The Redhead house was lit like a celebration.
Chandeliers burned across a living room the size of a soccer pitch, every light in the estate on, the whole place glimmering the way it had glimmered every night for two hundred years—gold on marble, gold on glass, gold on the long polished tables that had never been meant to hold anything but life.
And filled now with a sound that came from somewhere far underneath grief.
Harmione lay across her father, crying into his chest. The blood had gone everywhere. Across the marble in dark, spreading maps. Across the rugs that had been older than any of them. Across her arms, her throat, the front of her dress, soaking through until the fabric clung. Her shoulders shook with each breath she dragged in.
Mute stood in the doorway and watched her, and it put a smile on his face—slow, private, almost gentle.
