“We do not honor that one.”
Lux knew where Hildred would point before she did. “I suppose not. But what did you mean? About the rest of her family.”
“Come. Breakfast is being served, and the lords won’t like it if you’re late.”
Hildred continued down the stairs, but Lux was slow to listen and slower to follow. The remainder of Riselda’s family all wore intense or severe expressions. Imagining them now in the manor she stood in caused a cascading sense of foreboding. It suddenly all seemed too…heavy.
She turned away with the same sense of turning her back on the Shield, sure she could feel Riselda’s painted eyes watching her go.
“The morning room is through here,” Hildred called up.
Lux made her way down. When she reached the second-floor landing, she peered along the corridor where the woman had pointed. “Where?”
There was no answer. Lux turned to catch Hildred scurrying away, the maid stopping only when she neared the painting of the murdered founder of Mothlock’s Society. There, she curtsied so deeply, Lux thought she would surely prostrate herself beneath its frame. But after several moments, Hildred rose and loped down the final staircase. Lux turned back to the wide corridor, bewildered and at a loss of where to go next.
There are too many doors.
She paused beneath the arched frame marking the second floor’s entrance, the stone walls beyond it black as everything else and extending seemingly without end. It was dim, almost ominous, and the sconces’ blue cast could do little against it. Not even the sun allotted through the narrow windows brightened the expanse.
Her nerves pricked.
Enough of that. I’ve come here for a purpose and no dark corridor is going to deter me.
Bolstered somewhat, she walked to the first door, gripped the etched, silver knob, and turned.
“Lux.”
Her hand lifted away at once. When she searched for who had called her name, she discovered a robed figure in a doorframe farther down. Corvin lowered his hood. His light hair, nearly white, stood out starkly. As did his grin.
“Wrong door.”
Lux sucked her lip between her teeth for all of a second before she said, “I hope one of your preserved books has a map of this place.”
Corvin continued to smile as she made her way toward him. Her boots echoed against the flagstones and the chilled sea air crept through the cracks of the window to remind her of her damp head.
“Well?” she said when she reached him.
Corvin’s eyes flicked down her dress before returning to hers. “Well what?”
“A map? Does it exist?”
“I’m sure it does. But you won’t need it.” He made to return to the room behind him.
“I’m sure I will,” she said, following. Her gaze swept over his long, black robe. At how it just brushed the floor, allowing for only a sliver of his polished boots to show.
He glanced over his shoulder. “I will be your map.”
Lux narrowed her eyes at him. “Except when you leave me for some new collection.”
“Oh.” His words snaked around him to find her. “That won’t be for some time now.”
She hardly heard him. Instead, her attention had fixed upon the dining table. The sheer, imposing size of it. She stoppedbefore the gleaming wood, her quick glance revealing a massive fireplace, beams arched like a blackened ribcage overhead and nothing but portraits of aged men and burning lamps on the walls.
“This is not quite…”
“I know. The old collectors like the dark here in Mothlock. They believe it protects the knowledge stored within. I’m sorry if you find it stifling; I suppose I’m used to it.”
“Within the walls or within their heads?” Except it wasn’t only dark. It was positivelygloomy.She’d expected an area labeled as a morning room to contain a window to observe said morning, at least.
