But no matter how many steps I took, the crying was always just ahead of me.
Then it stopped.
I froze.
A single door stood at the end of the corridor. Narrow. Red. The wood was warped and glistening with age.An iron handle curled like a serpent’s tongue at its center. I didn’t want to touch it.
But my hand lifted anyway.
I knocked once.
The door creaked open on its own.
A room lay beyond, small, windows barred like a cage waiting for me. The only light came from the bruised glow of moonlight slipping in through a jagged crack in the ceiling. The air was thick with mildew and dust, heavy with silence. At the far end of the room stood a woman.
Her hair hung over her face, her gown torn and soaked at the hem, as if she had walked through a river to find me.
Elizabeth.
“Lucy…” she hissed. “He’ll kill you too.”
She repeated the same warning she’d given me in the garden.
I couldn’t move.
Her face began to lift, her mouth parting wider, her voice becoming a shriek that didn’t belong in the throat of anything living.
Then I awoke.
Gasping.
My back lay against ice-cold stone. My nightdress clung to my skin with sweat. I pushed myself upright with trembling hands.
I waslying in the east wing.
Alone.
The door to the tower remained closed and locked.
The chill of the stone seeped into my spine, anchoring me to the floor. My limbs felt distant, as if they belonged to someone else. The shadows shifted around me. Nothing was still. Not even the walls.
Had I been asleep? Dreaming? Was I still dreaming?
Sleepwalking.
I must have been sleepwalking. That’s what it was. It had to be.
But even as I thought it, the memory of the crying woman, of her voice whispering, lingered so clearly in my mind.
I stumbled forward, one hand braced on the wall, trying to remember the way back to my room. My bare feet dragged over the cold floors. The corridor stretched longer than it should have.
My vision blurred, the halls warped.
My heart kicked against my ribs.
I tripped. The wall caught me before the floor could. I slumped hard against it, breath heaving, the weight of my own body suddenly unbearable.
“Lucy.”
