This land could have only one master.

  The lake would’ve drowned Martin had he attempted to cross it.

  It would’ve drowned anyone who was not an Avon. Demon-cursed.

  St. Silas understood that now, when before his father’s obsessive warnings to never cross the lake had seeped into his consciousness. He should’ve known never to heed his father’s word.

  Martin could light a thousand fires in Weavingshaw, but the estate would remain cold to him. It was the demon that controlled that.

  St. Silas knew snippets of what was inside the red diary. He was keen to see if there was anything more in there that could be of use.

  The book told of his family history. Of how the 1st Marquess had brought the crypt-demon to Weavingshaw, how its magic had wrapped around the estate, protecting and shielding it from the rough elements that threatened to destroy it daily. The north had been a different landscape nine hundred years ago, when the 1st Marquess was deeded the estate by the King. It had been meant as a punishment; the 1st Marquess had displeased the King by trifling with his favorite mistress. Weavingshaw had been a fortress back then, the last defense before the sea, invaded countless times by the neighboring warlords who hailed from across the rough waters.

  Seven times Weavingshaw had been burned to the ground, and rebuilt every time anew.

  Each time more savage than the last.

  The demon had put an end to that forever.

  St. Silas stood in the Hall of the Lake now, watching the still black waters beneath him, staring at his reflection distorted in the ripples.

  It was in this exact spot that his ancestor, the 1st Marquess, had made the original bargain: The demon would protect the house against any foreign invaders who desired its complete annihilation. In return, each new Lord Avon must swear fealty to the demon, promising to remain on the land, to bear sons to continue the bloodline—and, above all, to always feed the demon.

  If the contract was broken, if the Avon line died out, Weavingshaw itself would crumble. The great house would turn into dust on the moors.

  St. Silas hadn’t yet performed the ancient act of binding himself to the demon; he’d been taken away as a child before he could. And he could not do so now while still indentured to the Duke of Fray, for he could not serve two demons at once.

  St. Silas took off his jacket, rolled his sleeves to his elbows, and left a single candle burning on the shore.

  No matter how intently he looked into the lake, he saw nothing but the empty expanse of water, the demon hidden deep within. Still, he felt its presence—a coiling energy that darkened these walls. This energy could not feed on St. Silas without the initial rites being performed, and it was for this reason the demon had chosen to feast on Leena instead.

  It did not succeed, he thought savagely, and not without a hint of pride.

  His thoughts returned to Leena’s turbulent face in the cave, asking him to abandon his tie to Weavingshaw forever.

  If St. Silas chose never to perform the ritual, then the demon would starve itself to death, destroying Weavingshaw alongside it. He could never abandon what was in his blood.

  Already, without the rightful master ruling these vast lands, the demon had weakened to such an extent that it had allowed the likes of Martin to enter its halls, invading Weavingshaw just as decisively as the warlords of the past.

  St. Silas would find the red diary, and then his father’s ghost, whatever the cost might be. The seething anger that St. Silas had subdued violently over the years whenever he thought of his father simmered to the surface now, engulfing him with disgust. There would be no sentimentality when he finally saw Percival’s ghost, no words of endearment traded.

  His only goal was to establish from Percival how to break the contract that had indentured him to the Frays eleven years ago—a contract forged by Percival’s own hand.

  Once his bond with the Frays was finally broken, St. Silas would return to Weavingshaw as the rightful lord, reclaiming it from Martin by any means necessary. He would then cut his palm over the lake, allow the blood to drip into the water, tying himself forevermore to the demon and to Weavingshaw.

  Then he would force the demon’s demise, eradicating it from these stones once and for all, purging Weavingshaw and resurrecting it anew.

  St. Silas turned to the raft bobbing up and down on the water. The small craft might have been brightly painted once, but the ensuing years had stripped the color away. It creaked beneath his weight.

