Robin
Once again, the castle looms out of fog like something ripped from the darkest fairy tale as our car winds up the serpentine drive. Stone turrets pierce the gray mists, gothic windows stare down unseeingly, and the whole fortress perches on its cliff like a predator surveying its domain.
It looks like what it is. A trap.
The air cuts sharp against my lungs when I step from the car, scented with pine and the distant smoke of village chimneys. The enormous oak doors swing open silently, as if the castle itself has been waiting. Mrs. Kovacs is there once more to meet us, bowing her head as Eva leads me inside.
“Your room is prepared,” Eva says, her voice echoing off the vaulted ceiling. She doesn’t look at me as she speaks, instead addressing Mrs. Kovacs in rapid syllables. I made an effort to forget what little I learned of their language and none of the words sound familiar, anyway. Mrs. Kovacs nods and sweeps away to carry out whatever orders Eva has given her.
“Surely you remember your way,” Eva says, as I just stand there.
Silently, I turn and mount the staircase. And Eva follows me. I feel her eyes on me as we climb, taking me in greedily. The way I trail my fingers along the banister. The way I stare up at a tapestry depicting some medieval hunt. Even the way I hesitate on the upper landing before turning down the hallway to where “my” room waits.
It’s like being watched by a hawk. Beautiful, focused, and utterly deadly.
My bedroom is exactly the same as I remember, except for the clothes. They’re all different from the wardrobe she dressed me up in before. New gowns, new leisure clothes, new shoes.
But they’ll all fit perfectly—I can tell, just by looking.
Eva watches me take this all in, and then says, “Dinner will be served in one hour.”
She leaves the room and, for the first time since I left the hospital, I let out a deep breath and feel my shoulders relax a little.
I can do this.
I can.
Dinner is served in the formal dining room. I sit at Eva’s right hand at a table long enough to park a car on, feeling ridiculously small beneath another glittering chandelier. The staff move around us like ghosts, setting down course after course of food I barely taste.
Eva watches me eat. Watches me sip the wine. Watches me try to make conversation and fail against her stone-wall silence.
When one of the servers—the young woman who tried to teach me words down in the kitchen last time I was here—places the dessert course before me, she grins furtively at me. I offer her a small smile in return. “Thank you.”
Eva’s gaze cuts to her, glacial and sharp. She retreats so quickly she nearly trips over her own feet.
Eva’s fingers tighten around her wineglass. “The staff are not here for your entertainment.”
“I was just being polite.”
“There’s no need for that.”
I meet her stare across the expanse of mahogany and crystal. “I’m not going to act like a jerk just because it makes you feel better about your own behavior.”
For a moment, I think I’ve managed to enrage her.
For a moment.
Then the shutters slam down again. “You will not bother the staff in the kitchen like you did during your last visit.”
And then she goes back to her own meal, dismissing me with a wave of the hand when I sullenly ask if I can go.
And so two days pass in this strange, gilded purgatory. Eva disappears for most of the day—business calls, meetings, who knows where else. I think about going down to the kitchens, talking to the staff again, but I don’t want to get them in trouble. Because when Eva does appear, she always seeks me out readingin the library or walking the grounds, and her eyes rake over me with an intensity that makes my skin prickle.
But she doesn’t touch me. Doesn’t even speak to me beyond the bare necessities.
It’s worse than anger. This cold distance makes me feel like I’m being slowly frozen from the inside out. After that first formal dinner, I eat all my meals alone. I get up alone and I go to bed alone.
I call Adrian every time I think of him, or Dane, or Alicia, or Maisie. But somehow, talking to them just makes me feel more alone.
