“The sap of a laurel tree contains a powerful poison…. When you prune the branches, you must take great care not to breathe in the fumes…. I’d had the doors open to air everything out. I certainly didn’t think it would linger so long, or that you’d be so affected. I’ve been working in the greenhouse all morning without seeing a thing.”
“Seeing.” I licked my lips. “What is it I’m meant to have seen?”
Gerard’s shoulders rose. “People have reported seeing hallucinations, having nightmarish comas they couldn’t wake from. Sometimes their throats seize up—they suffocate on their own blistered tongues.” He blinked down at me. “I can never apologize enough for this. I can’t believe I was so careless.”
“So…it was like a dream?” I asked, a wave of relief washing over me.
Only a dream.
Not me.
Not my mind.
Not truly.
Gerard frowned. “It’s hard to say. Some people believe it’s more than that. That it’s an experience, doors opening up to other worlds.A portal to realms beyond ours. I’ve read many accounts from survivors saying they saw all sorts of unimaginable wonders. Some even claim to have spoken with the gods.” Gerard leaned forward. “Is that who you saw?”
“Who I saw…,” I repeated.
The woman with her weeping eyes.
She’d not been human, that much was abundantly clear.
Could she have been a god?
I opened my mouth, forming the answer.
I wanted to tell him. I wanted to tell him everything.
The ghosts.
This god.
But what would Gerard think of me?
Surely a girl with the capacity for such terrible thoughts—Eulalie’s drooping clavicle swayed in my memory—such terrible visions, was not the right choice for his son.
Camille’s words haunted me.
No one is going to want a mad little fiancée, for a mad little wife, issuing out mad little children. You’d be ruined forever.
But it wasn’t my fault.
I wasn’t mad.
It was the laurel.
Wasn’t it?
“There was no laurel on the night you saw those women,”a little voice deep in my head taunted.
Those were peacocks.
“Hanna wasn’t. Hanna Whitten who has been dead and gone these last twelve years,”it reminded.
Stop it.
Stop it right now.
