Bright We Burn (The Conqueror's Saga 3)

And I was—

Well. Not like her.

“Did I ever tell you Victor and I used to climb out onto the roof of the house to watch lightning storms?”

She shook her head, not lifting it.

“The way the lighting would play off the mountains, throwing them into sharp relief, as though we were watching the creation of the world itself. Or over the lake, so it looked like it was in both the sky and the water. We would be soaked by the end; it is a wonder neither of us caught our death.” I laughed again, remembering. My skin—fair like my hair—would turn the most violent shades of red from the cold. Victor, with his dark curls plastered to his sallow forehead accentuating the shadows he always bore beneath his eyes, would look like death. What a pair we were!

“One night,” I continued, sensing Justine was calming, “lightning struck a tree on the grounds not ten body lengths from where we sat.”

“That must have been terrifying!”

“It was glorious.” I smiled, placing my hand flat against the cold glass, feeling the temperature beneath my lacy white gloves. “To me, it was the great and terrible power of nature. It was like seeing God.”

Justine clucked disapprovingly, peeling herself from my side to give me a stern look. “Do not blaspheme.”

I stuck my tongue out at her until she relented into a smile.

“What did Victor think of it?”

“Oh, he was horribly depressed for months afterward. I believe his exact phrasing was that he ‘languished in valleys of incomprehensible despair.’?”

Justine’s smile grew, though with a puzzled edge. Her face was clearer than any of Victor’s texts. His books always required further knowledge and intense study, while Justine was an illuminated manuscript—beautiful and treasured and instantly understandable.

I reluctantly pulled the curtains closed on the carriage window, sealing us away from the storm for her comfort. She had not left the house at the lake since our last disastrous trip into Geneva had ended with her insane, bereft mother attacking us. This journey into Bavaria was taxing for her. “While I saw the destruction of the tree as nature’s beauty, Victor saw power—power to light up the night and banish darkness, power to end a centuries-old life in a single strike—that he could not control or access. And nothing bothered Victor more than something he could not control.”

“I wish I had known him better before he left for university.”

I patted her hand—her brown leather gloves a gift Henry had given me—before squeezing her fingers. Those gloves were far softer and warmer than my own. But Victor preferred me in white. And I loved giving nice things to Justine. She had joined the household two years earlier, when she was seventeen and I was fifteen, and had been there only a couple of months before Victor left us. She did not really know him.

No one did, except me. I liked it that way, but I wanted them to love each other as I loved them both.

“Soon you will know Victor. We shall all of us—Victor and you and me—” I paused, my tongue traitorously trying to add Henry. That was not going to happen. “We will be reunited most joyfully, and then my heart will be complete.” My tone was cheery to mask the fear that underlay this entire endeavor.

I could not let Justine be worried. Her willingness to come as my chaperone was the only reason I had managed this trip. Judge Frankenstein had initially rejected my pleadings to check on Victor. I think he was relieved to have Victor gone, did not care when we had no word. Judge Frankenstein always said Victor would come home when he was ready, and I should not worry about it.

I did. Very much. Particularly after I found a list of expenses with my name at the top. He was auditing me—and soon, I had no doubt, he would determine that I was not worth holding on to. I had done too well, fixing Victor. He was out in the world, and I was obsolete to his father.

I would not let myself be cast out. Not after my years of hard work. Not after all I had done.

Fortunately, Judge Frankenstein had been called away on a mysterious journey of his own. I did not ask permission again so much as…leave. Justine did not know that. Her presence gave me the freedom I needed here to move about without inviting suspicion or censure. William and Ernest, Victor’s younger brothers and her charges, would be fine in the care of the maid until

we could return.

Another burst of thunder, this one rumbling through our chests so we felt it in our very hearts.

“Tell me the story of the first time you met Victor,” she squeaked, clutching my hand so hard that the bones ached.

The woman who was not my mother pinched me and tugged my hair with brutally efficient meanness.

I wore a dress that was far too big. The sleeves hung down to my wrists, which was not the style for children. But it covered the bruises that in turn covered my skin. The week previous I had been caught stealing an extra portion of food. Though I had often been bloodied by her angry fists, this time my caregiver had beaten me until everything went black. I spent the next three nights hiding in the woods at the lake, eating berries. I thought she would kill me when she found me; she had often threatened to do just that. Instead, she had discovered another use for me.

“Do not ruin this,” she hissed. “Better for you to have died at your birth along with your mother than to be left here with me. Selfish in life, selfish in death. That’s what you come from.”

I lifted my chin high, let her finish brushing my hair so that it shone as bright as gold.

“Make them love you,” she demanded as a gentle knock sounded at the door to the hovel I shared with my caregiver and her own four children. “If they do not take you, I will drown you in the rain barrel like the cat’s last litter of runty kittens.”