  He took a candle with him, but it snuffed itself out every time he tried to light it on the water. St. Silas cursed low under his breath: Damned demon. The only remaining light was the tiny flame left on the land. Otherwise, he was completely blind. It made no difference if he shut his eyelids or opened them; darkness was a sentry down here.

  The raft glided through the waters. He rowed forward, entirely sightless, the only sound the slap of the oars hitting the water. The hum of the current grew louder, and he knew that he was approaching the place where the power was concentrated.

  His thoughts drifted to her, as they often did now.

  Leena knew he was an Avon.

  She also knew about Weavingshaw’s demon. It was the risk he had taken, allowing her to be close. He had known from the outset she was clever, but as he got to know her more, he felt an odd pleasure at knowing exactly how clever she was.

  Her knowing who he was hadn’t been factored into his plans. He had been a fool for thinking he could keep her in the dark until they found Lord Avon’s ghost.

  Still, he would shift and adjust. Take what was needed, leave what wasn’t. Do what was necessary for himself and for the tenants of his land.

  For Weavingshaw.

  I will have to spend my days trying to release you.

  He had stepped closer to her in the cave, his entire focus narrowed to the blush of her lips and how he wanted to submerge himself within her—to taste her in decadence, in starvation. The silhouette of her soft curves even now played across his vision. If what he could see was enticing, what he imagined was devastating. He had wanted to shred to pieces the overcoat that she was wearing, or kiss it in gratitude for covering her. Had it not been there, there would have been no secret, no request she could have made of him, that he would have denied.

  He cursed under his breath, low and harsh. How, he thought, had she attained such previously unattainable power over him? He was not at all comforted by the fact that she did not know it yet. He was sure, sooner or later, he would reveal himself.

  With effort, St. Silas restrained his thoughts.

  He would be damned if he were to go further with Leena while the contract still stood. The power shift between them was too great, and he did not want her to feel the weight of it forcing her choices. If she chose him, she needed to do it of her own volition, within her own freedom. He would not touch her until then.

  He, himself, lived under the cruel hand of a contract, and he knew what it meant to be choiceless.

  St. Silas glanced behind him. The candle’s light was now a mere speck. If that guttered out, then he would lose his direction. He’d never known this sort of blindness—the kind that had depth, that swallowed, that smothered. It was a trick designed to tug at the bleakness that rested in the consciousness of every human. To tempt them into the water.

  Everyone except an Avon.

  The crypt-demon needed the Avons.

  St. Silas had heard stories of what Weavingshaw’s demon had done to his grandfather—slowly feasting on his soul day by day, until three decades later his grandfather had lost all semblance of himself, locked in his own head, wandering the grounds in madness and despair.

  His father had told St. Silas once, when he was a child, that the Avons’ sacrifice was worth it, for the endurance of Weavingshaw.

  The demon living in the crypts was a rare breed, unlike the ones St. Silas had dealt with in the underworld. Most demons fed on emotions, ultimately leaving the bodies of their victims hollow husks, or killing them outright if fed on too much and too quickly.

  Weavingshaw’s demon fed on the mind, implanting obsessions and delusions instead, plunging the Avons into eventual madness. In exchange, the Avons prolonged the demon’s life by allowing it unrestrained access to feast on them.

  The 1st Marquess of Avon had been an intelligent man and he had known how to guard himself, eventually succumbing to death before he succumbed to madness.

  St. Silas’s grandfather had not been so strong—although he had managed to avoid complete insanity until streaks of gray threaded his fair hair. In contrast, Percival had been weak, and, even as a boy of twelve, St. Silas had seen the first fledglings of paranoia beginning to unsettle his father.

  St. Silas knew that Weavingshaw’s demon could never easily plunge him into submission, into madness, unlike the majority of his bloodline.

  If St. Silas had been a weaker man—if he didn’t strive endlessly—the underworld demons would have fed on him until depletion years ago. He would’ve been long dead. Buried in that cursed ocean that surrounded the Duke of Fray’s estate with the other boys dressed in white.

