Her Dark Curiosity (The Madman’s Daughter #2)(77)
Author: Megan Shepherd

Her hands dug into me like claws. I pried them from my shoulders and rubbed them gently. “Don’t say that, Lucy. We won’t give up. We found a cure for me—we’ll find it for him, too.”

But Lucy couldn’t stop sobbing. She shook her head and then stumbled off to the kitchen for a rag to wipe her face. Balthazar pushed up from the table clumsily and went after her, offering her his handkerchief.

Outside, the church on the corner chimed six o’clock mass. I glanced at the window, where the family across the street appeared at the door with rosy faces as they made their way to the Christmas Eve service at St. Paul’s.

Elizabeth squeezed my hand. “I’m so relieved to hear your cure worked, Juliet, truly. But I’m afraid Lucy was right. We can’t do the same for Edward.”

“Why not?” I asked, baffled. My hands were still now. My heart cured of darkness.

“It came down to the unknown ingredient,” Elizabeth explained, clutching the letters.

I bit my lip. “What is it?”

To my surprise, her eyes shifted from me to Montgomery. She took a deep breath. “Montgomery, did Dr. Moreau ever draw your blood?”

FORTY

THE SOUND OF LUCY’S sobbing in the kitchen faded as the beating of my own heart grew. Beside me, Montgomery was tense as wrought iron.

“What are you suggesting?” he said.

“Did he, or didn’t he?” Elizabeth asked.

Montgomery glanced at me as he dragged a hand through his hair. “Yes—all the time. There were few illnesses on the island, but malaria was a threat. Only to us, not to the islanders. I caught it a few times, and he drew my blood to study the disease, the same with his own.”

I recalled the conversation I’d had with Edward when he first told me what he truly was.

Whose blood did my father use to make you? I had asked.

I don’t know. I’ve never known, Edward had said.

My God, it was all so clear now.

Elizabeth continued, “When we decoded the journal, we discovered that the unknown ingredient was human blood. Moreau hadn’t wanted to use his own because of his advanced age. He wanted strong young blood, and there was only one source to get it from.” She paused. “Edward was made from your blood, Montgomery.”

“Mine?” His head shook in denial, even in anger, but I knew him better than that. There was an uncertainty to the way his hand hovered anxiously over his mouth, the same move he’d made a year ago when I’d found him again. That move betrayed tender emotions that he was afraid to admit. All his life he’d wanted a family. It was why he’d been so loyal to my father. It was why he’d kept Balthazar alive. When I was young, he had told me once, I used to watch the other boys play in the street and wish I had a brother.

What a terrible twist of fate: Edward shared his blood—a brother of sorts. It meant if there was still some way to cure Edward, that Montgomery would have the family he’d so desperately wanted. Edward would, too.

Montgomery paced by the windows, and it struck me that this information might be far more welcomed by Edward than by Montgomery. Over the past year Montgomery’s sense of mercy had given way to a harsh desire for justice. Would this information soften him at all? Give me back the boy I’d fallen in love with?

Or would it only make him more determined to kill Edward?

“I don’t understand,” I said to Elizabeth. “If we only need Montgomery’s blood to cure Edward, it should be a relatively simple procedure.”

“That’s the problem, I’m afraid,” Elizabeth said. “Montgomery’s blood was tainted with malaria at the time. The malaria played some role in the composition of Edward’s genetic material; without that strain, we won’t be able to replicate it. It’s winter in London. The closest mosquito is halfway around the world.”

“It’s true, then,” I muttered. “There really is no hope for him.” Even spoken aloud, I couldn’t bring myself to believe it. I had always thought Edward’s and my fate were intertwined, and yet here I was cured, meant to live a long, healthy, wholesome life—and for Edward there was no future but melding into the Beast.

“How much time do you think he has left before the Beast takes over completely?” Elizabeth asked.

“A few days. A week, at most,” Montgomery said shakily.

“As it is, he can barely keep himself in one form or the other,” Elizabeth said. “I know you don’t wish to hear this, Juliet, but if we can’t cure him, the kindest course of action might be to put him out of his misery.”

Put him out of his misery.

I remembered a rabbit, long ago, laid out on an operating table being dissected alive by medical students. I’d taken an ax to the rabbit to put it out of its misery. But Edward wasn’t a rabbit. However he was created, he was a person now.

I looked to Montgomery. He had wanted Edward dead all along, but could he truly learn he had a blood relation, only to kill him?

“You can’t kill him,” a voice said. Lucy stood in the kitchen doorway, tears dried and a hard resolve on her face. “I’ve just been downstairs talking to him—” She silenced me when I tried to object. “Balthazar went with me. I was safe. Edward had a right to know all of this, since it’s his life we’re talking about. He’s back to himself, for now, though the Beast is just beneath the surface.” A look of tenderness crossed her face. “You can’t kill him for crimes that monster inside him committed. It isn’t fair.”

Lucy was right—here we stood discussing Edward’s fate, when he should have some say. Montgomery called after me, but I ran through the dining room covered with scrawled pages and ciphers, into the kitchen that still smelled of rosemary, and descended the stairs.

The basement was quiet. Put him out of his misery, Elizabeth’s voice echoed. We’d made a successful cure for me, and I knew I could find a way to cure him, too. I wasn’t my father’s daughter for nothing. We could replicate the malaria somehow, send Montgomery south to the tropics. . . .

At the bottom of the stairs, I wrapped my hands around the cellar door bars. “I know Lucy told you it’s hopeless,” I said. “But I’m better now, Edward, and soon you will be too. . . .”

My voice trailed off when I caught sight of the body crouched in the corner. Signs of the Beast were all over him—the way his fingers twitched, the powerful curve of his muscles. Lucy had been down here only moment before, but it didn’t take long for the Beast to transform.