You wanted retribution—
You wanted me to be the demon, dragging you to hell—
Rosamund was in her silk dressing gown—shell-pink, bias-cut, feather-edged—barefoot, disoriented, her tiny bottle of henbane oil clutched in one fist. She stumbled out of her cabin and into the corridor.
She could hear Miriam’s voice in her mind, over and over; could feel the press of shadows around her, pulling her forward.
Her vision was doubled, the narrow plum-carpeted hallways of the Monumental interposed with the dark wood of Thomas’s townhouse, the tapestried walls of Harding Hall.
On either side of her, she saw mirrors: Cybil’s face, Esther’s face, reflected back to her, blood dripping from their throats.
The air was thick with the scent of wilting roses, the tang of iron.
She knew this was magic, knew this was Miriam’s influence, but the onslaught was too strong to resist. Rosamund allowed the shadows to tug her forward. Behind one door, leading to some other cabin, she heard a woman screaming. Rosamund stumbled and stopped, feeling her eyes well with tears.
‘Mother?’ she said, pressing herself to the door—but the screaming went silent as abruptly as it had begun, and when she tried the handle, the door was locked.
Around the corner, a male figure was watching her.
Isaac, she thought, and she ran forward, reaching for him.
She wanted to tell him she was sorry, she had since the moment she’d remembered him; sorry for her coldness as Esther, her cruelty to him.
She’d spent her life pushing him away because of a curse that didn’t exist. He’d needed her, and she hadn’t been there for him.
‘Isaac, I’m sorry,’ she said, rounding the corner. But no one was there.
At the end of this corridor was an iron door, leading to the promenade. A Miriam-shaped shadow stood in front of it, watching her.
Rosamund drew in a ragged breath. She’d started crying at some point—she didn’t know when. ‘Please,’ she pleaded, ‘if you love me, stop this.’
The shadow laughed, cruel and cold, and then it disappeared.
There was nowhere to go but forward. Rosamund lurched toward the door. When she opened it, she found herself in an orchard.
The deck of the ship was gone. The ground was soft beneath her feet, damp soil and wet grass.
It was raining, but the rain didn’t touch her, instead making a halo around her as it dissipated inches from her skin.
The air smelt like fermenting apples and rotting leaves.
In the distance, there stood the towering lead and brick and glass of a familiar building, and Rosamund almost cried out in shock at seeing it again.
Miriam was standing behind her. She curled an arm around her waist, keeping her in place, and tucked Rosamund’s hair behind her ear. ‘Welcome home.’
‘Why are we here?’ Rosamund asked, staring in horror at Harding Hall.
‘I found the grimoire, darling. I thought a reminder was in order: what happens to those who refuse me. The shadows obliged. They betrayed you. Fear is stronger than love, in the end.’
Rosamund flinched. Miriam’s arm remained in place, unmoving as iron. ‘I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to see this place.’
‘Poor thing,’ Miriam said. ‘Does it hurt to remember? You were always so raw as Cybil, you know. You burnt so fiercely. No wonder things caught fire.’
‘I was sheltered,’ Rosamund said, voice trembling. ‘Na?ve.’
‘Do you blame yourself for what happened?’
‘A little. Not much. What happened to Cybil… no one deserves that.’
‘Do you blame me?’
Rosamund laughed, choked. ‘What do you think?’
Miriam kissed her throat. Rosamund let her do it.
‘What did you do, Miriam?’ she asked. ‘I heard you call to me, just a few minutes ago—you said that you’d give me something new to avenge.’
Miriam spun Rosamund in her arms, so they were face-to-face. ‘Do you remember the song you used to sing?’ she said, pressing her fingers into Rosamund’s cheek. ‘When you were Cybil?’
It was clear she wouldn’t give an answer to the question, clear that she was furious—Rosamund could see that in the coldness of her smile, feel it in the tightness of her grip.
Miriam was capable of killing her, she’d done it once before, and Rosamund knew they were only moments away from the same thing happening again.
But she was too unravelled, too confused to take hold of her power and escape the illusion.
