Dust swirls in the flickering candlelight.
Her footsteps echo on the stone walls.
The energy thumps at the back of her throat.
She turns the next corner.
Her ears ring and her eyes burn.
Another corner.
Another.
The pressure in her chest starts to hurt.
Her steps quicken.
Another corner.
She enters a room and freezes.
There’s Delphine’s slippers cast off on the floor, her half-drunk glass of ozrum, a leftover slice of bread.
No. No. Not that room.
Another hallway.
Another room.
Delphine’s silk robe draped over a chair.
Tears blur Cleo’s vision.
A moan escapes her throat.
She goes downstairs. She’s running now.
A breeze steals in through cracks in the stone. The flames of the lantern lights gutter out.
Cleo’s heart is rapping at her eardrums.
She turns into a sitting room.
Delphine is there holding a bottle of ozrum.
“Where have you been?” the witch asks.
Cleo squeezes her eyes shut and screams.
The sound fills the room.
It fills the cracks in the walls.
Cleo sinks to her knees and clamps her mouth shut.
The world grows still again.
Laughter burbles up, chasing the scream, and soon she’s hysterical, sobbing and laughing.
