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Chapter 76

Lotte

By my oath.

Benedict. His voice came again, like a distant whisper, snapping Lotte’s attention away from the ring on her shaking hand. She had sworn to herself she would walk back to Walstad if she had to, but a ring—that changed everything.

Everything.

By my oath.

Lotte followed Benedict’s voice now, closing her eyes and pulling on it like a thread through a labyrinth. A thousand other whispers began to draw closer as she moved. Until suddenly her hand met solid wood.

Lotte’s hand was resting against the door to the briar pit.

She had woken in the briar pit the morning her life had changed. The day she had learned she was a Holtzfall. But she had woken here many other days before that. Spent countless nights curled on the icy stone floor, surrounded by thorns on all sides, listening to the whispers of the dead who had dared to come to rip the princess from the Bergsra.

Or so she’d believed.

Nothing the Sisters had ever said was true. She had learned that from Benedict. But she had never thought back on the whispers from the briar pit.

I swear on my oath.

I will not—You wouldn’t—Did my mother

She will not—I’d rather die.

I saw nothing.

I never—If you don’t, I’ll always—How could you—

You will never understand—

She knew those voices. They didn’t belong to the dead. They were stolen memories.

Thousands of stolen memories. Whispering. Like the mirrors that had sat on her grandmother’s desk after the maze trial. She remembered her grandmother opening the secret door in her office. The way the air had tasted familiar in a way she couldn’t place.

Air that tasted of turned soil and old stone that wasn’t found in the sparkling new city of Walstad.

It came from here. From the place where Holtzfalls put the things they wanted kept secret. Inconvenient memories. Unwanted daughters.

A thick wall of briars greeted her at the bottom of the stairs.

In all her sleepless nights, she had been careful to steer clear of the walls. But Lotte knew now how the Holtzfalls guarded the things they wanted to keep secret. She reached out, her hand passing through the briar, thorns scraping at her arm. Drawing blood.

It was always about blood with the Holtzfalls.

Her palm met solid wood, even as the briars withdrew, like they were bowing out of her way, revealing a perfectly circular keyhole. It was a twin to the one on the secret door inside Mercy Holtzfall’s office.

And now she had the key.

The wooden band fit perfectly. It turned as if this door and all its secrets had been waiting for her.

Behind it, the corridor stretched what must be all the way below the convent; lined row upon row were memorandum charms. A cacophony of whispers rose to meet her.

Another door waited at the end of the hallway.

That one would lead into Mercy Holtzfall’s office. A byway.

This was Lotte’s way back. Back to Walstad. Back into the game.

She moved swiftly down the hallway, even as the voices she passed tried to snag at her. Memories begging to be remembered by someone.

Some mirrors were covered with dust. Lotte’s fingers brushed against them. Maids witnessing indiscretions of long-dead Holtzfalls. Secrets that wouldn’t hurt anyone anymore. Small humiliations that seemed petty now.

But the closer Lotte came to the byway, the more she began to recognize faces. Memories of her mother, of Mercy Holtzfall’s other children. And then their children. Memories of secrets belonging to Nora, Modesty, Constance, and Clemency.

A memory of a rainy night in Walstad.

Of a dark alley.

Of a woman stepping out of an automobile.

Of a knife.

Lotte knew who had killed Verity Holtzfall.