The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein Read online

  ALSO BY KIERSTEN WHITE

  Paranormalcy

  Supernaturally

  Endlessly

  Mind Games

  Perfect Lies

  The Chaos of Stars

  Illusions of Fate

  And I Darken

  Now I Rise

  Bright We Burn

  NOTE: ALL CHAPTER TITLES ARE TAKEN FROM JOHN MILTON’S PARADISE LOST

  This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical and public figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical or public figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2018 by Kiersten Brazier

  Cover art copyright © 2018 by Christine Blackburne

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Name: White, Kiersten, author.

  Title: The dark descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein / Kiersten White.

  Description: First Edition. | New York : Delacorte Press, [2018] | Summary: The events of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein unfold from the perspective of Elizabeth Lavenza, who is adopted as a child by the Frankensteins as a companion for their volatile son Victor.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017037621 | ISBN 978-0-525-57794-2 (hc) | ISBN 978-0-525-57797-3 (glb) | ISBN 978-0-525-57795-9 (ebook)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Characters in literature—Fiction. | Monsters—Fiction. | Scientists—Fiction. | Murder—Fiction. | Horror stories.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.W583764 Dar 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  Ebook ISBN 9780525577959

  Cover design by Regina Flath

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

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  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Kiersten White

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Part One: How Can I Live Without Thee?

  Chapter One: To Be Weak Is Miserable

  Chapter Two: What Hath Night to Do with Sleep?

  Chapter Three: In Wandering Mazes Lost

  Chapter Four: Half Lost, I Seek

  Chapter Five: With Purpose to Explore or to Disturb

  Chapter Six: Round He Throws His Baleful Eyes

  Chapter Seven: I Sung of Chaos and Eternal Night

  Chapter Eight: Horror and Doubt Distract His Troubled Thoughts

  Chapter Nine: This Horror Will Grow Mild, This Darkness Light

  Chapter Ten: To Lose Thee Were to Lose Myself

  Chapter Eleven: When from Sleep I First Awaked

  Part Two: What Is Dark Within Me, Illumine

  Chapter Twelve: At Once Indebted and Discharged

  Chapter Thirteen: That All This Good of Evil Shall Produce

  Chapter Fourteen: What Can We Suffer Worse?

  Chapter Fifteen: Love or Hate, to Me Alike

  Chapter Sixteen: So Farewell Hope

  Part Three: Long Is the Way and Hard, That Out of Hell Leads Up to Light

  Chapter Seventeen: Which Way Shall I Fly

  Chapter Eighteen: His Dark Materials to Create More Worlds

  Chapter Nineteen: Should God Create Another Eve

  Chapter Twenty: Flesh of Flesh, Bone of My Bone

  Chapter Twenty-one: Him Whom to Love Is to Obey

  Chapter Twenty-two: Hail Horrors, Hail Infernal World

  Chapter Twenty-three: So Shall the World Go on, to Good Malignant, to Bad Men Benign

  Chapter Twenty-four: And Study of Revenge, Immortal Hate

  Chapter Twenty-five: Did I Request Thee, Maker, from My Clay, to Mold Me Man?

  Chapter Twenty-six: Which Way Shall I Fly

  Chapter Twenty-seven: That Must Be Our Cure: To Be No More

  Epilogue: I Sung of Chaos and Eternal Night

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Discussion Guide

  Frankenstein

  For Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, whose creation still electrifies our imaginations two hundred years later

  — and —

  For everyone made to feel like a side character in their own story

  Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay

  To mould me man? Did I solicit thee

  From darkness to promote me?

  —John Milton, Paradise Lost

  LIGHTNING CLAWED ACROSS THE sky, tracing veins through the clouds and marking the pulse of the universe itself.

  I sighed happily as rain slashed the carriage windows and thunder rumbled so loudly we could not even hear the wheels bump when the dirt lane met the cobblestones at the edge of Ingolstadt.

  Justine trembled beside me like a newborn rabbit, burying her face in my shoulder. Another bolt lit our carriage with bright white clarity before rendering us temporarily deaf with a clap of thunder so loud the windows threatened to loosen.

  “How can you laugh?” Justine asked. I had not realized I was laughing until that moment.

  I stroked her dark hair where strands dangled free from her hat. Justine hated loud noises of any type: Slamming doors. Storms. Shouting. Especially shouting. But I had made certain she had endured none of that in the past two years. It was so odd that our separate origins—similar in cruelty, though differing in duration—had had such opposite outcomes. Justine was the most open and loving and genuinely good person I had ever known.

