“WHAT’S WRONG WITH HER?”
When Penelope’s topaz eyes go hard and her chin lifts, I know I’ve chosen exactly the wrong words.
“Nothing. There’s nothing wrong with her.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
I walk past her through the doorway, into the sitting area of the bedroom. I don’t think I’ve ever been in this particular bedroom. It’s covered in shades of rose and fuchsia and pink—nauseatingly girly, as if a Barbie Dreamhouse puked all over it.
Penelope shuts the door and stands in front of me, securing the belt of her robe defensively.
“The fugues,” I begin, “when she ‘blinks out’—she called it a quirk. It’s not a quirk, is it?”
The tightness in Penelope’s face dissipates, softens, and something like sadness rises in her eyes. “No.”
My heart jackhammers in my chest and my breath skips. Because I knew it before I walked in here—but to hear someone else say it, to hear her sister confirm that there’s something wrong with Sarah—something I may not be able to fix, some broken part of her she won’t even show me, let alone give me the chance to mend . . . it’s horrendous.
“I’ve seen it happen to men—soldiers with PTSD. They slip away and get trapped in another place, another time . . . a bad time. Is that how it is with her?”
Penelope’s lips fold together, her chin trembling. “Yes.”
A hundred horrific headlines flash in my head at once. I squeeze my eyes closed but I still see them.
“What happened to her?” My voice sounds tortured even to my own ears. “Please, Penny, I have to know.”
Her pale blond hair sways when she gives a little nod of her head, almost to herself, then motions for me to sit on the sofa. And I have to force my knee to stop bouncing with unspent energy, bracing for what’s to come.
The fire pops and her voice is gentle when she speaks, like a nanny reading her charge a bedtime fairy tale. Did you ever notice how genuinely fucked up fairy tales actually are?
“Our mother was traditional when it came to marriage. Very old school—“till death do us part,” a trousseau she stitched herself, a virgin on her wedding night—the whole damn thing. She was . . . innocent . . . only just eighteen when she married our father. He was thirty-five. Her parents, our grandparents, were cold arseholes; I already told you that. They were pleased to be rid of her. After the wedding, he took her to his estate in Everly.”
Everly is more moor than town. Jagged mountains on one side, cold ocean on the other—the weather as harsh and hard as a castle’s stone.
“My very first memory is the sound of my mother screaming . . . begging him to stop. He would go into rages for no reason at all. And he was merciless. Sadistic. Things would be quiet for a few weeks after, sometimes a few months . . . but then it would happen all over again. Sarah and I didn’t attend school; we had tutors. He said it was because it was the best education, but I think he just wanted control. The handful of servants we had were completely devoted to him—whether it was because they were loyal or terrified, I’ll never know.”
Penelope stares down at the gray and mauve rug, her eyes glossing over—seeing something I can’t.
“We used to hide in the wardrobe. Sarah had read The Chronicles of Narnia and I think some part of her prayed it was real, that we could be transported somewhere—anywhere but where we were. We would cover our ears and hold Mother’s dresses over our heads to try to muffle the sounds. You wouldn’t think you could hear so clearly,” she says and looks up at me with tears glinting like ice drops in her eyes. “I mean, it was a fucking castle. But the sounds carried and we heard every slap, every cry.”
Her brows draw together and her forehead crinkles. “I was . . . five the first time Sarah did it, so she would’ve been about seven.”
“Did what?” I rasp out.
“The first time she left the wardrobe.”
The words drop like lead in my stomach. Like shrapnel.
“She couldn’t stand it. I held onto her hand and I begged her to stay. She told me to stay put—no matter what happened, no matter what I heard.” Tears fall silently, one after the other, down Penelope’s smooth cheek. “And then she went out of the room and started breaking things.”
“Breaking things?”
Penelope nods. “A vase in the hallway, china plates in the drawing room—once she pulled a gold-framed mirror right off the wall. Anything that would make a crash. That would take his attention away from Mother. She would go from room to room, until . . .”
It’s only when Penelope stops speaking that I realize I’ve stopped breathing.
“Until?”
Her light brown eyes look directly into mine. “Until he caught her.”
My mind is blank. Black. Like the heaviest curtain has come down, blocking out any light or thought or image.
“Caught her.” I roll the words around on my tongue. “I don’t . . . I don’t understand.”
Penelope gazes back at me. “I think you do.”
The air expels from my lungs.
“Are you . . . are you saying he hurt her? That he . . . beat her? Sarah?”
“Yes.”
I’m not an idiot. I studied engineering at university and was bored by it. I have a deep breadth of understanding of history and art and military strategy and science. I know words—big and little. I understand their meaning when they’re strung together. When they’re used to imply, to deduce, to insinuate.
But this . . . this doesn’t make any sense. I can’t process it.
