Right.
A further snap of twig.
“H-hello?”
Yet naught and she quickened her stride, a sensation of being watched disturbing her, of being chased through the dark.
A man hunting his quarry.
Her slippers caught, tripped.
Another choice.
Left.
The hedge twisted, the sun gleamed on her back, her heart pounding as a broad arc of light filtered ahead.
There.
Hebe picked up her skirts and ran, looking skywards as she spun into the mellifluous sunshine…
Sublime and beautiful.
For she’d reached the centre, and within a miniature grassed square, a marble circular fountain sat inviting and untouched, an arching lithic swan with wings forever outstretched reposing in silence, water sliding from its beak.
Serenity pervaded this garden – a sanctuary of light awaiting those who struggled through the twisted paths of dark.
Pleasure flowed within her, a laugh expelled as she darted around the fountain to view the beauty of the graceful swan and the majesty of the pristine marbl–
Her foot stumbled.
Breath ceased.
For upon a cord around the swan’s neck, a small brown bird was hanging by its foot, head tilted down and nigh parted from its body, a jagged bloodied gash to its throat.
Grotesque fingerprints of ruby-blood were smeared down the swan’s immaculate white marble-carved body…
And Hebe screamed and screamed.
11
LABYRINTH
Ernest’s head ripped up from tending Lord Rupert’s hoof. “What the devil?”
“Get thee to the maze, lad,” wheezed Grampy Tom. “Tha ain’t lost, thas scared, so it be.”
“Daniel!” But with no sign of the damn groom, Ernest tossed the stallion’s reins to Thos.
“What in hell’s gates was that?” declared Redmond, wandering from the carriage house with a hand inside his waistcoat.
“Mrs Locke,” Ernest yelled over his shoulder as he sprinted through the courtyard doors and towards the maze.
The scream had halted. The castle grounds plunged to silence, and dread kicked Ernest’s cantering heart to a gallop, his booted feet to quickened speed as he entered the maze.
Was she hurt? Fallen? Had someone harmed her?
“Hebe! Where are you?”
