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Chapter 78

Nora

The first thing she saw was her mother.

At ease in a chair in Mercy Holtzfall’s office. Nora was seized with the urge to reach for her, to crawl through the glass and into her mother’s arms. She heard herself choke out a sob, but the image just played under her fingers like a film reel.

Verity Holtzfall couldn’t hear her daughter’s grief. It hadn’t even happened yet.

The memory, Nora realized, was playing from over Mercy Holtzfall’s shoulder. This was one of Liselotte Rydder’s memories.

Mercy was saying, “That’s not amusing, Verity.”

“It’s not meant to be, Mother,” Verity replied. Nora felt her mother’s voice crawling its way into the broken pieces that her death had left behind, forcing them farther apart. “We have enough magic stored to last a hundred heiresses’ lifetimes. Why shouldn’t we share some of it among the poorer circles?”

“You want to insult them with handouts?”

“Generosity is a virtue, Mother. I gained my ring because of it. We could pay for every child in Walstad to go to school, and we’d still have money to burn. We could give every tenant in the city a chance to buy their land from us so that they aren’t indentured in rent to the Holtzfalls for their whole lives. We could give medicine out for free. We could—”

“And then what, Verity?” Lis could only see the back of her mistress’s head, but she could sense the anger in the set of her shoulders. “I’ve spent my tenure at the helm of this family regaining what my father squandered with his kindness. All for the sake of this family’s legacy. If you give handouts today, they’ll just want more tomorrow. Do you plan to bankrupt us?”

“Grandfather hardly made a dent in the fortune. And even if he had, there’s more money coming in every day.”

“Have you considered what you are leaving behind for Honora?”

“I’m leaving her plenty.” Verity sighed, exasperated.

There was a long moment before Mercy Holtzfall spoke again. “I made a mistake not preparing you equally. You have never understood what it means to be head of this family. Not like Grace would have. Not like Honora will.”

Verity Holtzfall’s smiling mouth pressed into a thin line. “None of us could ever be good enough for you, Mother. Grace let you down by losing, I’ve let you down by not being Grace, and one day Nora will let you down by not being you .” The truth of that echoed through Nora even now as, in the memory, her mother stood up with a sigh. “Fine, Mother, it’s your money, for now. But one day your portrait will be up on that wall too…”

“Wishing death on your mother so you can inherit, how nice.”

“I’m not wishing you dead.” Verity sounded exasperated as she turned to leave the office. “But things are going to change when I inherit, with or without you, Mother.”

Painful silence stretched out as the branches of the office door wove themselves back together behind Verity Holtzfall. Liselotte waited. Finally, without turning to face her knight, Mercy spoke.

“Summon him.”

Nora knew what was coming the second before she saw him.

As every single piece fell into place at once, forming a clear picture.

Oskar Wallen stepped into her grandmother’s office.

I wish I were able to tell you that I know what you’re talking about.

His words rang around her mind.

By my oath, I would tell you if I could.

He wore a garish tie and a plethora of jewelry. In his own world, he might have looked wealthy, but here, across from Mercy Holtzfall, he seemed to Nora to be playing pretend.

“Am I here to be ordered to kill your daughter?”

His fingers tapped across the head of the cane.

The stolen bloodvenn. Shared blood with Liselotte Rydder. A knight.

Child O.

Not O for Ottoline. O for Oskar.

Oskar Wallen, the son of a laundress and an unknown father.

But very little was unknown to Mercy Holtzfall.

Here, he wasn’t a gangster running his own empire, he was just another knight summoned to serve his mistress.

“No.” Mercy waved behind her at Lis. “Liselotte will take care of that.” And then she intoned the words. “As ax bearer of the line of Honor Holtzfall, I order you, Oskar Rydder, to find someone else to take the blame. You will cover up this murder and not speak a word of what you have done.”

Oskar Wallen’s face soured as the order closed its jaws around him. As the order gripped him.

It didn’t matter that he was raised on the streets, not in the barracks. It didn’t matter that he’d been trained as a gangster, not to wield a sword. It didn’t matter that he had no loyalty to the Holtzfalls. He had the blood of Hartwin Rydder, and that was enough. He was as bound to Mercy Holtzfall as their most loyal knight.

