One Salt Sea
Page 35

My first impression was of overwhelming pinkness. Everything was one shade of pink or another—the walls, the rugs, even the upholstery on the chairs. Evening Winter-rose had had a similar decorating scheme for her apartment, but while she’d made it look like a private Valentine, this looked more like a preschooler’s room, one who dreamed in Disney princesses and once-upon-a-times.
Oh. That was exactly what this was: the room Sylvester and Luna decorated for their precious baby girl. Then she went away, and came back broken. They didn’t know what to change, what would help her heal . . . and so they didn’t change anything at all, and they never taught her about growing up. I don’t think anyone, or anything, ever did.
There were traces of her adulthood visible around the edges, but not many. Raysel shared this room with the ghost of her own childhood, the little girl who died on the day when she was swept off into the darkness. Her kidnapping was—and is—the case I couldn’t solve. We’re all still paying for it.
I walked forward, scanning the area. This was a showroom, the entry to a noble’s private space. If Raysel had slipped up, it wouldn’t be here. There were two doors at the back of the room. I indicated them, asking, “Grianne, where do these doors lead?”
“Bedroom. Washroom.” Each word was accompanied by a Merry Dancer soaring over to bob in front of the indicated door. Grianne paused before adding, “There’s a door from the bedroom to the family’s private garden.”
“Gotcha.” I started for the bedroom door. “Tybalt, can you shift to cat form and see if anything smells out of place?”
“Will you never learn that I am not a bloodhound?” he asked without rancor.
“Nope.” The door was warm under my fingertips, like some unseen sun had been shining on it. I tried the knob. It turned easily, the door swinging open to reveal a darkened room that seemed like a much better match for Rayseline’s adult character. Heavy drapes were drawn across the windows, blocking any light that might have tried to slip inside. “Grianne?”
She didn’t answer me, but the Merry Dancer that had been marking the door swooped inside and hovered slightly above head height, brightening to cast a soft white glow through the entire room. I stopped where I was, taking a moment to simply look. This was where Raysel had lived, free from the expectations of her family. This was where she hadn’t been forced to hide.
The walls had been papered pink, at one point; scraps of wallpaper still clung around the ceiling and near the floor. The rest had been ripped away, revealing smooth plaster. Even some of that had been torn down, leaving bare the rough gray stone of the actual walls. The floor was hard, uncovered oak. Raysel had removed any trace of softness, leaving the room as stark as she could. A standing wardrobe was shoved against one wall, and a simple bureau was up against the other. In the darkest corner of the room, the one farthest from the windows, a twin bed that was practically a cot had been made up with a thin blanket and a single pillow.
A lump formed in my throat as I looked around. Raysel might have returned from the darkness that stole her, but in a very real way, she never came home.
A tabby-striped tomcat slipped past my feet, nose pressed low to the ground as he stalked through the room. That snapped me out of my momentary freeze. “Etienne, search the wardrobe; Grianne, get the bureau.” I started for the bed.
“What are we looking for?” asked Etienne.
“Anything that shouldn’t be there.” I knelt, peering into the narrow, shadow-filled space between the floor and the bottom of the mattress. If Raysel had kept anything hidden there, it was long gone; the only things I saw were dust bunnies and a few more scraps of wallpaper.
“How specific,” said Etienne, as he started going through the wardrobe.
“I live to serve.” Peeling back the blanket revealed nothing but the mattress, sliced open along the side to allow for the removal of half the stuffing. I reached cautiously through the slit, and found nothing but wadded lumps of silk. “This isn’t a room for two.”
“No,” said Etienne. “Master O’Dell maintained his own quarters.”
“Oh.” I always knew things between Connor and Raysel were less than ideal—I wasn’t even sure the marriage had been consummated, and I’d never quite been able to bring myself to ask—but somehow, I thought they would have shared at least an apartment, if not a bed. That’s what I get for being an occasional idealist, I guess.
Tybalt stalked over to the bureau, letting out an earsplitting yowl. I stood, turning in his direction. “What’s that, Lassie? Timmy’s down the well?”
The look he gave me could have peeled paint. I snickered as I walked over to him, motioning for Grianne to step aside.
“What?”
Tybalt reached out with one paw and tapped the front of the bureau’s bottommost drawer. He meowed again, just to be sure I got the point.
“I’m on it,” I said, and sat down on the floor. “Grianne, a little light down here?” The second Merry Dancer swung into position. “That’s good.”
The drawer stuck a little as I tugged it free. The reason became clear when I looked at its contents: shoeboxes full of rocks. Dozens and dozens of rocks. They looked perfectly ordinary, like they’d been harvested from paths and flowerbeds around the knowe. I picked one up, squinting at it. “Okay, what the hell?”
“She used to pick those up,” Grianne said. The sound of her voice was surprising enough that I turned toward it, the rock forgotten. She shrugged. “When she was walking, and thought no one watched her, she would pick them up from wherever she happened to be. I never asked her why. I doubted she would give me an answer.”
“Yeah, probably not.” I was sickeningly sure I knew what the answer would have been, if Raysel had been compelled to tell the truth. She’d spent so many years lost in the darkness that she must have lived every day afraid the world would fall away again, leaving her alone in the nothingness. Rocks were little things, simple things, and they were solid. They were real. If they symbolized nothing else, they proved that she was in a place that actually existed.
I put the rock back among its brothers before gripping the sides of the drawer and giving it one last, firm tug. It popped loose and thudded to the floor. I checked the sides and bottom for hidden panels or secret documents, and then pushed it aside. Tybalt gave it a sniff before meowing and crouching to peer into the hole in the bureau.