Page 180 of Ashen Torment

“He is not the one leading me,” I reply at last. “We were all led, years ago. Only you chose to turn your gaze elsewhere.”

He moves away, returning behind the desk. His cane knocks lightly against the wood as he settles in, sitting with measured slowness and smoothing the creases of his suit. Then, he lifts his gaze to me.

“And tell me, grandson,” he asks with a calmness that weighs more than a reproach, “what did you find in Brittany?”

“You speak as if it were a matter of accounting,” my voice comes out harsh. “Theodore was your son.”

His expression does not change.

“I cannot alter what has occurred, Dorian. I do not dwell among the dead. I look after the living.”

He lifts his hand slightly, indicating me.

“So?” he insists. “What great revelations have you gathered?”

He pauses.

“Nothing,” he concludes. “Because there is nothing to discover.”

I turn and walk across the room without looking at him.

“Mind your future,” he says behind me, before I reach the threshold. “Not the corpses.”

My hand closes around the handle, the metal is cold and smooth.

My fingers tighten, for a moment, I fear the wood might give way before I do. Then I open it.

The door clicks shut behind me with a dull thud.

I have lost count of the hours.

Time has unraveled among the papers, sheets lie scattered, folded, stained with ink and the prints of nervous fingers. The whisky, forgotten, has grown lukewarm in the glass.

Nothing.

We found nothing.

Lucien and I spent entire days scouring Brittany, the wheels biting into nameless roads and the wind carrying no answers. At Château Lestrieux, there was not a living soul. No servants, no animals. The stables were silent, the windows blind.

Of the Duke, not even a shadow.

The peasants Ivan spoke to all shook their heads the same way. Lestrade, they say, hasn’t set foot there in at least ten years.

Ten.

I pull a sheet toward me and sigh. The nib scratches as I trace my signature, halfway through the gesture, the tip screeches across the dry paper. I lift the pen. It’s empty. I click my tongue against my palate and open the drawer to search for more; there, out of place in the center, lies a white handkerchief.

I take it between two fingers, the fabric sliding out slowly.

The handkerchief belonging to that malchik.

He didn’t deign to give an answer.

Not that I expected one, to be truthful.

It would have been inconsistent with everything he is, with that sharp way of vanishing. And yet, the speed with which he has feigned that nothing happened unnerves me.

Even I—who have had papers to order, names to chase, roads to remember—have not had a single moment where my mind did not return to him, like a tooth the tongue seeks out even when it aches.