Rosamund, trying to hide the tremble in her voice, replied, ‘“Greensleeves”.’
‘Yes, that was it. A song of love lost, and love returning.’
‘I’ve never been a good singer.’
Miriam laughed indulgently. ‘Not particularly. But I heard you singing, you know, even before we met that night in the clearing. I heard how fiercely you longed for freedom. You needed me then, my dear. You needed me as Esther, too; and still, you need me now.’
Rosamund couldn’t reply. She closed her eyes, unable to look at her.
‘Alas, my love, you do me wrong,’ Miriam sang softly, ‘to cast me off discourteously.’
The sound of the rain fell away. It was replaced with the soft hum of dozens of distant voices.
String instruments picked up the melody as Miriam’s voice faded.
Rosamund opened her eyes to find that they were standing on the balcony of Carroway House.
The night sky stretched above them, the sounds of the Ton drifting through the building’s closed doors.
Despite the absence of rain, there was no change in the temperature of the air; it was like being on a movie screen, noises and shapes without presence.
‘Trite,’ Rosamund said. ‘They weren’t playing “Greensleeves” at the ball.’
‘Forgive me my inaccuracies, darling. I find myself distracted.’
Rosamund glanced at the house and shuddered. ‘We should’ve stayed at Harding Hall.’
‘Why?’
‘This is the moment I hated you the most,’ she said. ‘When I knew I could never forgive you.’
Miriam released her, stepping back. Something glinted in her hand: the oyster knife.
Rosamund’s eyes widened, her pulse speeding. ‘Don’t.’
Smiling, Miriam raised the knife, holding the blade between thumb and forefinger. It glinted in the light of the false stars above them. ‘We have both killed with this,’ she said. ‘We are alike, you and I.’
‘We are nothing alike.’
‘We both know that isn’t true.’
‘And that is your fault!’ Rosamund cried. ‘It’s all your fault, Miriam. I was human, once. And now you’ve made me—made me into this creature, this monster, thinking only of you, your destruction, your love.’
‘It was Christopher Harding who made you, darling. Him, your mother, your cousin, yourself—all those who believed in the curse, who taught you to believe in it, who moulded your darkness in their image.’
‘That doesn’t matter. It was you who forced me to live three lives, to drown in my loneliness three times over. You killed me.’
‘And you brought me to life!’ Miriam shrieked back, voice rending the air with her fury.
‘Before you, Rosamund Harding, I had never known love, and I had never known regret. Now you have wounded me with these things, you have made me fallible. I will never forgive you for that, just as you will never forgive me.’
Rosamund closed her eyes once more, balling her fists. She felt the presence of the shadows all around her, dancing themselves into the shape of Carroway House, into the unearthly glow of the stars above them, all at Miriam’s command. Rosamund needed to command them instead.
Enough, she told them, offering a piece of her soul, small and bright and burning. Enough.
A sharp pain pierced through her core, as savage as any deal she had made so far. The music of the fake ball stuttered, then stopped.
Rosamund opened her eyes. Around them, the horizon and the sky and Carroway House were beginning to drip downwards, like paint beneath turpentine.
Miriam looked alarmed. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Three lives a witch, Miriam,’ Rosamund told her, voice straining with effort.
‘Three souls to sell, and centuries of fear to make reality. I didn’t waste this life, you know, on dancing and tapestries.
You might be the same as you always were, but I’ve grown stronger.
I’ve made many more deals while you were away. ’
Reaching for the shadows, Miriam commanded, ‘Come to me.’ In her palm, she offered a piece of some ill-gotten soul—the darkness seethed over it eagerly. For a moment, the vision of Carroway House wavered, and then it began to strengthen. The music resumed; the stars roared back to life.
Rosamund gritted her teeth and pushed through the pain, carving another piece from herself, coaxing the shadows back to her.
The music stopped again.
‘Enough of this,’ Miriam said. ‘What—’
‘I’ll only ask once more. What did you do, Miriam, before you called me here? Why did you say I’d have something new to avenge?’
Miriam paused, then grinned at her.
