Kiersten White - The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein

Paranormalcy

Supernaturally

Endlessly

Mind Games

Perfect Lies

The Chaos of Stars

Illusions of Fate

And I Darken

Now I Rise

Bright We Burn

N OTE: A LL CHAPTER TITLES ARE TAKEN FROM J OHN M ILTONS P ARADISE L OST

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 authors 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 Childrens 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 Shelleys 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 literatureFiction. | MonstersFiction. | ScientistsFiction. | MurderFiction. | Horror stories.

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

Ebook ISBN9780525577959

Cover design by Regina Flath

Random House Childrens Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

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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

L IGHTNING 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 originssimilar in cruelty, though differing in durationhad 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 skinfair like my hairwould 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 beneath 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.

Justines smile grew, though with a puzzled edge. Her face was clearer than any of Victors texts. His books always required further knowledge and intense study, while Justine was an illuminated manuscriptbeautiful 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 natures beauty, Victor saw powerpower to light up the night and banish darkness, power to end a centuries-old life in a single strikethat 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 handher brown leather gloves a gift Henry had given mebefore 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.