Chapter 101: The Grand Duke Receives Rain (2)
"I am known for punctuality when irritated."
Her eyes moved to Abi, then to the observer. The smile tightened. "Lady of the Verdant Court," she said. "I did not expect your personal involvement."
"So you admit the papers were forged."
"Borrowed."
The rain struck harder against the glass channels. "Wrong answer," the observer said.
The clerk holding the bell flinched. There. He wasn’t trained. Not fully.
Good.
I looked at him. "Name."
Lady Marielle’s eyes sharpened. The boy swallowed. "My name is Eron."
"Eron," I repeated.
The brass bell in his hands trembled. Abi moved slightly. I raised one hand to stop him.
"Do you know what she wants you to do?"
Eron looked from me to Lady Marielle, his grip tightening. "She said I can open the door."
"Yes. Adults often begin terrible ideas with can."
His brows drew together. Lady Marielle’s voice remained soft. "Eron, do not listen to him. His Excellency does not understand what you were promised."
"And what were you promised?" I asked.
Eron’s eyes reddened. "My sister."
Ah. Of course.
"She died?" I asked.
His face crumpled, then hardened immediately, as if grief had been trained to stand at attention. "No. She was taken. From Saint Orison’s. Lady Marielle said the Choir can return what was lost if the door opens. She said the voices are not dead. They’re waiting."
I looked at Lady Marielle. She smiled sadly, a perfect expression, soft enough to fool donors, cruel enough to fool herself.
"Many children were taken from us," she said. "You know this now, Your Excellency. You have seen the evidence. Do you think punishment is enough? Do you think arrests will undo what was done?"
"No."
Her smile widened slightly. Good. She’d expected that answer.
"But I also don’t think opening an old mouth beneath the empire will return anyone’s sister," I continued.
Eron’s hands trembled. "She said there are voices."
"There are."
He looked up quickly. "Then she’s alive."
"No."
His breath caught. I didn’t soften the word. Cruelty sometimes wore gentleness. I refused to lend it mine.
"There are voices because something has been stealing what people leave behind," I said. "Names. Fear. Prayers. Memory. Grief. Pieces. Perhaps echoes. Perhaps worse. I don’t know yet. But whatever answers from that bell has already learned how to sound like the person you want most."
Eron shook his head. "No."
Lady Marielle’s face cooled. "Do not poison him with doubt."
I laughed softly. "Poison? My lady, I am terrible at using poison properly. Ask the Crown Prince."
Abi made a sound suspiciously close to a laugh. The observer looked intrigued.
Not now. Really, not now.
Eron looked confused. Good. Confusion was better than certainty when certainty had been fed to him by a woman in rose.
Lady Marielle stepped closer to him. "Eron, your sister called through the bell. You heard her."
"I did," he whispered.
"Did she not ask you to open the door?"
His face twisted. "She said she was cold."
"Exactly."
I stepped forward. "Did she call you by your childhood name?"
Eron froze. Lady Marielle’s eyes sharpened.
I smiled. "No? How interesting."
He stared at me. "How did you know?"
"I didn’t."
I was guessing. A practical guess. Stolen voices knew names, they knew grief, they knew how to mimic pain. But they didn’t always know the private, useless little things that made a person whole. The kind no record preserved. The kind no ritualist bothered to steal because they had no ceremonial value.
"What did your sister call you?" I asked.
His lips trembled. "Ron."
Simple. Ordinary. Absolutely useless to a ritual. Therefore important.
"And the voice?"
He swallowed. "Eron."
Lady Marielle moved, not toward me, toward the boy’s hand. Abi’s violet light snapped between them. She stopped, and her expression lost its softness.
Finally. There she was. Not the patron. Not the gracious lady. Not the woman in rose holding charity like a perfume bottle.
A handler. A conductor without a baton.
"You have ruined enough," she said.
"I disagree," I replied. "I have only begun."
The soundless bell in Eron’s hands trembled. No sound came from it. The underground garden shifted, the pale trees around us turning their branches inward. No wind. No light. Just movement.