  He saw them now.

  It was the demon magic warping his mind; this he knew. He stared hollow-eyed as the young boys now marched across the water.

  There was Joseph, the eldest of the group, still smooth-faced.

  Hector, who cried into his fist at night while everyone else slept.

  Theodore Daye, who had had the misfortune of being St. Silas’s servant, indentured to the demon alongside him as a parting gift from Lord Avon.

  He’d forgotten the names of the rest. They had blurred over the years, becoming echoes of themselves, haunting no one, not even St. Silas—the only one of them to have lived.

  But he saw them now.

  They were all just children. He hadn’t realized it at the time. Not given the way they’d clawed at each other for survival.

  In the beginning, St. Silas had been a lordling among street urchins and pickpockets. The Duke of Fray had paid him special attention at first—perhaps to reward him, perhaps to punish him—but it had stoked the hatred of the other boys. Except Theo Daye, who was now dead because of him.

  It had disturbed him that Leena saw Theo’s ghost, forcing St. Silas to reckon with a past that he thought he’d already sealed over long ago.

  He’d been twelve when Joseph had forced his head into the underworld canal and held him down until his limbs weakened, until black dots clouded his vision. Until the water’s rot had baptized him anew. Baptized him worse. It was Joseph whom St. Silas had killed with a rock to the brow in that final fight for survival.

  And it was Joseph he’d dug a grave for, because he couldn’t stand the thought of a human buried like a demon.

  St. Silas’s muscles stiffened as he forced the raft away from the boys standing in a motionless row. Their faces were expressionless, six heads turning as they watched him go. There was accusation in their silence.

  No, that was just the cursed waters, feeding on the jagged edges of his memory.

  Instead, St. Silas imagined the Rosethorn taking root in the hard soil atop the two burial mounds, digging deep and reaching the dead beneath, speaking a language of comfort that had once been foreign to him.

  Once more he felt the vise around his chest ease. He continued to row forward.

  St. Silas thought he’d see his father next; it seemed the exact sort of maudlin nonsense that the demon craved. Or even hallucinations of Lord Hargreaves and Lady Hargreaves, and the many nights he’d spent as a small boy in Hythe House when his father went away. Hargreaves teaching him how to shoot or toasting him as he declared, To the youngest member of the Wake.

  Perhaps he’d hear Lady Hargreaves’s soft southern lilt as she sang him a lullaby—the closest thing he’d had to a mother in that cold house.

  The fact that Lady Hargreaves had drowned by her own hand meant only one thing to St. Silas—that Weavingshaw had also gripped her. Whether it was anger or madness or guilt, St. Silas would never know, for he had been traded before he could ever find out. But the ache of her loss was far more potent than the loss of Percival or even the mother he could not remember.

  And still, he would row past.

  But they didn’t come.

  Instead—

  “It’s not intuitive, is it?” a soft voice said from behind him. He turned around, his hand already resting on the barrel of his pistol, but he halted. Leena sat in front of him, knees drawn close together in the tight confines of the raft, her hair spilling onto her shoulders.

  He stared at her.

  “The demon’s magic,” she amended. “It’s not very intuitive.”

  “Isn’t it?” he asked in a low voice.

  Her head jerked as if she’d seen something in the edge of her vision; he’d seen her wear that expression before, when a phantom appeared. Fear scrunched her brows, her chest rose and fell—and suddenly, without warning, she buried herself into his chest.

  It is merely a hallucination. He knew that the scent of lavender that enveloped him was not real.

  Still, his arms tightened around her in spite of himself, and he felt the warmth of her body even through the layers of clothes.

  She was dressed exactly as she had been at the Festival of Demons, save for the mask. Her curls swept down the length of her back; he remembered how his hands had burned to entangle themselves in their softness even then.

