Home > The Last Legacy(4)

The Last Legacy(4)
Author: Adrienne Young

“How is my aunt?”

“She’s well.” I didn’t tell him that she’d sent her regards, because she hadn’t. I had a feeling it would come as no surprise to him. Henrik and Sariah seemed to tolerate each other, at best.

He nodded. “I am happy to hear that. And your journey? Your cabin on the Jasper?”

“All very well,” I answered. “Thank you for arranging everything. I’m grateful.”

Another silence fell over the study as he curiously looked me over. His eyes studied my hair, my frock, my boots. The shimmering bracelet around my wrist. “Murrow will show you to your room. I’m sure you’re very tired. You’ll meet the rest of the family tonight at dinner.”

There was a subtly commanding air in the words, but I relaxed slightly. When I opened my mouth to speak again, Murrow was already opening the door. I looked between them, realizing that Henrik wasn’t giving a polite suggestion. He was dismissing me.

I forced a polite smile. “I’m glad to finally meet you,” I said.

At that, Henrik seemed to stiffen. “I suppose it feels that way to you.”

My smile fell a little. I wasn’t sure what he meant. Maybe that to him, it didn’t feel like a first meeting because he’d known me as a child. Or maybe that I didn’t feel like a stranger to him. Either way, he didn’t exactly look angry and I took that as a good sign.

“I’ll see you tonight,” he said, straightening from where he leaned on the desk. He turned toward the fire, reaching for the small leather book, and I watched him over my shoulder as I stepped back out into the hall.

The chill that hovered outside of the room was a relief. I was too warm beneath my frock from the study’s blazing fire.

“This way.” Murrow gestured to the stairs behind me that Tru had taken.

I followed him up, each step creaking as we climbed their winding path. When we reached the next floor, a bit of sunlight was coming from a high window on the topmost level. Outside, the gray sky had brightened to a soft blue.

Murrow led me around two turns before he stopped in front of a closed door. More light spilled into the hallway as he swung it open. Across the small room, the single window was cracked, letting a breeze skip through the air.

Murrow tapped the top of the trunk sitting at the foot of the bed. Someone had brought it up from the street, along with my cloak that now hung on the hook at the back of the door.

I looked the space over. There was a simple dressing table, a bed, and leaning in one corner was a long mirror with a porcelain washing bowl on one side and a chair on the other. The walls were painted the palest shade of green, but it was chipping, revealing the white plaster beneath.

It was bare and modest, but it had the feeling of once being lived in. I liked it.

In Nimsmire, I’d always felt like a roughly cut jewel set into a shining brooch. My edges were too sharp. My anger too swift. Sariah had done her best to make me into one of the girls from prominent merchant families who would be matched like shoes to a handsome frock, but I’d never fit seamlessly among them. I’d never wanted to.

In that way, Bastian was more than my destiny. It was my chance at freedom from charades and displays and diplomatic marriages.

“Whose room was this?” I asked, eyeing the tortoiseshell comb on the dressing table. “Before, I mean.”

Murrow’s expression shifted just slightly. “Someone who’s not here anymore.” He stepped back into the hallway. “Welcome home.”

He left me alone, and I took the three steps to the window, reaching up to close it. Outside, the rooftops of Bastian were still glistening with rain as the sun burned off the fog. It was only then that I got a glimpse of just how big the city was. A sea of buildings rolled over the hills in the distance, edging along the shore for as far as I could see. In comparison, the small port city of Nimsmire that had been my whole world seemed tiny. The thought made me feel small in that window.

I went to my cloak and reached into the pocket, removing the two envelopes inside. The first was Henrik’s letter. It was still badly creased, but the other was crisp, the corners sharp. It was the letter Sariah had given me before I left. The envelope was sealed, the wax pressed with her initials, SR. I hadn’t yet had the guts to read it.

I opened the top drawer of the dressing table and dropped them inside before I sat down on the bed and kicked off my boots. I pulled my legs up beneath my skirts and hugged them to my chest, shivering. The quietness of the house returned, like the sound of a cavern. Empty and hollow.

Back where you belong. Henrik’s voice crept through my mind.

I’d never belonged anywhere. Not in Nimsmire. Not with Sariah. But there was a faint, whispering voice that had found me as I crossed the threshold of the house tucked back in the dismal, forgotten alley of Lower Vale. It had snaked its way through me, echoing that single, terrifying word that Murrow had spoken.

Home.

 

 

THREE

 

I wouldn’t write to her. Not yet.

In the hours since I’d arrived in Lower Vale, I’d unpacked my things into the few drawers and wardrobe. I’d set my jewelry into the little glass box on the table and paced the floorboards in front of the long mirror. After I’d spent a good hour at the window, watching the distant water darken in the falling light, I finally sat at the desk and pulled a piece of blank parchment free.

The scribble of the quill was a chaotic flurry of half thoughts and admissions, but the moment I signed my name I’d torn it up, feeding the pieces to the single flame on the candle.

Sariah would see it as weakness to receive word from me so soon. She’d know exactly what lay beneath the prompt message—uncertainty, fear. Worst of all, she’d know that I needed her.

Sariah had never been particularly warm, and I’d always thought it was because I was destined to leave her. Or that the pain of losing her son and my mother haunted her so much that she’d never really let herself grow too attached to me. But there had been an ache that woke in my chest as I stood on the deck of the Jasper, watching her grow small on the docks as the ship left port. Like the tether between us had finally been cut. And for the first time in my life, I was drifting.

I stood at the top of the stairs, listening to the sound of glass clinking and boots on the hollow floors below. Laughter. The house was full of people, missing the emptiness from that afternoon. For a fleeting moment, I thought it stirred a memory somewhere deep in the back of my mind. The smell of lamp oil and mullein smoke. The golden glow of a fire and the sparkle of crystal.

My skirts brushed along the walls of the narrow stairwell as I came down and I paused on the other side of the entrance to the dining room. Shadows moved over the walls and the light cascaded, reflected by the chandelier that hung from the ceiling. It was a piece too beautiful for the run-down house.

I pasted on my softest, most proper smile before I stepped through the open doorway. My fingers tangled together at my lower back and the voices promptly silenced when the family saw me. I counted seven pairs of eyes, all glistening in the firelight. Among them there was only one woman, a slight, dark-haired figure with a toddler on her hip. She was the only one who didn’t look directly at me, absently tucking the little boy’s hair behind his ear.

“Ah.” Henrik stepped out from behind the others, a grin spread wide on his face.

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