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Chapter 10

Lotte

“We won’t make it far in this car without being caught.” Benedict’s voice drew Lotte out of her thoughts, which were still on Mr.Brahm’s body by the side of the road. It was only then that she realized they’d entered Walstad without her noticing.

The trees had been replaced by walls. The small road was now a wide paved avenue.

There were stories that started like this. Of ships that were swallowed whole by sea creatures so gargantuan that the sailors didn’t notice they were in the belly of the beast until they looked up from the deck and saw that the stars had gone. And sure enough, all Lotte could see were towering buildings blotting out the sky, packed together so tightly she wasn’t sure how the lashing rain that flooded the windshield could even get through.

Benedict was turning the automobile down a side street, away from the blur of traffic. “We’ll have to go some way on foot, but we might be able to get a taxi a few circles up. That’ll draw less notice.”

The automobile looked like it had driven through a battle. Claw and teeth marks scarred its glossy black shell, the back window was shattered, and there were dents everywhere the mechanical wolves’ heavy bodies had hit them. Even Lotte, who wasn’t exactly an expert, knew they looked conspicuous.

“Because we’re trying to keep my family from noticing us.” Her lips felt numb. Everything on that road littered with wolves and blood had been a blur. Benedict gathering her out of the ravaged back seat to sit with him in the front and driving off at a speed that nearly made Lotte throw up. It wasn’t until they were too far away that she realized she shouldn’t have let Benedict leave Mr.Brahm’s body behind in the woods. Mr.Brahm had a wife. A wife who’d be waiting for him to come home. A wife who’d want to bury him.

Lotte’s family had killed Mr.Brahm, just because he was in their way. To get to her.

“All families are complicated.” Benedict kept his face carefully neutral, his eyes ahead on the road as he pulled the automobile to a stop. “The Holtzfalls more than most.”

Benedict killed the engine, and for a long moment, the only sound was rain hitting the metal carcass. Lotte waited silently.

The Sisters liked to say she had no virtues. But she had been patient her whole life. She had waited sixteen years for a family. She could wait Benedict’s silence out.

“Seven days ago,” Benedict finally spoke, “Verity Holtzfall was found dead.” Lotte knew that name from the papers Estelle had pored over. Although when she tried to summon Verity Holtzfall’s face, all of the Holtzfalls blended together into a shapeless mass of glittering blonde beauties. All except for Verity’s daughter, Honora Holtzfall. The dark-haired desert princess who seemed to appear more than any of the rest of them. “I take it that particular piece of news hadn’t made it out to the countryside yet.”

“We only get the papers once a week.” Lotte wasn’t sure what she ought to feel, learning in one day that she had a family and that one of them was dead. But she could feel bitterness rising in her throat. “So that’s why my mother sent for me? A Holtzfall is dead, so there’s a vacancy in the family?” Be compliant , the Sisters’ voices seemed to hiss in her head. No one likes an impertinent girl. Your family will never want you like this.

Benedict’s mouth pulled up just a little at the edges. It was the first hint of a smile Lotte had seen on him. “You’re not far off. Verity was the Heiress to the Holtzfall name. She’s gone. A new Heiress must be chosen, by a contest of virtues. You’re a Holtzfall. You have as much right to stand for the heirship as any of them. That is why your mother has sent for you. And that’s why the rest of them want you dead.”

Estelle used to hold up pictures of the Holtzfalls, pulling her own hair back into the fashionable short city cuts and asking Lotte, didn’t she think Estelle looked just like them? Lotte had done what she did best and told Estelle what she wanted to hear. She’d never wondered whether she looked like them. Because she didn’t. No matter what blood they might share, every Holtzfall she had seen in the papers looked like they could step into the part of Heiress without batting an eye. They looked like they belonged to their name.

Lotte meanwhile looked like she had never belonged anywhere. Or to anyone. Because she hadn’t.

“What if I don’t compete?” Lotte asked. She could feel that rising want turning to desperation. “I don’t want to rule my family.” My family —it felt so foreign on her tongue. She didn’t want to be in charge of them, just to be one of them. “If I bow out of this contest, they have no reason to kill me.”

“They’d have no reason to keep you either,” Benedict said matter-of-factly.

So, this was her choice.

Most people just had a family. One that was granted them when they were born. But her family was being dangled like a prize just beyond some sort of game. She might almost have laughed. The Sisters had dangled her freedom beyond the same hurdles. Prove that you are virtuous enough.

