Page 1 of Blackwicket

Prologue

The sound of crying woke me, growing fainter as it receded down the hall. I sat up and peered into the gloom, fractured by small wafts of moonlight that had slipped through the wooden shutters. I was alone, my sister’s bed empty, the creature that had taken up lurking in the slanted dormer alcove at night, absent.

My sister missing wasn’t strange, but the Drudge being gone alarmed me. It only moved when there was danger in the house.

I climbed from bed, following the sound into the moldering hallway that smelled of mildew and damp, the cool ocean air stealing in from windows no longer able to shut in their swollen frames. The usual thrum of the house had lessened, and the stillness felt odd in my bones. I caught sight of candlelight flickering in the stairwell, followed by a gulping sob.

Fiona.

Two flights brought me to the foyer, shadowy and unwelcoming. The heartbreaking noises continued in the parlor, a room I hadn’t set foot in since the day I’d made the mistake that broke my family. But I hadn’t heard Fiona cry in years, and I needed to know what event had caused her tears.

I found her slouched against the wall near the Narthex, a hidden doorway between here and the realm magical lawprohibited anyone from entering, the one leading to chaotic corridors crafted by Curse Eaters over generations.

When she saw me, she startled, wailing slightly, huddling into herself.

I hurried to her, kneeling to place my hand on her knees, which she’d drawn to her chest. She was two years older than I, eighteen this past summer, but she looked like a little girl again, curled up like this.

“I wasn’t going to wake you.” Her voice trembled.

“What’s happened?”

“Mother’s gone,” she whispered.

“Gone where?” I asked, prepared to act, assuming she’d wandered into the night again to walk the cliffs, an unsafe excursion in her state. We were always worried she’d forget to look for the edge.

Fiona gripped my wrist, fingernails digging as she forced my palm against the surface where the portal had always existed, giving my family forbidden access to the place where magic was born.

“Dark Hall,” Fiona replied. “She went to Dark Hall.”

The house moaned, like the mortally wounded begging for death.

There was no telltale vibration beneath my hand, no softness in space growing ever more pliant as my magic unfurled to touch it, only an inflexible wall, the portal sealed shut. I stood, panic returning tenfold.

“You didn’t try to stop her?” My voice rose, wild, disbelieving.

“What was I supposed to do?” She yelled in return.

“Grab her, hold her, beg her not to leave!” I clutched my chest as my heart raced painfully. Mother was gone. Not just gone, but good as dead.

“She wanted to go, Eleanora,” Fiona said, rising unsteadily.

“Well, so do I.” The words were out before I’d considered them, and once they were free, the rest followed. “I hate this house. I hate Grigori and this filthy town. I’m scared all the time. Peoplehateus.”

Faced with my rage, my sister’s demeanor changed from the mournful bewilderment of loss to one of insult. She’d always taken our duty more seriously.

“It’s our burden to bear. What will the people of Nightglass do without us?”

“Die too, for all I care,” I choked out, “Like mother. She’s dead, Fiona. You don’t walk into Dark Hall as cursed as she was and leave.”

My sister struggled briefly with her turmoil before crumbling beneath it.

“This is all your fault!” she shrieked, her body shaking with the effort. “You should have kept out of mother’s business!”

“I was trying to help,” I cried, stunned by both her animosity and the accusation.

“No one wanted your help, Ellie.” Fiona wasn’t screaming anymore, her voice dropping into the exhausted register of a young woman who was finally giving in to fate.

“Grigori had our family by the throat.”