A Cold Legacy (The Madman's Daughter 3)

I returned to Edward, close enough for his dark blood to stain my hands. I was terrified to look up, afraid that he’d be dead, and this time I’d have killed him.

But he let out a deep sigh.

“You’re alive,” I whispered.

He winced, reaching for the lighting rod. I hurried to help him pull it from both Radcliffe’s body and his own. Radcliffe’s body sagged onto the mud, face in a puddle, no air coming from it.

Dead.

I knelt next to Edward, brushing the hair from his face. He clutched a hand to the slow seeping blood from his chest. “Nothing you can’t fix, right?” A small smile played at the corners of his mouth.

I wrapped my arms around him, holding him tight, knowing that soon I’d have to tell him about Lucy. What place was there in the world for a man like him, so unnatural and yet so good?

“Go to him,” Edward said, nodding toward Montgomery’s unconscious body.

I pulled away, wiping my eyes. Edward gave me a gentle push, and I crawled across the muddy courtyard to where Montgomery lay. The color had drained from his face and arms. I pressed my fingers to his neck, praying to every god I knew that he wouldn’t be dead. He couldn’t be. Not after everything.

Someone shuffled behind me, and I smelled wet dog. Balthazar crouched next to me. Blood seeped from a gash on his shoulder, but otherwise he seemed unhurt.

“Is he alive, Miss?”

Beneath my fingers there was a pulse, and I closed my eyes with gratitude. I braced my arms in the mud, crying freely now.

“Yes,” I said. “He’ll make it.”

Balthazar patted my shoulder, and all the strength ran out of me. I hadn’t realized that, like Montgomery, my body had been pushing me beyond what was humanly possible. I slumped to the mud, barely able to keep my eyes open.

“Balthazar, it’s still dangerous. The fire—”

He patted my shoulder. “I’ll take care of everything, Miss. Rest now. It’s over.”

The final bit of resistance within me let go. Over. I let my eyes sink closed, and the last thing I felt was the soft rain against my eyelids.

FORTY

I WOKE AS MORNING broke over the moors.

The last tendrils of smoke streaked across a mottled pink sky. I was lying beneath the open ceiling of the winter garden; though all the glass had shattered, the iron skeleton still stood. I sat up, still dazed from smoke poisoning, and took in the other survivors.

Edward had dragged one of the white metal chairs into the grass and sat with his back to me, facing the smoldering house. He rested his elbows on his knees, slightly hunched and stiff. Montgomery, still unconscious but breathing steadily, was laid out on the floor beside me on an old saddle blanket. A bark came at my side, and Sharkey nuzzled against me.

“Good boy,” I said, scratching his ear. There was something so simple about petting a dog. Sharkey didn’t understand what the burning building meant. Sharkey didn’t know that Lucy was dead and the world had turned upside down time and time again.

He laid on the dusty floor, rested his head in my lap.

“I found him in the barn this morning.” Balthazar lumbered over, crouching down to scratch Sharkey’s back. “The fire didn’t spread there. He was sleeping in the straw with the goats.”

“So all the servants are safe?”

“Yes, Miss.”

“How’s Montgomery?”

“Still hasn’t woken, but the rest is good for him. His body will take some time to recover.”

I let my eyes trace over his sleeping form, remembering how he’d torn open the metal grate with his bare hands. It had wrecked his body, but maybe that was a blessing. If he’d been involved in the fight with Radcliffe, there’d be no telling if he’d be alive right now.

“And Edward?”

“He bled and bled,” Balthazar said. “I tried to do stitches, but these hands.” He held up his giant fingers and sighed. “I haven’t the dexterity. You’ll have to do it, Miss. I plugged the hole in his chest with straw, and that’s held for now. He’s like Master Hensley, I think. Not much can kill him.”

“No. I don’t suppose so.” I drew my knees into my chest, taking a deep breath. The air was thick with the smell of smoke. A few lingering fires still crackled in the east wing; we’d probably find burning embers deep in the ruins for days. In the morning light the manor looked like a looming skeleton, all stone spines and ragged metal bones. A building that had stood for hundreds of years, against the attack of the Vikings, protecting a secret that had the potential to change the world.

Now it was nothing but ashes and stone.

“What about Jack Serra and his troupe?” I asked.

Balthazar scratched the back of his neck. “They’re gone, Miss.”

“What do you mean? Where did they go?”

“I can’t say, exactly. After the fighting ended I carried you and Montgomery here and did my best to attend to your injuries, then I went looking for the carnival troupe but found nothing. They moved on.”

“They can’t have just left. Jack . . . Ajax . . . he’s one of us.”

“He isn’t one of you,” Balthazar explained patiently. “He’s like me, you know. A creation. His ways aren’t the ways of men. He isn’t one to stay for good-byes.”

It was the first time I’d ever heard Balthazar admit to the truth of what he was. He was so lovably naïve to the ways of the world that at times I had doubted he did know what he was.

“What about you?” I asked Balthazar. “Will you go, too?”

His face went very serious. “No, Miss. My place is with you and Montgomery, whether I’m one of you or not.”

I envied him the certainty that hung in his voice. This man had once been a creation in my father’s laboratory, then a dog at Montgomery’s heels. Now he was so much more. A savior. A friend. I reached over and squeezed his hand. “You do belong with us.”

The wind must have carried the sound of our voices beyond the winter garden, because Edward turned in the chair and came over to us. There was a carefulness in the way he handled himself, one hand pressed against his chest, his movements guarded and slow. I jumped up to help him ease onto a low brick wall. Behind him, the stone statue of a fox watched, unscathed by the fire.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

He winced as he settled on the brick wall. Carefully, he pulled away his hand from his chest, where he’d been clutching a blood-soaked cloth packed with straw. “It doesn’t hurt. That’s something, at least.”