“By my oath, I will obey,” he sneered back. “Have her at the intersection of Brosmar Road and the border of the thirteenth at midnight.”

When he departed, Mercy spoke to Liselotte without turning. “You know what needs to be done.” It wasn’t a question. And in the memory, Nora sensed that Lis knew this was not the first time she had been asked to do something like this. Although of course, she had forgotten those times as well. As she would this one.

There were always signs after a member of the family died.

After Mercy’s husband had died, Lis had tasted poison on her fingers. When Verity’s husband died, Lis had found instruments for tampering with an automobile. As if she had left them behind for herself as clues, knowing that her memories would be taken.

Clues to what she had done in the name of obedience.

She had fought to be the best knight of her generation because she had believed in a life of honor and duty and service. But there was no honor in these deaths.

For the first time in the memory, Liselotte spoke. “And Alaric?”

Nora understood. Lis Rydder had practically raised Alaric and Theo after their father died. She wanted him to be spared, unlike his father. She wanted him to be sent elsewhere and kept ignorant of what they were doing here.

But either Mercy didn’t understand or she didn’t care. “I’m sure you can manage to dispatch him as well as my daughter.”

Nora’s fingers were shaking now as she spun the memory forward and forward, quickly passing by Lis’s memories of the rest of the day. She saw flashes of other faces, of her own, of Theo’s and Alaric’s.

Until, finally, she was there. Driving through a rainy night in Walstad. Alaric in the passenger’s seat, restless and bored. Lis’s fingers shifted uneasily on the steering wheel. He was too good for this. Too talented to be wasted like this. Lis drove slowly downtown through the storm. She glanced in the rearview mirror, checking on Verity in the back, who was looking anxiously out of the window.

“Are we nearly there?” Verity asked.

“Nearly,” Lis said as the car’s headlights splashed along the rain-slicked walls of a narrow alley. “Nora sent the emissary from a bar a few streets over,” Liselotte lied, pointing down one small alley. “But it’s too narrow in these old streets to get the car through. We’ll have to go on foot.”

Lis stopped the car, stepping out into the rain. She pulled open the car door, opening an umbrella as she went, to let Verity out.

“Which way is it?” Verity asked anxiously as she let Liselotte help her out of the car, pulling her coat tightly against the drizzle.

The knife went through her stomach like it was nothing.

A cry ripped out of Nora now, as her mother tumbled to the ground in the memory. Alaric was at her side in a second, on his knees next to Verity, her blood all over him even as she gasped, dying. His face turned up to Lis in the rain. She expected to see confusion there, but she saw understanding. He had never been a fool, this boy, her dear sister’s grandson. He had seen the world for how it was far sooner than most did. Especially knights.

“Are you going to stab me too?” He straightened, facing his great-aunt. “Or do you need to make it look like I put up a fight?” He looked so much like his grandmother. Like Lis’s sister. More than their father or Theo ever had.

Lis moved like a whip. No matter how much she trained them, she was always the best of the knights. The knife slashed across his forearm, drawing blood before he could even draw his sword.

“Bleed a trail to the river,” she instructed. “Make it look like your body was tossed in and swept out to sea. They’ll think you’re dead. Mercy will never send anyone out looking for you. But you will have to go far, far away.”

“What will you tell Theo?” Alaric let the blood run down his arm.

“Nothing.”

Alaric nodded. He was gone, into the storm, leaving a bloody handprint on the wall behind.

Lis waited by Verity Holtzfall’s slowly dying form.

“You may come to regret that.” Oskar Wallen’s voice came from behind her. “My mother thought she could get me out too. And yet here we are.”

“I have many regrets.” Lis didn’t look up, watching Verity die. She remembered the day Verity had been born. “Alaric should have a life without the same regrets.”

“Tell her it’ll be taken care of.” Oskar’s voice was bitter. “By my oath. Now you should leave. The cops will be here soon.”

And Lis watched as the woman who would have been head of the Holtzfalls finally died.