Rosamund froze in her arms. Next to them, the mechanical boat continued to move blithely from side to side, gears turning.
‘Three lives, and I am still as alone as the first,’ Rosamund said.
‘You aren’t alone,’ Miriam replied, and Rosamund made a broken noise, sagging against her.
‘I know,’ she whispered. ‘But I will be, soon enough.’
Rosamund pulled away. She looked up at Miriam’s face—that terribly familiar face, the only constant in centuries of loneliness and shame—and she wondered whether, in a fourth lifetime, she might’ve learnt to forgive her. She would never know.
‘Let’s go to bed,’ she said. ‘For the last time.’
‘For the last time,’ Miriam agreed—and there was something in her voice that almost sounded like regret.
It was four in the afternoon, and the sun was already setting.
Ice limned the porthole, and the sky—the same deep blue of the ocean beneath it—was clear of all clouds.
The last, fading light refracted through that ice, making a prism of colour on Rosamund’s cheek.
She had fallen asleep after their exertions.
Her red hair, spread wildly across the pillow, crowned her with a halo of flame.
The first-class cabin the Jennings were travelling in was just as opulent as Thomas’s townhouse, as the vaulted ceilings of Harding Hall.
Luxury had surrounded Harding for all her lives, and yet—ill-starred as she was—those lives had been unhappy ones.
Miriam knew she was largely to blame for that.
Each rebirth was supposed to provide a new opportunity, but they only seemed to compound the problems of the last.
Maybe Miriam was providing some recompense, then, in her inevitable end.
There was movement in the corner of the room. A mass of shadows, amorphous in shape, was watching her from the wall. As she observed them, they shrank a little toward the floor.
She is mine, she told them—and instead of cowering further, they rose up towards the ceiling, defiant, in the shape of a crow far larger than Miriam had ever been.
Hissing in anger, Miriam slid from the bed, careful not to jog Rosamund. You dare resist me? she asked the darkness. I, who feed you from my own hand?
The shadow-crow spread its wings, feathers squirming as if each were its own insectile creature crawling along the wall.
Where was this defiance coming from? This boldness, this discontent? It was as if the shadows’ loyalty had shifted, somehow—as if their fear of Miriam no longer moved them.
Frowning, Miriam glanced to the bed, and then back to the darkness.
She recalled, just a few hours ago, how tears had run down Rosamund’s face in the wake of her failed ritual.
Was it truly failed, after all? This new Harding may have been different in some ways—in her scarlet smile and the sea changes of her moods, the gold gleam of her soul reflecting in her eyes—but she was still a Harding.
She remained, fundamentally, the woman who had set the Hall alight, who had burnt Thomas’s corpse to ashes.
The woman who had killed herself rather than have Miriam take her soul—and yet who now refused the same fate when offered the knife.
Miriam bent over the bed, considering. Rosamund was having a dream—her eyelids were fluttering, and soul-light was gathering in the hollows of her collarbones. Miriam pressed her finger to this light, and when she pulled back, a faint glimmer remained, lingering, on her own skin.
Miriam presented her finger to the shadows on the wall.
You want this, she asked them. Don’t you?
The darkness trembled.
Our deal is soon complete. You love her—I can tell. I love her, also. But she is mine. For centuries, she has been.
Miriam stretched her hand outwards. The shadows swarmed forward—at the last moment, she pulled back, placing her finger upon her own lips, flicking out her tongue for a taste.
There was nothing there, of course—she could not truly consume Rosamund’s soul unless a deal was completed—but the theatre made the shadows writhe as if in pain.
If she betrays me, Miriam said, if you betray me, you will have none of her soul to feed upon. I will complete our deal and keep her light to myself, buried within me, for the rest of my existence. If you are loyal, it will be different. Do you understand?
The shadows hesitated, flickering—Miriam wondered if this was truly the first moment, in her centuries of life, that the darkness would refuse her.
But it did not. Slowly, it slipped from the wall to the floor, gathering around the jacket Miriam had pulled from Rosamund’s shoulders as they’d entered. Miriam went to pick it up and noticed a heaviness in the lining. Something was concealed there.
It was the grimoire.
A bookmark in the shape of a filigreed leaf had been pressed between its pages. Miriam opened it to the correct page.
To weakene a dymon, it read. Within the lighte of daye, but beneathe clouds so no shadow is cast, surrounde the creature or those possessed wythyn a circle of salte, or water that runs…
Circle of salt. Water that runs.
Outside, the Atlantic rumbled with the beginnings of a storm.
Miriam dropped the book to the floor. It fell with the decisive heaviness of a guillotine blade, the leather striking the wood with a dark thump.
You have already won, Miriam had said to her, when they’d met two days ago—and Rosamund had replied, Yes, I suppose I have.