  And I was—

  Well. Not like her.

  “Did I ever tell you Victor and I used to climb out onto the roof of the house to watch lightning storms?”

  She shook her head, not lifting it.

  “The way the lightning would play off the mountains, throwing them into sharp relief, as though we were watching the creation of the world itself. Or over the lake, so it looked like it was in both the sky and the water. We would be soaked by the end; it is a wonder neither of us caught our death.” I laughed again, remembering. My skin—fair like my hair—would turn the most violent shades of red from the cold. Victor, with his dark curls plastered to his sallow forehead, accentuating the shadows he always bore beneath his eyes, would look like death. What a pair we were!

  “One night,” I continued, sensing Justine was calming, “lightning struck a tree on the grounds not ten body lengths from where we sat.”

  “That must have been terrifying!”

  “It was glorious.” I smiled, placing my hand flat against the cold glass, feeling the temperature b
eneath my lacy white gloves. “To me, it was the great and terrible power of nature. It was like seeing God.”

  Justine clucked disapprovingly, peeling herself from my side to give me a stern look. “Do not blaspheme.”

  I stuck my tongue out at her until she relented into a smile.

  “What did Victor think of it?”

  “Oh, he was horribly depressed for months afterward. I believe his exact phrasing was that he ‘languished in valleys of incomprehensible despair.’ ”

  Justine’s smile grew, though with a puzzled edge. Her face was clearer than any of Victor’s texts. His books always required further knowledge and intense study, while Justine was an illuminated manuscript—beautiful and treasured and instantly understandable.

  I reluctantly pulled the curtains closed on the carriage window, sealing us away from the storm for her comfort. She had not left the house at the lake since our last disastrous trip into Geneva had ended with her insane, bereft mother attacking us. This journey into Bavaria was taxing for her. “While I saw the destruction of the tree as nature’s beauty, Victor saw power—power to light up the night and banish darkness, power to end a centuries-old life in a single strike—that he cannot control or access. And nothing bothers Victor more than something he cannot control.”

  “I wish I had known him better before he left for university.”

  I patted her hand—her brown leather gloves a gift Henry had given me—before squeezing her fingers. Those gloves were far softer and warmer than my own. But Victor preferred me in white. And I loved giving nice things to Justine. She had joined the household two years earlier, when she was seventeen and I was fifteen, and had been there only a couple of months before Victor left us. She did not really know him.

  No one did, except me. I liked it that way, but I wanted them to love each other as I loved them both.

  “Soon you will know Victor. We shall all of us—Victor and you and me—” I paused, my tongue traitorously trying to add Henry. That was not going to happen. “We will be reunited most joyfully, and then my heart will be complete.” My tone was cheery to mask the fear that underlay this entire endeavor.

  I could not let Justine be worried. Her willingness to come as my chaperone was the only reason I had managed this trip. Judge Frankenstein had initially rejected my pleadings to check on Victor. I think he was relieved to have Victor gone, did not care when we had no word. Judge Frankenstein always said Victor would come home when he was ready, and I should not worry about it.

  I did. Very much. Particularly after I found a list of expenses with my name at the top. He was auditing me—and soon, I had no doubt, he would determine that I was not worth holding on to. I had done too well, fixing Victor. He was out in the world, and I was obsolete to his father.

  I would not let myself be cast out. Not after my years of hard work. Not after all I had done.

  Fortunately, Judge Frankenstein had been called away on a mysterious journey of his own. I did not ask permission again so much as…leave. Justine did not know that. Her presence gave me the freedom I needed here to move about without inviting suspicion or censure. William and Ernest, Victor’s younger brothers and her charges, would be fine in the care of the maid until we could return.

  Another burst of thunder, this one rumbling through our chests so we felt it in our very hearts.

  “Tell me the story of the first time you met Victor,” she squeaked, clutching my hand so hard that the bones ached.

  * * *

  —

  The woman who was not my mother pinched me and tugged my hair with brutally efficient meanness.

  I wore a dress that was far too big. The sleeves hung down to my wrists, which was not the style for children. But the dress covered the bruises that covered my skin. The week previous I had been caught stealing an extra portion of food. Though I had often been bloodied by her angry fists, this time my caregiver had beaten me until everything went black. I spent the next three nights hiding in the woods at the lake, eating berries. I thought she would kill me when she found me; she had often threatened to do just that. Instead, she had discovered another use for me.

  “Do not ruin this,” she hissed. “Better for you to have died at your birth along with your mother than to be left here with me. Selfish in life, selfish in death. That’s what you come from.”

