“I’ll ruin it.” She made a helpless gesture to encompass first the state of her gown and then the chair.

“Then I’ll burn it,” he said. “Sit.”

She obeyed, lowering herself to the chair, holding his gaze as he knelt before her.

His fingers worked at the fastenings of her gown, loosening ties, unhooking stays.

His hands were cut and burned, marked by their ordeal, his touch careful, almost reverent, as he slid the ruined fabric from her shoulders.

Piece by piece, he stripped away the wreckage of the night until only her shift remained, blackened and frayed.