Tessaly stepped closer, her eyes wide. In her hands, she clutched a small potted moonflower, the leaves drooping and grey. “The walls are crying, Miss Emberlin. Look.”
She pointed to the base of the stairs. Like on the outside walls, silver sludge that was the waste magic in its purest form, was weeping from the grout, pooling on the expensive rugs.
“I know,” I said. I reached out, brushing a smudge of soot from Tessaly’s cheek. My fingers left a faint trace of warmth, and the girl leaned into it. “Listen to me. The house isn’t broken, it’s sick.”
“The Shadow-Man is down there,” Tessaly said. “He was screaming earlier.”
My heart slammed against my ribs. “Fenrik isn’t a monster, Tessaly. He’s just hurting.” I stood up. “Stay here. Stay together. The house won’t hurt you, it recognizes you. If the walls shake,get under the heavy table in the dining hall. Do you understand?”
Dorcas nodded, seemingly heartened by a direct order. “And you, Miss?”
I looked toward the shifting shadows at the top of the cellar stairs, where the air rippled with the heat of a breaking curse.
“I’m going to have a word with the management.”
The golden lights strobed ahead of me, pulling me away from the grand staircase and toward the service wing. The floorboards vibrated, a low-frequency hum that rattled my teeth. I skidded around a corner and collided with a cloud of plaster dust.
A sound like grinding millstones filled the narrow corridor. Just ahead, where the hallway narrowed toward the cellar access, Thorven Hearthcleft was fighting a mountain. The Serpentine Sentinel I’d glimpsed on my way to the house was a dormant coil of granite and iron guarding the animals living at the manor. It had now squeezed its massive bulk into this passage and filled the whole space, a sleek nightmare of animated stone. Thorven stood his ground. He handled a reinforced ironwood rake like a quarterstaff, jamming the handle horizontally between the construct’s open jaws. The serpent thrashed, its stone fangs gouging slivers from the wood. Thorven’s boots slid backward on the dust-slick floor, cutting furrows through the debris.
“Back!” he roared, veins bulging in his neck. He twisted the handle, leveraging the creature’s own bite force to slam its head into the wall. “Get back, you garden ornament!”
Granite cracked against the plaster. The beast recoiled, shaking its head. Its eyes, milk-white and weeping silver waste, locked onto me.
The tail lashed out. Thorven dropped his shoulder and took the blow on a leather pauldron. The impact threw him into a linen cupboard, shattering the doorframe, but he bounced back, spitting blood, rake raised.
His gaze snagged on me. For a second, I expected anger. I expected him to scream at me for leaving, for the chaos, for the dying manor. Instead, his face crumpled with relief.
“He’s below!” Thorven shouted, pivoting to block the serpent’s lunging strike at my ankles. He caught the blow on the rake’s shaft, the wood groaning under the strain. “The foundations! He broke the seal on the Sump!”
“Thorven—“ I stepped forward, raising my hands, gathering the Quieting in my palms.
“Don’t waste it on this rock-pile!” He said, shoving the creature back with a heave of his thick shoulders. “Save it for him. He went down there to end it. To pull the whole damn line into himself.”
The serpent shrieked and snapped the rake handle in two. Thorven jammed the jagged broken end into the joint of the creature’s stone jaw, forcing it wide. He was bleeding from a cut on his temple, the grey in his beard stained crimson.
“Go, girl!”
“I can help you—“
“I was a stray when I came here!” Thorven didn’t look at me. He slammed his shoulder into the beast, buying me an opening. “Too soft for the high houses. Too gentle for the trainers. He took me in. He never turned away a broken thing in his life. Not a drake, not a wyrm, not me.” The serpent swung its head, catching Thorven in the ribs. He wheezed, stumbling, but planted his feet again, refusing to yield a single inch of the corridor.
“I am not leaving him,” Thorven snarled, swinging a heavy iron key-ring like a flail into the creature’s eye socket. “Now move your arse, Emberlin! Get to the roots!”
I ducked beneath the thrashing stone tail and sprinted for the cellar door, the sound of Thorven’s roar and the serpent’s answering shriek chasing me down. My boot caught on something soft at the base of the wall, and I pitched forward, barely catching myself on the wainscoting.
“Mrs. Crane!”
The housekeeper was slumped against the dark wood paneling. She was shaking with a rattling vibration that seemed to come from her bones.
I dropped to my knees, my hands hovering over her. Her skin was the colour of ash, her lips blue. “Mrs. Crane? Can you hear me?”
Her eyes snapped open, though she didn’t have the strength to lift her head. Her gloved hand shot out, clamping around my ankle. The grip was shockingly weak, a ghost of her usual fortitude.
“We couldn’t stop him,” she rasped. “He went down... to the roots. To the Sump.”
“I know. Thorven told me.” I reached for her pulse, but she batted my hand away.
“Don’t waste it on me.” A spasm of pain crossed her face, and the silver chatelaine at her waist jingled mournfully. “I pulled... I pulled everything I had to hold the Wards when the Lady tried to breach them last night. Just to keep her out. But he... he broke the seal from the inside.”
