She had not wept for Eleanor. Not properly. The town had not allowed it.
They had buried her absence beneath laws and curfews and whispers, tucked away behind her father’s speeches and the Church’s sermons.
But Penelope had felt it.
Each day a little heavier.
Each evening a little darker.
And now, that weight curled around her chest like ivy, winding tighter with every breath.
She lowered her hands to the keys of the piano at last, pressing one softly.
Then another.
A melody began to unfold, slow and wistful, delicate as a first snowfall.
She played not for comfort, nor for company.
She played because she could not scream.
Yet as she played, her eyes still found the sliver of window hidden by her curtains.
Because out that window, past the fog and the broken cobblestone, past the lines of houses caging in the women she once knew in the freedom of childhood, was the edge of the Evermore Forest. The last place Eleanor was said to have gone.
Penelope shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut as her fingers danced across the keys before slamming her fingers down on the final notes. The sound faded into silence as she focused on her breathing.
What would obsessing over her friend’s disappearance do her?
She ought to be focusing on what she could control. On her music. On finding a husband.
But how? How was she supposed to escape her thoughts when they chased her? How was she supposed to live, when to even feel the warmth of the sun she needed to be accompanied as if she were a prisoner. A criminal. Simply for being a woman.
Her blood ran cold as a floorboard groaned—only slightly—under the weight of slow footsteps. Penelope’s heart stilled in her chest.
Without breathing—a task that seemed impossible at that moment—Penelope slowly turned her head over her shoulder, and there it was.
Therehewas.
Standing behind her. Watching her.
Hunting her.
A vampire was standing in her bedroom.
“Quite the melody, Lamb.”
2
PENELOPE
There was a vampire in her room.
His eyes burned red in the darkness, his white hair falling in a curtain that stopped just short of them.
“W-what are you doing here?” she stammered, her heart pounding against her ribs in a wild, discordant rhythm. “My father—”
“—is far from here.” He stepped forward, silent despite the weight of his boots. “And your father’s rules mean little to me.”
