I squeezed my eyes shut, gripping my hair.I should never have listened to myself. I should never have had the idea to send for a healer.
But then the thought snagged.DidI have the idea?
I tried again to summon the memory of the day I wrote the letter to Lysa. I reached back into my mind, looking for the moment of decision, the desperate hour in the library when I’d decided to break my isolation. There was nothing there. No, not nothing. That would have been mercy. Instead, there was a grey, oily fog.Why did I send for her?
I pushed harder against the fog. I remembered sitting at my desk. I remembered the quill in my hand. But the impulse? The nameLysa Emberlin?
“...perhaps fresh eyes, Fenrik...”
The voice whispered from the grey sludge in my mind.
“...the Emberlin girl. Such a tragic gift. She might be useful...”
My blood went cold. The memory wasn’t mine. The decision hadn’t been mine.
I stared at Lysa, who was watching me, her hand still outstretched.
And if I hadn’t chosen this... then someone else had set the board. Someone who knew what would happen when a monster met a woman who could quiet him.
“Oh Gods,” I said. “Get out. Lysa, you have to get out.”
fifteen
Lysa
Istumbled away from the scene in the dungeon. The image of Fenrik,whatFenrik had become, was burned onto the back of my eyes. It hadn’t been merely a man losing his mind. He turned into a beast. I’d seen the shadow of wings, vast and membranous, unfurling from his shoulders, and scales the colour of polished haematite rupturing the skin of his forearms.
It should have been grotesque. It should have been the stuff of nightmares I’d silence with a heavy dose of valerian root. But it wasn’t. It was terrifyingly, brutally majestic. Like seeing a storm break over a mountain peak, destruction and awe wrapped in the same thunderclap. I needed to get out and breathe some fresh air. I could quiet the corruption, slow it, even cage it, but without Fenrik’s own magic pushing back, it would always return.
I reached the landing that split the manor’s wings, turning toward the East corridor where the guest quarters lay. I took a step, and my stomach dropped. The hallway was looking unusually long, and itstretched.
I watched, blinking rapidly, as the familiar carpet runner elongated, the patterns distorting. The door at the far end, the sanctuary of my room, seemed to rush backward, miles away.
“No,” I said, gripping the banister. “Stop it.”
I turned on my heel, aiming for the library instead. The heavy double doors slammed shut. I reached for the handle, rattling the brass. Locked. The click of the latch echoed with a smug finality.
A draft, cold and purposeful, shoved against my shoulders. The floorboards beneath my boots groaned and tilted enough to make staying still a muscular effort. Every path I tried was blocked, sealed, or warped, except one. To my left, the entrance to the forbidden West Wing stood open. The air drifting from that dark mouth smelled moldy.
“You are incredibly pushy,” I hissed at the ceiling.
“It is less a matter of personality and more one of utility, miss Emberlin.”
I jumped, spinning around. Standing in the shadow of a suit of armour was Mrs. Crane. One could think she would be dusting or something, but the woman was standing there, her hands clasped over her apron, watching the house contort around me.
“The manor,” I said. “It’s... it won’t let me go to my room and it won’t let me go outside.”
“It appears not.” Mrs. Crane stepped forward. “As you already know, the architecture here suffers from an excess of opinion and a lack of manners.”
She glanced down the forbidden corridor where the house was trying to herd me. “Lord Corvus Stormgarde, the fourth of his line, built the Hall of Whispers in that wing. He was a man who believed that stone could hold a memory better than a mind could. He designed the foundation to be... porous.”
“Porous to what?”
“Intent.” She looked at the ceiling, where a chandelier was swaying. “The manor is a reservoir. Think of water filling a vessel. If the water is agitated, the vessel shakes. Fenrik’s distraction down below has disturbed the equilibrium. The house is trying to rebalance the pressure.”
“By trapping me?”
“By directing you.” Mrs. Crane’s gaze was sharp, uncomfortably intelligent. “You quiet things, Miss Emberlin. The house is in pain because its master is in pain. It is moving the remedy to the source of the infection.”