But unlike at the convent, this was a real chance to prove she was worthy.

With a real prize at the end.

And it was so close. Almost within reach. She could feel it. She ached for it as she stretched out her fingers for it.

“Then I’ll compete.” It sounded simple said out loud, but Lotte felt that ache in her harden to determination as she said it. “If I have to win to have a family, then I will win.”

Benedict nodded, as if he hadn’t been expecting anything else. As if he already knew her more than she knew herself. He opened the door into the rain. “Then we’d better get you to the house before it’s too late.”

Lotte tried to match Benedict’s pace through the chaos of the city.

They found a taxi, paying it double to accept them in soaking-wet clothes, after walking for almost an hour. Benedict told the driver to head north. Through the window, Lotte watched the city whip by. Men in black suits and women in colorful hats dashed up and down the streets. A girl extended a gloved arm lined with shopping bags, and an orange taxi pulled up alongside her, the light on top turning from green to red. They passed a restaurant . Through the gaps in the curling letters of its name, she glimpsed tightly packed bodies at small tables, knees and elbows knocking together, the window fogging with the heat of all their voices. Three stories up, a girl in a silk negligee leaned out a window, smoke from a cigarette clouding around her scarlet lips. A man in a slick suit pushed open a small metal door, spilling music out around him. It was far from Gelde. It was a whole new world here, and Lotte could feel herself coming alight with it, street after street.

Lotte could tell when the city started to shift around her. Shop fronts and high buildings became elegant white town houses with wrought iron fences and overflowing window boxes.

“Pull over. We’ll get out here,” Benedict instructed the taxi driver, handing over money. “We just need to get you to the house before sunset.” Lotte could hear the urgency in his voice as he pulled open her taxi door. “Your mother will be there already.”

Lotte hunched her shoulders instinctively against the rain as they kept moving, her whole body racing with anticipation.

They were almost there. Almost to her mother. Her family. Her chance to prove herself.

They rounded a wide street corner, and in an instant, the Holtzfall mansion appeared.

Everywhere else in the city, rain was relentlessly pouring down. But over the Holtzfall mansion, the skies were clear. It stood at the end of the street like a castle in an old storybook. The white stone glowed in the last of the daylight. Columns twisted up under wrought iron balconies draped in ivy, and turrets jutted up above a slate-gray roof. It was easily the size of Gelde. Next to the Holtzfall mansion, the automobiles that were pulling up and spilling out people looked like toys.

Lotte felt something catch in her chest. Something in her seemed to recognize her family’s home as it came within reach.

They had barely taken another step when three figures stepped out of a nearby doorway.

They were dressed identically to Benedict. Gray doublets with a figure wielding an ax over their hearts. And just like Benedict, all three of them had swords at their sides.

Lotte felt Benedict’s tension shift instantly as he stepped between her and the three knights, his hand dropping to the pommel of his sword.

Two of them were scarcely older than Lotte. A young man and woman, who drew to attention when they saw Benedict. The third figure, a man probably three decades older than Benedict, was the only one who didn’t flinch at the sight of them. The only motion was his eyes flicking to Lotte, taking her in with the same easy efficiency that Benedict had in the square in Gelde.

“This is her.” It wasn’t a question. The knight seemed to know her the same way Benedict had.

They were here for her. Like Sister Brigitta locking her away. Like the wolves on the road. A last barrier to stop her from reaching the mansion. But there was only a weary resignation in his face as he took her in.

“Sir Emmerich.” Benedict inclined his head, a bow of respect, but he never took his eyes off the three knights. “It would be too much to hope that you could step aside, I suppose.”

Sir Emmerich’s weathered face looked sorrowful. “We have orders.” Orders. The word carried a weight that seemed to mean more than Lotte understood. “Benedict, my boy, this can’t end well for anyone. Not even Grace’s girl. If you just wait…it’ll be dusk soon. No blades need to be drawn. No blood needs to be shed.”

Benedict’s answer to the older knight was wordless, his hand tightening around the sword at his side. Instantly, the two younger knights had blades drawn.

With the hindern on her hand blocking out the minds of others, Lotte had never been more aware of every feeling crackling through her. Fear flooded her whole body. Not only for herself, but for Benedict.

But neither of the young knights moved to attack. Both looked to the older knight for guidance. They were three against one, but they looked more scared than Benedict did.