‘Avenge him,’ she said. ‘Why not? It hardly matters now. See if your anger will give this new life meaning, in the hours you have left.’
‘Who?’ Rosamund replied, and then she realised.
‘I fed him to the Atlantic,’ Miriam said. ‘He went quietly, too. I didn’t give him enough time to scream.’
Rosamund should have expected it. Because she was cursed, after all—that curse stood in front of her, smiling grimly, satisfied that she had taken her due.
That didn’t make it hurt any less. That didn’t make her throat loosen or her tears dry; and it didn’t douse the burning coal of anger that tumbled into the base of her belly, that set her alight from the inside out.
‘I’ll kill you,’ Rosamund snarled.
‘Oh, sweetheart. If you strike a match, you shouldn’t be surprised when it catches fire. But you can try, if you’d like.’
Miriam offered her the oyster knife. Rosamund took it from her.
And, for a moment, she had the urge to slit her own throat; to deny Miriam one more time.
Another life, another soul—why limit herself?
Why not stay this way forever, live ceaseless lives of mortal drudgery, watching those who loved her be destroyed?
Too many memories, too many broken hearts, and any woman would become incapable of feeling.
Someday, eventually, Rosamund would stop caring about what Miriam Richter had done to her, and she would finally be at peace.
But she felt the phantom flames of the ritual she’d performed, still licking at her heels; she could feel the fear of all those who’d hated her writhing beneath her skin. Rosamund would use that fear like kindling, set herself alight with it. She had a plan. She would see it through.
Stepping forward, she pulled Miriam in for a kiss. As her teeth sank into her bottom lip, she plunged the oyster knife into Miriam’s chest.
Miriam allowed the kiss to continue for a moment longer, then pulled away. She glanced down at the knife embedded in her skin and smirked. ‘Did that make you feel better?’
‘No,’ Rosamund said. ‘But this will.’
Then she tore off a piece of her soul that was so great, so fundamental, that she screamed and shattered at the pain, unmade, red-hot as a poker in the fire—but it was enough.
Of course it was enough. It was more than anything she had ever given before, and more than anything Miriam could ever give.
The shadows bowed to her entirely; they fell over her, grateful, loving, and Rosamund disappeared.
She had always been lonely.
Rosamund had made herself lonely, across centuries, across lifetimes.
She had made herself lonely because of the curse, but the curse hadn’t been real; and that wouldn’t have mattered, anyway.
All of her relationships had been brief and fragile.
There had only ever been one person who didn’t abandon her—and that person wasn’t a person at all.
Shadows are fickle, and they leave at the hint of light.
But they return, always. They are the only thing that will never leave you.
There was no Harding without Richter: she had accepted that the first time she died.
Without Miriam, she would have lived an entire life as Cybil, miserable and isolated.
She would have made that cavernous Hall a coffin to bury herself in.
She would have never known the power she could wield.
Sometimes, Rosamund was relieved to be spared such a fate.
Sometimes, she wanted it so badly she could barely breathe.
Once, she had thought that to be human meant to love and be loved.
Her curse, real or no, had prevented those things, and so prevented her humanity in turn.
But now Rosamund knew that feeling wasn’t human, not inherently—Miriam had proven that.
Although that swirling darkness in Miriam’s heart had once seemed an emptiness, a void, three lifetimes had shown otherwise.
Miriam wasn’t human, but she grieved, she exulted, she angered.
She had a soul, just as Rosamund did. A soul of a different kind, maybe, but a soul still.
To be human: it was an impossible dream, and one Rosamund had finally had to discard.
She had lived three lives, none of them happy.
Like a gambler down on their luck, she was sometimes tempted to throw the dice again, to end this life and start a new one; hoping beyond hope that this time she’d find something in her own mortality that would make it all worthwhile.
But Rosamund knew her life as a human was a losing game.
If she wanted to be free, truly free, to love as she wished—to burn as she wished, to look at the world with defiance, not surrender—she needed to change the rules.
My soul will be yours, Cybil had once said.
All magic was exchange, after all.