“Ver—”
His protest ended as I sank my fingers into his shoulder, nodding toward the shelves.
“You might be mad about being exiled away to Marchioly House,” I said, drawing Julien’s attention from the dossiers. “But at least you didn’t end up in a glass jar.”
Viktor sprang from his seat, eyes narrowed as he approached the bookcase.
There were dozens of those jars on the shelves, some nestled in sets of three, other larger ones tucked between leather-bound volumes, and while I had no desire to examine them further, I would have staked my life each contained the remains of an experiment.
Like moths to a flame, the boys were drawn in, turning jar after jar round as they looked through their cursed half siblings. I found my remaining absinthe and downed the tumbler in onehasty, trembling gulp. It was a poor choice. My bloodstream boiled and every time I shut my eyes, I saw the gaping mouth, the sightless face, those rounded limbs.
“Versia’sstars,” Viktor whispered, hoisting a specimen up. “Are those…fronds?”
“Fronds?” I whispered. “Like…like a fern?”
Viktor held the jar out and my stomach flipped over as I caught sight of the figure within.
“I’ve seen that baby before,” I admitted, my voice cracking as hot bile threatened to slosh up my throat. “That’s one of Constance’s.”
I gnawed at the inside of my cheek, struggling to put together the bits and pieces of everything I’d guessed at and weighing them against what I actually knew.
And it didn’t make sense.
Constance had been viciously murdered. Such an attack wasn’t something that could have been easily cleared away. It was laughable to imagine Dauphine in the secret tunnel, on her hands and knees, cleaning up the bloody aftermath, dragging Constance’s body out of the manor to toss within a grave she’d dug herself.
And the babies.
If Dauphine had killed Constance, she would have undoubtedly gone after the children as well, wanting to make it appear as if Gerard’s mistress had simply taken her children and fled.
But the babies were here.
In Gerard’s study.
Here, preserved for further study and speculation. To be analyzed and puzzled over.
By Gerard.
“Ver?” Viktor asked. “Are you all right?”
Slowly, I shook my head. “Gerard killed her,” I murmured, my mouth feeling impossibly dry. “Constance. He killed her and them.” I gestured to the jars lining the bottom shelf. “Those babies weren’t like the others…. Look how big their jars are. They’d been born. They were alive. Until…” My throat caught and the words wouldn’t come.
Viktor paled, looking up at all of the other jars. “Where do you suppose all the other mothers are now?”
“The gardens,” I guessed. “Buried somewhere in those rose mounds.”
“He needs to pay,” Julien murmured quietly, tracing his fingers along the lip of a jar. The formaldehyde within was blessedly too murky to see through. “We have enough evidence, more than enough evidence. The diary…these babies…whatever is buried out in the mounds…We need to go to the authorities and let them deal with it all. Deal withhim.”
Viktor nodded, uncharacteristically subdued.
“But…” I stopped, my head roiling. “But you can’t…”
Both brothers’ eyes fell upon me.
“You’re not about to justify all this, are you, Ver?” Viktor asked sharply, at my side in a flash. He held up Constance’s baby. The little tendrilled arms swayed in the sloshing liquid.
“No, of course not! Gerard absolutely needs to be held accountable—he needs to be stopped—but…but before you do that, before you tell anyone else, we need to tell Alex,” I decided firmly, blinking hard to keep the room from spinning. “He needs to know this. To know about you and Julien. To know everything Gerard has done. Alex deserves to hear it from us first.”
The boys studied each other and I had the uncomfortably distinct impression they were speaking to one another without words.
