The Bloodline She Burned novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Top of the Stairs
Rosalind wakes at the top of the Kensington House staircase five years in the past, refuses to kneel after her sister's staged fall, and finds a committal form with her name on her father's desk.
Two hundred guests were looking up at Rosalind Ellsworth, and every one of them held a champagne glass.
Her cheek still remembered the freezing concrete of the bridge.
Her stomach still remembered a month of nothing.
Then the marble came into focus under her bare feet, and the crystal chandelier, and her father standing at the bottom of the staircase with his arms folded.
"Rosalind." Her father did not lower his voice. "You shame this family every time you stand in a room."
Behind him hung a banner three stories tall, blue and gold, with her brother's face on it.
The family's esports team had won its second national title that week.
She knew this afternoon.
She had lived it once, and it had ended with her on her knees on this same floor.
Her left hand was heavy.
She looked down and found a clear tube taped to the back of it, and an IV pole beside her, its wheels sunk into the carpet runner.
The family doctor had hooked her up that morning to "calm her nerves."
She had wandered out of her room to find the noise.
At the foot of the stairs, her adopted sister turned away from the crowd.
Camille Ellsworth wore white silk and pearl earrings, and she was already crying.
She started up the steps with a glass of champagne in her hand.
"Roz, you're shaking," she said gently. "Come sit down. Dad didn't mean it."
In the first life, Camille had climbed partway up the stairs.
Then she had said, "Please, don't," and dropped backward down the marble.
Roz had lunged to catch her.
Two hundred people had seen that lunge and called it a shove.
A wall screen behind the bar showed the party's live stream, the one Crown's sponsors paid for.
Its camera was pointed straight at the staircase.
Roz looked at it and understood what it was for.
Then she put both hands behind her back.
Camille reached the sixth step.
"I'm not touching her," Roz said. Her voice rang off the chandelier. "Everybody watch my hands."
Camille's glass slipped.
She cried out and sat down hard on the marble, one palm flat against her ribs, and the champagne ran down the steps in a bright line.
A woman near the door gasped.
Her brother Dane shoved through the crowd, jacket still on, his title medal swinging on its ribbon.
"Roz! What did you do?"
"Nothing," Roz said. "It's on the screen."
Nobody looked at the screen.
They were looking at Camille, who was shaking, and at Roz, who stood there with a tube hanging out of her hand.
"Apologize to your sister," Conrad Ellsworth said. "On your knees. Now."
It was the same sentence as before, word for word.
Roz felt it in her bare knees before he finished it.
She did not kneel.
She took the tape between two fingers and pulled.
The needle slid out of her vein, and blood ran over her knuckles and dripped onto the white marble in fat red drops.
A man in the front row stepped back.
Camille did not flinch at the blood at all.
Roz held up the hand where everyone could see it.
"That screen is live," she said. "Every sponsor Crown has is watching a father order his sick daughter onto her knees."
"Come to my study," Conrad said. He had gone very quiet.
"No."
"Rosalind."
"I'm leaving this house today," Roz said. "I'll sign anything you want me to sign, once your lawyer is in the room and I'm walking out with a check."
Dane stared at her.
"You can't be serious. Where would you even go?"
She did not answer him.
She walked down the stairs.
Somebody gave her a napkin, and she pressed it to her hand.
Camille was still sitting on the sixth step, and when Roz came level with her she lifted her wet face.
She did not ask where Roz was going.
She did not say "Don't leave."
She wiped her eyes with her thumb and said, "It's freezing out. I'll get your coat."
Then she stood up, perfectly steady, and went to the hall closet.
Roz followed her father across the foyer while two hundred guests parted for them.
The study door was already open.
The family lawyer sat in the leather chair by the window with his briefcase on his knees, already waiting.
On the desk lay a folder.
Roz read the first page upside down.
GREYWATER CLINIC. ADMISSION FORM. Patient: Rosalind Alice Ellsworth.
The date typed under her name was today.
The signature line below it was for her father.
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