Page 33 of Ashwood (Wallflowers and Demons #1)

The nobles are the first to depart. The ladies with their ostrich-feather fans and powdered faces, the lords with their tired eyes and secret affairs. All of them cleaned up, buttoned down, pretending they weren’t trapped in a haunted castle for a night like characters in some cautionary tale.

I don’t miss them.

But I also don’t trust this relief.

It is too quiet in Ashwood.

Gabriel joins us. He looks worn — his coat unbuttoned, his cravat undone. Without time to shave, a new beard has grown in.

“It’s done,” he says.

“How many left?” I ask.

“Just over two hundred. Most are staff. Delivery teams. The rest are mine.”

“And the Dowager’s people?” Dorian asks.

Gabriel’s jaw clenches. “The runners are watching them closely. I’ve sent a few to tail some suspects.”

I grip the balustrade tightly. “They’re watching us right now.”

Gabriel nods. “Perhaps they know of your secret, Dorian.”

“Perhaps I am going mad,” I add. “I saw a dead woman and there is no reasonable explanation.”

The last of the noble carriages disappears beyond the ridge. The hills roll outward, and in the far distance, the tall spires of Wexmoore Castle appear from above the forest.

“They’ll reach the port before nightfall,” Gabriel murmurs. “Assuming the weather holds.”

“Will it?” I ask.

Dorian’s eyes narrow. “Yes.”

The clouds have thickened. Swollen grey beasts lurch across the sky. There’s thunder on the horizon. A sea-storm, perhaps.

I do not know this land.

“Did we make a mistake?” I ask quietly.

Gabriel and Dorian look at me.

“Sending them away,” I clarify. “What if this was never about the girl? What if the killer… is still building to something worse?”

Dorian answers. “Then we prepare.”

I leave them behind and descend the stairs. The castle has emptied and yet, it seems more crowded than ever. Nora is already beside me before I even speak.

“Lock the guest wings,” I say. “Clean only what must be cleaned. I want a full list of the remaining staff — where they sleep, where they eat, what they touch. ”

“Understood.”

DORIAN

Three taps. Repeated. The persistent knocking is enough to wake me.

Katherine stirs beside me. The sheets rustle. The fire’s gone cold again, despite the embers I stoked only hours before. We must have fallen asleep sometime after midnight. Exhausted, I must’ve succumbed not long after.

The knock comes again.

I slip out of bed, pull on my trousers and boots, and as Katherine wakes, I gesture for her to stay. She doesn’t argue. She draws the covers higher and sits up slowly, watching as I cross the room and open the door.

The group stand outside my door and I know it is serious news. Nora stands there with Mr. Everly, Peter, William and Issac.

They’ve been keeping an eye on the forest, poisoning it as instructed.

Nora doesn’t wait for pleasantries. “You need to come with us, Your Grace,” she says. She opens her mouth again and then closes it. “I cannot even explain what it is.”

I nod once. “Williams, stay with her Grace. Nobody gets in this room.”

Without another word, I leave them behind and follow the rest of the group. The corridor is dark. The candles have guttered. We move in silence through the hall and down the stairs, past the cold bones of last night’s feast and furniture still haphazardly left in various hallways of the castle.

Outside, the storm has broken. The wind howls against the stone, and the rain comes in sideways. I step into it without flinching. We take the carriage roughly fifteen minutes north, just past the pasture that borders the forest’s edge.

“We are here, Your Grace,” Issac says.

We move quickly, down the servants’ path, past the stables and toward the far pasture — a stretch of farmland wedged between the rear gardens and the woods. There were pigs here once. Chickens. A barn with red shutters. The estate used it for overflow harvests. I haven’t thought about it in years.

Until now.

Nora raises her lantern.

“Stop, Your Grace. We are here.”

At first, I don’t understand what I’m looking at. The field is torn up, the fence shattered in places, and boards are flung a hundred yards. The coop is gone. Nothing but splinters remain. But it’s not until she steps forward and lifts the light higher, that I see it.

Blood.

There is so much blood.

It stains the entire house, from the ceilings, to the floors and across the grass and brown Earth.

And across, in an open field, a depression appears.

It is three feet long at least, rounded at one end, cracked in the centre like something flexed.

The grass beneath it is flattened and mud pools in the heel.

A footprint.

Not a bear. Not a trick of rain or erosion. Not a collapsed burrow.

But the shape of a human foot.

It is giant.

Deformed.

I crouch slowly, placing my hand beside it.

It is a man’s foot.

Only three times the size.

A few dark splatters, half-washed by the rain is indented inside the mud and something else too. I lift it out of the ground.

It is a hand. Someone’s hand.

I drop it and it squelches in the mud.

“Where did it go?” I ask.

Nora turns and points toward the woods. “The trail leads northeast. Toward the ravine.”

Dread comes fast.

The cursed side of the forest.

I stare at the trees, swaying in the wind.

“How did it get so close?” I ask. “Without being seen?”

“We didn’t patrol this end last night. Due to the guests, all hands were required.”

Of course.

I rise, wiping mud from my hands. “Send a runner to Gabriel. Tell him to meet me by the guard tower in fifteen minutes. Wake only those whom you trust. Everyone else, the staff — all of them, send them to Wexmoore. When the tide rises on the morrow, they will be safe.”

She nods.

“And Nora,” I add, as she turns to go.

“Yes?”

“You will go with them. It is not safe here. You will take Her Grace with you.”

She hesitates, just slightly. “You think she can’t handle it?”

“I think she’ll try.”

She hesitates again.

“There is another matter, Your Grace…”

My ears perk up.

Whatever it is, it cannot be good news.

“There is a survivor. He saw everything.”

∞∞∞

Back inside the Castle, the storm pulverises the windows. I strip off my wet coat and leave it by the hearth. Katherine is already out of bed. She stands near the mirror, brushing out her hair, with her robe clinging to her frame. When she sees me, she frowns.

“Is it bad?”

I don’t lie.

I don’t say a damned word.

She just sets the brush down, walks past me, and sits on the bed. Worried, she places a hand over my back.

“Dorian, whatever is the matter?”

But I can still smell the mud.

Still see the print in my mind.

Still feel the truth taking shape, and it is both giant and grotesque. “Lord Sainsbury’s missing entourage. I think I’ve found them.”