Her sudden reappearance on the Monumental; the strange ritual Miriam had caught her in; and now the grimoire, somehow risen from its grave.
She should have suspected earlier. Miriam had known the risks when she came on the ship, but then Rosamund had batted her lashes and—like a lovelorn idiot—Miriam had chosen to trust in her surrender. In return, she had been betrayed.
On the bed, Rosamund stirred. Miriam looked at her. Asleep, her face was na?ve and placid, mouth slack and head lolling on the pillow. She was beautiful. Her eyelids fluttered with dreams.
It was unlikely that this plan of hers would work, of course. Miriam could simply try to fly to shore; they were close enough. It would be incredibly painful, but it may still be possible, if she waited until the land was visible.
But she didn’t want to leave. Miriam was furious. Miriam wanted justice.
There was a letter opener on the dressing table, and a collection of hairpins with sharp ends. The curtains of the porthole had long pulls, rope as thick as Rosamund’s wrists. The bath was deep enough to drown in. Miriam didn’t need any of it, regardless. Her own hands had snapped enough necks.
She approached the bed.
Rosamund sighed and turned in her sleep. Her throat was exposed, as was the pulse beneath it.
Miriam’s fingers met Rosamund’s neck, so gently she didn’t even stir. She was warm. Her skin was soft. It would be so easy. So simple.
But she couldn’t do it.
She left the room.
Miriam went to the promenade. It was a cold day, blisteringly so—she could infer this from the lack of people outside, and the way that the single person present was bundled in a coat and scarf.
She didn’t feel the cold—she never had—but sometimes rage felt to Miriam as she imagined ice felt to a human, the freeze-and-burn contradiction of it, the way it sat in her stomach and made her limbs go tense and shaky.
Salt, water, clouds.
Perhaps Miriam had known, all along. She’d said it to Rosamund herself in the baths—I think you’re hiding something from me. But she had ignored her own doubts, remained in wilful ignorance, just because of her fondness for a woman who was destined to die. She wouldn’t make the same mistake again.
Miriam walked to the railing, curling her hands around the iron bars.
She squeezed until the metal groaned and began to buckle.
There were few shadows here, midday with the sun directly ahead, nothing to cast darkness except the ship itself—still, what few were present began to flinch away, anticipating her anger.
The other person on the promenade approached her, holding something glinting in their hands. Miriam turned violently, expecting to defend herself. But it was just a cigarette case, monogrammed with a gold W.J.
‘Want a smoke?’ asked Walter Jennings.
‘What?’ Miriam ground out, voice like an iron nail scraping glass, and it was testament to either his bravery or his foolhardiness that Walter stood his ground.
‘A smoke,’ he repeated. ‘No offence, miss, but you kind of look like you could use it.’
Miriam’s fury flared. She took a step toward him, teeth bared. ‘What is it about you, Walter Jennings,’ she snarled, ‘that draws her affection? It can’t be your intellect—or attraction. Is it companionship, then? I offered her that, many times, and she always rejected me, in the end.’
He took a step back from her, startled. ‘I—well—wait. Are you talking about Rosie?’
‘Rosie,’ Miriam echoed derisively, and she surged forward to wrap a hand around his elbow. ‘Once she was feared, you know. Once her family’s name was spoken with terror and reverence. But then the Hall burnt, and they became domesticated. I won’t let the same thing happen to me. Cybil was right.’
He blinked at her. ‘Who’s Cybil?’
Miriam ignored the question. ‘It’s the frog and the scorpion, just as she said. Some things are monsters by nature. I’ve been playacting humanity for her, but it’s time I stopped.’
‘Let me go,’ Walter said, and his voice was wavering, his eyes wide. He’d realised that Miriam was more than she seemed, but it was too late.
‘Is this what you wanted, Rosamund?’ Miriam said to the shadows, bidding them to pass the message on: and her voice was a cacophony, discordant, shrieking like the gulls that flew above them, roaring like the waves of the Atlantic, groaning like the iron of the Monumental’s hull.
‘You wanted retribution, didn’t you? You wanted me to be the demon, dragging you to hell.
You wanted to hurt me the way I’ve hurt you.
I’m sure you’d appreciate something new to avenge. ’
‘Don’t—’ Walter said.
‘Then here it is,’ Miriam said, and she threw him over the side of the ship.
It took only an instant. Her strength was such that Walt plummeted toward the water like a cannonball.
The Atlantic rose to meet him, and he disappeared beneath the waves.
He didn’t even have time to scream—and besides, if he had screamed, the wailing of the wind would have drowned it out.
Miriam could have been merciful, and sent the darkness after him, to grant him a quick death. She didn’t. She would let him drown.
Miriam stretched out her arms and bid the shadows to her. They came without complaint, seething around her shoulders, draping themselves across her hands.
‘Come find me, darling,’ she said. ‘It’s been so long since we last danced.’