The observer’s gaze sharpened. "These trees are not Verdant stock."
"No," Abi said. "They’ve been listening too long."
Lady Marielle lifted her hand. Red glass flashed between her fingers, not a shard, a splinter, thin as a needle. She drove it into her palm.
Eron screamed as the bell in his hands flared black. The pale trees burst into song. No mouths. No voices. Still song. The sound pressed into the bones, climbing through the floor, the walls, the glass channels above. The soundless bell tried to ring through Eron’s hands, searching for willingness, grief, consent twisted into a key.
Abi moved. The observer moved at the same time. Violet light and rain-touched magic crashed into the sound before it reached the upper exchange. For one violent moment, the entire winter garden flashed with color. The glass channels above cracked, rain pouring through in silver streams.
Lady Marielle laughed. "Too late," she said.
People truly needed new lines.
"Eron," I said.
The boy was sobbing now, both hands locked around the bell, unable to drop it, black lines crawling from the brass into his fingers.
"She is cold," he whispered. "She is cold. She keeps saying she’s cold."
"She is not there."
"She is."
"No," I said, stepping closer despite the pressure shoving against my chest. "Your grief is there. Her voice is there. The thing wearing it is there. But she is not."
The bell flared. A child’s voice cried out. "Ron."
Eron went still. The voice had changed. Lady Marielle smiled. "There," she whispered. "Do you hear her now?"
For a moment, Eron’s expression emptied, then filled with terrible hope.
No. Absolutely not.
My hand moved before I decided. Again. How hateful.
I crossed the last distance and closed my hand around the bell over his. It was cold, not metal cold, grave cold, the kind that had nothing to do with temperature and everything to do with something taking the shape of absence.
A thousand voices brushed my skin. Children. Adults. Prayers. Names. Wishes. So many wishes that were not mine and yet reached for me like I had been expected.
I froze. Only for a breath. A sky without stars. Hands reaching from smoke. A voice laughing through blood. Someone saying, Ash, if you keep answering everyone, what remains of you?
Then the memory folded itself away.
No. Not now.
I pressed my aura into the bell. Steady. Stubborn. A correction. The black lines recoiled from Eron’s hands. The child’s voice screamed, then softened. For one breath, the voice became very small. Not fake. Not quite real either. An echo, perhaps. A remnant caught in the teeth of something hungry.
"Ron," it whispered.
Eron sobbed. I tightened my grip. "Do not answer," I said.
He shook.
"Do not answer for the dead when the living still need you."
The words came out harsher than I intended.
Good. Harsh things held better in storms.
Eron’s fingers loosened. The bell fell. Abi caught it in violet light before it struck the floor. The song broke. The pale trees snapped backward as though released from strings.
Lady Marielle’s face finally changed. Not fear. Rage. There it was. Beautiful in its ugliness.
"You had no right," she said.
I looked at her. "My lady, I am the Grand Duke of Sonomi. I have many rights. The rest I purchase."
The observer made a low sound, more approval than amusement.
Marielle reached into her sleeve. My father’s sword stopped against her throat before the movement completed. He’d entered so quietly that even I hadn’t noticed.
Show off.
"Do not," he said kindly.
She froze. Arthur arrived a moment later through the upper stairs with rain dripping from his armor and enough men behind him to make escape impolite. He took in the scene, the cracked glass, the unconscious clerk, the bell wrapped in violet light, Lady Marielle bleeding from one palm with red glass embedded in the skin.
Then he looked at me. "Your Excellency."
"You are late."
"There were false doors."
"Did you stab them?"
"One."
"Good."
Lady Marielle laughed once. It sounded broken now. "You think this ends with me?"
"No."
That seemed to surprise her. I stepped closer. "I think you’re another clerk in a prettier dress. Perhaps higher than Father Lorian. Perhaps more useful than Duke Rouvier. Perhaps clever enough to make yourself appear central so the true root can pull away."
Her eyes narrowed. "But you are not the root," I said. "You are too frightened."
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