“Then that is how it will be.” Sir Emmerich had regret etched over every line of his face. “You know, you may cost a great many their lives tonight, my boy. But I will not begrudge you keeping your oath to her.”

Lotte only understood a sliver of what was at play here, in the rain on the border of the hulking mansion they were guarding. But she knew that blood was going to be shed in her name. Again.

“On my signal,” Benedict said low so that only Lotte could hear, “run.”

And then he lunged.

Lotte stumbled back as Benedict’s blade clashed with the suddenly drawn sword of the older knight. In one swift movement, Benedict had the younger man down on the ground, then his elbow slammed into the face of the female knight, bloodying her nose and sending her backward.

Lotte staggered in retreat before she remembered herself. Run. Not run away.

Her heart raced as the blades clashed, blood already pouring with the rain. Benedict was fighting for her. To give her an opening to get to her mother. Lotte wouldn’t waste it. Not this blood. Not Mr.Brahm’s blood.

She regained her footing just as the knight on the ground seemed to take notice of her. Lotte pulled the remaining strength she had to herself. After a night without sleep in the briar pit, after a betrayal, a near death by wolf, with one life crumbling around her, she could see the next life straight ahead, at the border of the mansion where the storm ended.

So she ran.

She ran for her life. For this life that she wanted so desperately. Benedict slammed his foot into the ribs of the younger knight as he tried to rise.

And in one violent movement, Lotte broke through the rain.

The sudden low sunlight struck her face, blinding her, forcing her to a stop even though her pounding pulse was telling her that she had to keep going. But without Benedict, she wasn’t sure where. They had approached from a side street, and from here she could see the bustling front entrance, with streams of expensive-looking automobiles pulling up, pouring out people in grand clothing. Even as she hesitated, she saw a flurry of camera flashes go off, voices rising all at once as a dark-haired figure exited a car and was lost in the flashes.

Marching up to the doorway and declaring herself a lost Holtzfall while wearing a mud-caked dress was unlikely to get her very far.

A flash of movement at the edge of the lights and commotion caught Lotte’s gaze. It was a plainly dressed girl with long red hair woven into a braid, moving around the commotion to another side of the house.

Keenly self-conscious of how casual she was trying to look, Lotte fell in behind the girl. She ran her hands through her hair, trying to shake off the worst of the storm. The other girl glanced at Lotte but didn’t speak, ducking her head and pressing on. She had a slip of paper in her hand, the writing on it too small for Lotte to make out, although she could see a logo printed on the corner that read: The Ash Lounge . Lotte stayed as close as she dared, worried the girl would be able to hear the pounding of her heart. The redheaded girl came to a small side door, far out of sight of the glamour of the main entranceway. She rapped swiftly.

For the first time since slipping on the hindern, Lotte didn’t feel relieved to be free of the thoughts of others. She felt at a disadvantage, unsure what she was walking into.

Old habits came back easily.

Before she could think better of it, she slipped the hindern off her finger. Instantly, she became aware of the jumble of thoughts spilling off the girl. They were bundled in a nervous mess, but a few distinct images darted out.

A boy with a slimy smile that made her skin crawl even as she let him put his hands all over her, telling herself it would be worth it. It was a price to pay to enter his world. And then another figure, uncertain and blurred but larger, safer, solid and trustworthy, handing her a piece of paper. Instructions for a job in the Holtzfall mansion. Another way in. A way that meant she didn’t have to do things that turned her stomach. That she could still serve the cause.

It was that simple. Come to this door and say that he’d sent her. And when she saw her chance—

Lotte slipped the hindern back on. It was enough. Enough to bluff her way in, even though she was sure the lie was written all over her face.

The door swung open. Held by another knight. Lotte fought her instinct to run. She kept her head bowed. But unlike with Sir Emmerich, no recognition passed over his face as he looked from one of them to the other.

“You’ve come for work?” He sounded faintly annoyed but not surprised. “On whose authority?”

“Sir Theodric,” the girl with scarlet hair replied. Her voice was low and raspy and tinged with an accent Lotte knew didn’t come from the city. His eyes went to Lotte, and she jerked a small nod, too afraid that a single word might give her away.

The knight made a vaguely exasperated noise, but he waved them inside. “Down the hall, get on some uniforms. In the kitchen, ask for Margarete.” He kept talking, but it faded into distant noise under her pounding heartbeat as Lotte stepped over the threshold into her ancestral family home.