“It wasn’t human,” she choked. “It came through the hall. Dragged Mr. Carson. Ripped his throat. Mrs. Hale. Mrs. Hale didn’t even have time to scream.”
Her hands flew to her mouth, shoulders shaking violently. The Guardian winced, color draining from her face.
Penelope remained composed. “What did it look like?” she pressed.
The maid shook her head frantically. “I didn’t see its face. Just shadows. And eyes like… like…” She gagged. “Like pools of pitch-black water.”
Mingxi exchanged a look with the Guardian. That was not a revenant. Not even a necromancer’s work. This was something else entirely.
The maid’s panic spiraled as she looked around the storeroom, breath coming in sharp gasps. “Please. I can’t. Please get me out of here. I can’t be in this house.”
She reached toward Penelope as if grasping for something solid. Something human. Penelope stepped neatly out of reach. Not cruel. Simply composed. Untouchably so.
“Guardian,” Penelope said, clipped and precise. “Get her outside. Now.”
“Yes, Lady Penelope.”
The Guardian sheathed her blade and hurried to the maid’s side. The girl clutched the woman like a lifeline, sobbing into her armor as they left the room.
Mingxi watched Penelope instead. Watched the way she observed the evacuation with steady, detached calm. No one touched by such violence should possess such calm.
He stepped closer, lowering his voice. “That girl is on the edge of collapse.”
Penelope turned to him, her coolness sharp enough to cut stone.
“And what good would it do,” she asked, “if I joined her?”
The answer struck Mingxi with weight. Not because of what she said, but how simply she said it. Emotionless. Pragmatic. Standing in the center of catastrophe and still functioning with aristocratic precision.
“Lady Penelope,” Mingxi said quietly, “most people do not hold themselves together like this.”
Her gaze sharpened, something dangerous flickering through it.
“I am not most people, Councilor Shen.”
He believed her. More than that, he understood how true the statement was.
“We need to get you out of here,” Mingxi said.
“By all means,” Penelope replied.
Chapter 11
Penelope didn’t look back as they left the bloodstained corridor. Not because she was brave, but rather there was nothing behind her worth looking back at.
The house felt smaller than she remembered.
Smaller, darker, as if the walls had shrunk inward during the years she’d been gone. Or perhaps she had simply outgrown it. She didn’t belong here anymore. She wasn’t sure she ever had.
Mingxi kept close, his steps quieter than hers. His presence filled the silence her parents never had.
They reached the staircase.
She paused, not from grief, but from disorientation. The banister was cracked, splintered where violence had forced its way through. Nineteen years ago, she’d been forbidden to touch it for fear of “leaving prints.” Now it bore the marks of far worse hands than hers. A bemused smile lit her face briefly, enjoying the irony.
She descended without touching it.
The foyer stank of blood and decay. A sharp, metallic tang threaded through the air, clinging to the back of her throat. She felt no sorrow for it. Only a faint, strange hollowness where other people might have felt loss.
