Chapter 30

Chapter Thirty

"Y our Grace!" Susan shook her shoulders, every word frantic. "We must go."

Hugh was away for a few days overseeing his tenants when Evangeline woke in the middle of the night to choking smoke.

There were loud noises, screaming, and the groaning sound of wood.

"Go where?" Evangeline sat up, staring around her darkened room.

There was nothing out of place in her surroundings, but beyond her door, she could sense activity—and that awful sound, as though the world were falling down around their ears.

"There's been a fire." Susan threw back the covers and opened the window.

A cool sea breeze flooded the room, banishing the smoke, and Evangeline realized for the first time how thick and smoggy the air had become.

A fire.

Her thoughts clung to that one thought.

"His Grace," she said, her voice strangled. She flung her feet out of bed and found a robe, slinging it over her shoulders without Susan's help. "Did he return?"

"I believe not, Your Grace."

"Good." She started for the door. "Lily—I mean?—"

"I imagine someone has been sent for her, too."

Evangeline didn't so much as give her bedchamber one final glance as she hurried from it, down through the smoke-filled staircase to the bottom floor. The heat was fiercer here, singeing her skin, and she felt the burn all the way in her lungs as she gulped for air.

"Evangeline!" Margaret was outside, her arms wide, dressed only in her nightgown and a robe of her own. "I'm so relieved you made it out!"

Evangeline allowed herself to be enfolded in the older woman's embrace. Once Hugh was back tomorrow, Margaret was due to leave; what a cruel twist of fate that she hadn't yet gone, that the fire had happened that night.

"What happened?" she demanded, turning back to see servants coming and going from the house.

Some footmen were running to the well, bringing buckets of water back, but Evangeline could see flames licking out of the windows of the west wing.

Lily's tower.

"I don't know, precisely," Margaret said. "We don't know how the fire started, but everyone is doing what they can to put it out."

What they could do wasn't going to be enough.

The blaze was already catching, roaring out of control. If they wanted to save anything or anyone else, they were running out of time. A lot of the building was made of thick stone, but not everything.

"Where's Lily?" she demanded.

"I don't know. She should be coming out any second." Margaret wrung her hands anxiously as she looked at the door. "She'll be right out."

Evangeline watched the stream of servants. Though she knew someone had probably been dispatched to find Lily, there were a thousand things that could have happened—including the fact that the blaze was too large and too near.

No, she couldn't wait for someone else to do this.

She broke away from Margaret and raced to the door.

"Your Grace," a footman shouted after her. "You can't go in there! It's dangerous!"

As though she didn't know. But Lily was somewhere in there, and after everything the girl had been through, after everything Hugh had gone through to protect her, Evangeline wasn't about to let her suffer anything more.

The outside world disappeared as she stepped into the smoke. It was bitter, acrid, sitting on her tongue as she took stock of the situation.

Servants were running in all directions, some trying to protect the most precious things from the flames, others trying to put out the fire.

Evangeline set off at a run, one hand across her face so the smoke didn't get too much into her lungs. The west wing was where the worst of the fire was concentrated—and it was also the side closest to the road and the village.

Evangeline tucked that piece of information in the back of her mind for when she had a moment to dissect it.

She reached the door to the west wing and flung it open. It was hotter here, the handle searing her hands and the smoke curling heated tendrils around her face. Her chest burned, both from the smoke and the heat of everything.

She took a breath through the material of her robe and plunged onward.

"Lily!" she called. Her voice was choked. "Lily, where are you?"

There! She was certain she heard something there. An answering call, perhaps. Or perhaps just the house settling.

Shielding her streaming eyes, she continued along the long corridor that ended in the small sitting room that she had found on her first proper exploration.

The fire had caught here, and the staircase had partially collapsed. If Lily was upstairs, Evangeline wouldn't be able to find her.

"Evangeline?" The voice was weak, coming from near her feet. "Is that you?"

Evangeline looked down to see Lily there, barely visible through the smoke, trapped under a piece of fallen timber. The fire roared, the blast of heat enough to crisp her bare skin. She didn't have long before the flames swallowed them both too.

There was no way she could allow that to happen.

She bent, taking hold of Lily's arms, and tugged. Lily made a muted sound of pain, but Evangeline didn't stop.

She couldn't.

She tugged, harder and harder, until eventually there was give. A sudden release that sent both girls flying across the room. Evangeline's clothes were impossibly hot, burning against her skin.

"Quick," she said, hauling Lily to her feet and wrapping her arms around Lily's shoulders. "We need to go!"

* * *

Hugh's legs felt as though they were going to drop off entirely as he raced toward the castle. He hadn't even known there was a fire until someone in the village had pointed out the blaze. It lit up the entire night sky, obscuring the stars. Sparks rose into the air like a parody of a bonfire.