  I lifted my chin high, let her finish brushing my hair so that it shone as bright as gold.

  “Make them love you,” she demanded as a gentle knock sounded at the door to the hovel I shared with my caregiver and her own four children. “If they do not take you, I will drown you in the rain barrel like the cat’s last litter of runty kittens.”

  A woman stood outside, surrounded by a blinding halo of sunlight.

  “Here she is,” my caretaker said. “Elizabeth. The little angel herself. Born to nobility. Fate stole her mother, pride imprisoned her father, and Austria took her fortune. But nothing could touch her beauty and goodness.”

  I could not turn around lest I stomp on her foot or punch her for her false love.

  “Would you like to meet my son?” the new woman asked. Her voice trembled as though she was the one who was scared.

  I nodded solemnly. She took my hand and led me away. I did not look back.

  “My son, Victor, is only a year or two older than you are. He is a special child. Bright and inquisitive. But he does not make friends easily. Other children are…” She paused, as though searching a candy dish for just the right piece to pop into her mouth. “They are intimidated by him. He is solitary and lonely. But I think a friend like you would be just the gentling influence he needs. Could you do that, Elizabeth? Could you be Victor’s special friend?”

  Our walk had brought us to their holiday villa. I stopped dead. I was amazed by the sight. Her momentum tugged me forward and I stumbled, stunned.

  I had had a life, before. Before the hovel with mean and biting children. Before the woman who cared for me with fists and bruises. Before a life haunted by hunger and fear and cold, crammed into the dirty darkness with strange bodies.

  I pushed one toe gingerly over the threshold of the villa the Frankensteins had taken for their time at Lake Como. I followed her through those beautiful rooms of green and gold, windows and light, pain left behind as I stepped through this dreamworld.

  I had lived here before. And I lived here every night when I closed my eyes.

  Though I had lost my home and my father more than two years before, and no child could remember with perfect clarity, I knew it. This had been my life. These rooms, blessed with beauty and space—so much space!—had graced my infancy. It was not this villa, specifically, so much as the general sense of it. There is a safety in cleanliness, a comfort in beauty.

  Madame Frankenstein had brought me out of the darkness and back into the light.

  I rubbed at my tender and bruised arms, as thin as sticks. Determination filled my child’s body. I would be whatever her son needed if doing so gave me back this life. The day was bright, the lady’s hand was softer than anything I had felt in years, and the rooms ahead of us seemed filled with hope for a new future.

  Madame Frankenstein led me through the hallways and out to the garden.

  Victor stood alone. His hands were clasped behind his back, and though he was not much more than two years older than me, he seemed almost like an adult. I felt the same shy wariness I would feel approaching a strange man.

  “Victor,” his mother said, and again I sensed fear and nervousness in her voice. “Victor, I have brought a friend.”

  He turned. How clean he was! It filled me with shame to be wearing a much-patched, too-big dress. Though my hair was washed—my caregiver said it was the best thing I had to recommend me—I knew my feet inside my slippers were dirty. I felt, as he looked at me, that he must surely know, too.

  He tried on a sm
ile like I tried on castoff clothing, shifting it around until it mostly fit his face. “Hello,” he said.

  “Hello,” I said.

  We both stood, motionless, as his mother watched.

  I had to make him like me. But what did I have to offer a boy who had everything? “Do you want to find a bird’s nest with me?” I asked, the words tumbling out in a rush. I was better at finding them than any of the other children. Victor did not look like a boy who had ever climbed a tree to spy on nests. It was the only thing I could think of. “It is spring, so their chicks are all nearly ready to hatch.”

  Victor frowned, his dark eyebrows drawing close together. And then he nodded, holding out his hand. I stepped forward and took it. His mother sighed with relief.

  “Have fun! Do stay close to the villa, though,” she entreated us.

  I led Victor out of the garden and into the spring-green forest that surrounded the estate. The lake was not far. I could smell it, cold and dark, on the breeze. I took a wandering path, keeping my eyes trained on the branches above us. It felt vital to find the promised nest. As though it were a test, and if I passed, then I could stay in Victor’s world.

  And if I failed…

  But there, like hope bundled into twigs and mud: a nest! I pointed to it, beaming.

  Victor frowned. “It is high.”

  “I can get it!”

  He considered me. “You are a girl. You should not climb trees.”

  I had been climbing trees since I could walk, but his pronouncement filled me with the same shame my dirty feet did. I was doing everything wrong.