Or maybe I just don’t want to.
“But . . . how?”
How could anyone hurt sweet, darling Sarah? My Sarah. She’s everything that is kind and good and funny and beautiful and amazing in this world. Why would anyone want to cause her pain? How is that even possible?
Penelope sniffles. “Usually with his fists. Sometimes with the belt. If she fell, he would kick—”
“Stop.” Nausea twists and knots my stomach, folding me over. “Fucking Christ, stop.”
Because the curtain is lifted and the images that spill out from Penelope’s words are sickening and vivid. My thoughts are cut off when I think of something else. Something I didn’t put together until this moment.
“She limps,” I tell Penelope in a voice colored by ash. “It’s barely perceptible, but I noticed. When she’s tired, she limps.”
“That was the final straw for Mother. He broke Sarah’s leg. They were right outside the door of the room I was in when it happened. It was so loud—the snap of it.” Penny squeezes her eyes closed. “God, I can still hear it.”
I broke my arm once. Fell the wrong way during a rugby match. It hurt like a bitch. And I know just what she means about the sound—it’s distinct. Once you hear it, you’ll never forget.
“He wouldn’t let us leave, wouldn’t let Mother take Sarah to the hospital. For three days he kept us in one of the upstairs rooms.” Penelope shudders as she breathes and cries softly. “Sarah was in so much pain. And then, Joseph, the driver—he had only been with us a few months—he helped us escape when our father fell asleep. I remember he swept in and scooped Sarah up in his arms and told us, ‘Down the back steps, the car is waiting—hurry now.’ And the most terrifying moment was when the three of us were loaded into the back and Joseph had to run around to get to the driver’s seat. We were so close . . . I kept watching the door, waiting for my father to burst through and kill us.”
Penelope’s face has lost all color now. She rubs at her eyes and cheeks with weary hands. “But he didn’t. Joseph drove us to the hospital and they set Sarah’s leg, but it never healed the way it should have. Auntie Gertrude took us in, had her lawyers arrange the divorce, and they managed to convince our father that if he ever came near us again, details of his actions and photos of Sarah’s bruises would be made public. He was in Switzerland the last I heard, and I hope every day that an avalanche falls on him.”
My chest feels like it’s filled with concrete. And I want to cry. I haven’t wept since I was ten years old, but I could now. For her. For the fucking injustice of it. I want to fall to my knees and shout at the sky. I want to curse God to his face.
I want to slash and burn and maim and kill.
And it’s that last thought that finally gives me the focus I so desperately need. I take a few deep breaths then stand up and put my hand on Penelope’s shoulder, squeezing. “Thank you for telling me.”
She gifts me with a shadow of a smile. But as I step toward the door, she clasps my hand in her chilly grip. “Henry. You can’t . . . you need to leave my sister alone. You can’t toy with her. I know she seems strong and in some ways she is, but inside . . . she’s so fragile. Sarah is genuine and good and . . . not like us.”
Penelope Von Titebottum and I are cut from the same selfish cloth. Wild. Needy. We know how the game is played, how to turn all heads our way. We thrive on it—the attention, the adoration of others. I mean—look at this fucking show I’ve jumped into.
Without a care in the world.
Without a thought for my country or my responsibilities or even a second of concern for the feelings of the women who’ve signed up for it. The whole point is to get them to fall in love with me—to think they have a chance at living royally fucking ever after, while the whole world watches.
All because I wanted a distraction.
And if a few hearts are shattered in the process? That’s just too damn bad. Because this is who we are.
What did my brother tell me once?
We can’t change who we are.
“No.” I tell Sarah’s sister. “She’s not at all like us.”
My hands shake as I walk down to the great hall—to the Fantastic Wall of Death.
The mace is the first thing to come down. The rusty spiked ball and chain. I give it a test swing.
That’ll do.
Next is my grandmother’s namesake—the battle-axe. It comes with a sling so it can be strapped across the back, and the blade is still razor sharp.
Then it’s the jewel-handled sword. It’s heavier than you’d expect. I thrust forward and imagine running it through a stomach, then watching patiently as the acids leak out from the wound into the body cavity, eventually eating away at the vital organs. It’s a slow, ghastly way to die.
Perfect.
After carefully selecting four additional harbingers of death, I clink and clank my way up the steps to the third floor. When I walk into the room, Sarah is awake, sitting on the sofa. She’s changed into nightclothes and a soft white robe, and her voice is thick with sleep. “I woke up and you weren’t here.”
Her eyes drift over my arms and chest, laden with weaponry. “What are you doing?”
“I’m leaving.”
Her brows pinch. “Where . . . where are you going?”
When I speak, I barely recognize my own voice.
“I’m going to find your father, and then I’m going to kill him. Badly. I thought it’d be rude not to ask if you’d like to come along and watch.”