His heart squeezed, then expanded until he thought it was going to break through his chest.

Somewhere, Evangeline was in there. Lily. Margaret. The family he had vowed to protect.

But he had only been away for a matter of days. And he had thought the castle was resistant to fire—it was made of stone.

But here he was, watching his home burn, with everyone left in the world that he loved trapped within.

He hadn't known fear until now. Every bitter, aching, painful tang of it. The village was a couple of miles away—a jog he had made countless times when he was a boy, but now he was aware of every passing second. He didn't have the time to wait. Didn't have the time for his legs to ache, for his muscles to burn with exertion.

Faster. He needed to go faster.

After watching his parents perish in their different ways, after seeing Lily almost lose herself after losing her child and her husband, after coming back to an empty house after Evangeline had left him, he couldn't lose anything else.

Who cared about the house? All he needed was his family back.

"I'm coming!" he roared at no one as, up on the cliff, the castle continued to be engulfed in flames.

* * *

Evangeline stumbled through the smoke, unable to see. Her clothes had half burned from her form, and beside her, Lily was in even worse condition, her hair singed from the ends up.

All they had to do was survive.

Survive .

It felt like too much of an ask as the fire expanded behind them, swallowing pictures and tapestries and carpets with the same indifferent, greedy fervor.

There. A door. Evangeline pushed through it, yelping as even the wood was hot, and she fell through first. The room beyond, largely used for storage or so it seemed, was little more than rubble, but she continued anyway, losing her grip on Lily as the other girl fell behind.

A figure loomed in the gloom ahead of them, and Evangeline could have wept with relief.

"Hugh," she said, her voice hoarse and cracked. "Hugh, I'm so glad you're here!"

The figure stepped closer, and the smoke cleared enough for her to make out his features.

It wasn't Hugh.

It was George .

She hadn't seen him in months now, but she knew his face almost as well as she knew her own—they had spent so many hours together when they were growing up.

And later, when they were adults, and he had come to court her, she had compared the way his adult face compared to that of him as a child. And she had been a little disappointed by the cruelty that she sometimes thought lingered around his mouth.

That cruelty was out in real force now.

"Evangeline," he said, catching her arm and holding it hard enough to bruise, not seeming to notice the burn of her clothes against his palm.

She felt it burn into her skin, the pain of it sinking deep and joining the kaleidoscope of hurts inside her.

"What are you doing here?" Her voice was too high-pitched, too loud for the small space.

"You should have been my wife," he snarled, tugging her closer. "I always wanted to marry you. Did you know that? When we were children and you were playing with your dolls, I was planning our life together."

"What are you talking about, George?"

"He stole you from me, but he won't win."

"George." Evangeline stopped struggling as his fingers tightened around her arm—and the full realization of his words sunk in. "Did you do this?"

"The fire?" There was a crazed glint in his eyes. "Of course that was me. What did you think? Did you think that it happened by accident? While your darling husband was away?"

"I—I don't understand."

"I want him to lose everything I lost. To know what it's like to have all the things you ever cared about ripped from your grasp."

Evangeline shook her head. The fire within the castle roared.

"What did you do ?" she whispered.

"He'll think you perished in that fire. His home and the woman he loves lost."

Above them, the room creaked ominously. They were close to a side door, but he was standing between her and it—and she had lost Lily. The girl had been hurt. Not badly, she hoped, but enough that it made her worry about her whereabouts.

Then again, perhaps it was better that Lily didn't see George, didn't know that after all this, he was still causing havoc in their lives.

"I'm not going anywhere with you," Evangeline said, trying and failing to wrench her hand free. "I thought you were a good man. I trusted you."

"I always loved you! Is that worth nothing?"

"What about Lily?"

He made a dismissive gesture, as though waving her away. "She was nothing. A silly mistake. I?—"

His face whitened, turning unnaturally pale as he looked over her shoulder.

Evangeline turned to see Lily emerging from the smoke, her clothes torn, blistered skin showing through the rips. But it was her eyes that had the most impact, blazing and fixed on George.

"What kind of specter—" He made a strangled noise and released Evangeline, stepping back.

The roof creaked with the strain of the fire.

"You're dead. You're supposed to be dead !" George shouted.

"Be careful!" Evangeline looked above him to where the beams splintered.

"Am I dead?" Lily croaked as she stepped forward. "Or did you kill me, George? Did you hope I would die? Did you lie awake and pray that any day you would hear of my death?"

"No, no. No, I would never?—"

Lily limped forward. "Did you think you deserved no punishment for what you did?"

"I didn't do it," he moaned. "It's not my fault! Keep away from me!"

The ceiling gave one final groan as it inevitably gave way.

"George!" Evangeline screamed.

He didn't so much as look up as the beam fell to the ground, crushing him underneath.