  Leena looked up at him from beneath thick lashes, her eyes earthy brown and wide—that searching look, soft as thistles, a dagger to his chest. Haltingly, she placed a hand on his jaw. He swallowed. His muscles tensed, not daring to move, as she brushed her lips against his.

  A tether broke inside him.

  He leaned forward, one palm slamming on the wooden seat by her hip, the other drawing her closer as he took her mouth with his own, just as he had wanted to in the cave. She tasted like sweet sorcery—maddening him, enshrouding him. He pulled away to take a deep inhalation, burying his forehead into her neck, trailing kisses across the soft skin.

  He felt the vibrations from her throat as she spoke. “I won’t leave you behind, Bram. I’ll stay with you.”

  He stiffened.

  Those were not her words but the vows of the demon, dragging out his deepest desires from when he had been a boy of twelve, left abandoned in the underworld.

  Suddenly, jarringly, he released her, taking one last look at her smile—as if she trusted him, as if seeing him was happiness—before he pushed her over the raft’s edge and into the fathomless waters.

  The vision of her shattered like glass, plunging him into darkness once more.

  St. Silas didn’t linger any longer. It had not been his Leena. He forced himself to keep his gaze steady and row, not to look down, not to make sure…

  Time moved differently down here. Perhaps he was only on the lake for a few minutes; perhaps hours passed. But he finally felt a jolt as the raft hit the shore on the other side.

  This time, while on land, the wick held its flame. More statues littered the place, the stone facades aged with algae and dirt, nobility left to decay. He tied the raft to the arm of a Lord whose jaw had crumbled into dust, leaving only parts of a lip still frowning. The flame flickered in and out, collecting shadows on the wall, while he navigated the stone floors and disintegrating relics. His steps echoed. There was no Al-Sayer here to sing folk songs, and St. Silas kept silent.

  At last he came to a raised platform at the far end of the room. He knew what he’d find before he reached it. He climbed the steps, his boots thudding against the marble.

  A tomb lay in wait.

  “Bravo,” St. Silas murmured. He felt the electric hum in the air again, the demon’s power so condensed his skin felt feverish with it. He circled the vault, his brows furrowed as if trying to decipher a puzzle. The stone felt real beneath his hand, the rough texture familiar, scraping the calluses on his palms. There was no name on the lid.

  It could be his father’s. It could be his own.

  Swallowing harshly, he pushed on the lid. The color drained from his face as the smell of spoiled meat enveloped him. His father’s corpse lay inside—not a smiling skeleton, but a bloated, mangled body that still retained its flesh. He was only recognizable from the tufts of still-golden hair crowning a face half eaten by rats and maggots, the sinewy muscle glimmering underneath, the eyes blue and gaping. A sword had pierced him in the chest, plunged so deeply that only the bronze hilt showed. Nestled between the corpse’s folded arms was the red diary. All St. Silas needed to do was move the arms and grab the book.

  He knew it was not real. His father’s actual remains lay behind him, in the family crypt. He knew that this was another layer of the demon’s magic, convulsing his mind, consuming him.

  Still, St. Silas stood paralyzed.

  You were always guarded, the Duke of Fray had told him once, even as a child.

  He could not force his hand to move.

  Such a waste, Orley had said. I cannot get a feel for you at all.

  Fear constricted his lungs, a slow asphyxiation.

  Do you tear hearts for a living?

  A change overtook him. The terror receded. His expression flattened, blackened—a derisive curl to his lips, a cold fury in his eyes. St. Silas’s own promise, the one he had made when he was sixteen years old, head bent as his life was debated by the Duke of Fray, rang louder than the rest.

  He would not falter.

  Reaching out, his actions firm and steady, he took the red diary. The crypt and the image of his putrefied father shattered into nothingness.

  A demon’s trick.

  There he stood—Bram St. Silas, Bramwell Avon, waist-deep in vows, in vengeance, born to privilege, marked by brutality. There he stood, the Saint of Silence, triumphant in the dark.