Page 18 of Darkest at Dusk (Revenant Roses)

Chapter Eight

I sabella lay still, her breathing shallow, her eyes open to the heavy dark. Something had woken her…

There. A sound. A deep, resonant scrape of metal across stone.

The sheets, which had been warmed by the pan when she had climbed between them, cocooned her in the scent of clean linen and lavender.

At some point, her candle had guttered out and the fire had burned low, leaving only a scatter of glowing coals in the hearth.

Shadows pooled thick in the corners of the room, shifting with the uneven flicker.

The sound came again, harsh and grating, reverberating through the house.

She pushed back the covers. The cold in the room felt wrong, unnatural, piercing her skin and muscle, surging deep to scrape at her lungs. Her wrap hung over the end of the bed, and she drew it tight around herself as she rose, tying it at her waist with stiff fingers.

Crossing the room, she then pulled back the heavy drapes, allowing silvery moonlight to spill across the bed, the armoire, the dark-paneled walls. The shadows sharpened their teeth.

There, again…the sound, harsh and grating.

Don’t listen. Don’t answer. Her father’s voice echoed in her mind.

Isabella’s hand froze on the edge of her wrap. How many times had Papa warned her? How many times had she feigned blindness, feigned deafness, while the wraiths brushed her skin with fingers of frost and whispered their spider silk words in her thoughts?

But ignoring them never made them vanish. Ignoring them had never stopped their burning eyes from watching her, their icy breath from chilling her skin, their whispers from curling around her like gossamer webs.

The rasping scrape carried through the stillness, closer now, louder, nothing like the whispers she had grown accustomed to all these years. This felt different. Frightening.

She squeezed her eyes shut. She should crawl back into bed, pull the sheets over her head and shut out the world until morning light bled pale gold across the room.

But she could not.

She knew that Papa had meant the very best for her, but he had been wrong. Acknowledging the wraiths didn’t make them appear and ignoring them didn’t keep them away. They came whether she wanted them or not. And if she ignored them, they only grew bolder.

Heart pounding, she relit her candle and crossed to the door. The corridor stretched before her, lit only by a streak of silver moonlight slicing through a high window at the far end.

She hesitated, her breath coming in shaky rasps. If you follow them, Isabella, they will only take you deeper into the dark.

But the sound, deep, grating, impossible to ignore, pulled at her. She thought of an iron poker dragged against the stone of a hearth but could not say why that particular image came to her.

Breath fogging in the cold air, footsteps barely a whisper against the carpet, she stepped forward.

Then the house fell still, silence descending, heavy and watchful.

Almost did she turn back. Almost.

But that would mean hearing the sound again tomorrow night, or the night after, until she finally answered the summons. Better to choose to pass the threshold now than be dragged across it against her will.

And so, she walked on.

She turned a corner, then another. She let her fingertips drift along the wall, guiding her, the rise and dip of doorframes marking entryways to locked rooms. Each knob held fast.

The corridor grew narrower, the walls closing in, leaning toward her.

It is not real , she told herself. But it felt real.

Icy breath drifted across her nape. A whisper of laughter, high and childish, danced at the edges of hearing. She smelled roses, sweetly floral with just a hint of honey.

Isabella turned and froze.

A girl stood at the far end of the hallway, her slight frame swallowed by an oversized nightgown tied with thin, pink satin ribbons. Pale hair hung in damp, tangled strands, spilling over her narrow shoulders. Her eyes, too large for her delicate face, fixed on Isabella with unblinking intensity.

The girl did not move. Not even the hem of her nightgown stirred in the draft that sighed along the floor.

She was no wraith, for her form was as solid as Isabella’s own.

Isabella took a cautious step forward, her pulse thrumming like the wings of a moth caught in a spider’s web. “Hello?”

The question was greeted by silence.

She was no servant; Isabella was fairly certain of that. The gown was fine, the fabric delicate and expensive, yet… wrong somehow.

The girl’s pale face gleamed in the moonlight, her expression vacant, eyes dark and endless as she stared at Isabella with an eerie intensity, her head tipped to one side.

“Do you need help?” Isabella asked, taking another step forward, an uncomfortable wariness crawling through her. “Are you lost?”

The girl’s head twitched sharply, a convulsive movement, the angle unnatural, like a doll’s head knocked loose. Isabella’s pulse stuttered. A small, thin sound escaped the girl’s lips, not a word or even a moan, just…breath.

“Who are you?” Isabella whispered, every instinct screaming that something was terribly wrong.

The girl blinked slowly and took a single step forward, the movement odd and stiff, disjointed, as though her limbs argued the command of her mind.

Isabella’s breath caught. The cold deepened, sharp as thorns against her skin.

She saw now the dark halo surrounding the girl’s form, writhing like oil slicking across water.

And then she knew. Impossibly, the girl was a wraith , though unlike any she had encountered before. Solid. Dangerous.

A sudden, wind howled down the hallway, kettle-hot, breathy with ash and scorched oak, whipping Isabella’s hair across her eyes. Heat scored her cheeks and the backs of her hands.

As if a grate had been flung open and a bellows put to work, the sounds of a fire raged around her, quick, greedy crackles and pops and snaps accenting a gathering roar. A rippling wave of scorching air stole her breath.

The flame of her candle sheared flat, then clawed upright once more, hissing and spitting.

In the next instant, the heat was gone. The sounds and smells and horror of the fire were gone.

And the girl was gone.

The corridor stretched before her, empty, silent.

The air was thin with cold, heavy with the scent of metal and rot. Somewhere close, something tapped inside the wall. Tap…tap…tap.

Isabella’s heart thundered. She had seen wraiths all her life, but never one like that, never one that looked so real, as if it could step fully into the world.

She stumbled forward, desperate to escape this place, to return to her room, to what paltry sanctuary it might offer. Her heel caught on the edge of the carpet. With a startled cry, she fell, bracing for the impact?—

But she never hit the floor.

A hand caught her wrist.

Warm. Solid.

She looked up into the shadowed face of Rhys Caradoc. His hair, dark and thick and sleek, framed his face. The moonlight painted his bare shoulders in silver, the hard planes of his chest rising and falling with slow, measured breaths.

“Miss Barrett,” he murmured, his voice low and smooth, the sound wrapping around her like a cocoon of velvet and silk.

She stared at him, stunned, unsteady, her pulse tripping violently. He yet held her wrist, his hand warm, his body close, the faint rasp of his breath stirring against her temple.

“Mr. Caradoc!” she whispered, the sound barely more than a breath. For a heartbeat, she saw him not here in this corridor, but in another place, trapped behind iron bars and wired glass. She pushed the vision away and gathered herself. “It seems you are always catching me when I fall.”

She meant to look away, to compose herself, to remember that she was alone in the dark with a man she barely knew, a man who was only half-dressed and standing entirely too close.

But her gaze betrayed her, tracing the dusting of dark hair on his chest, the hollow that marked the center of his throat. She imagined the pulse there, steady against her lips if she but dared to lean in, to press her mouth?—

Heat flashed through her, and something clenched low in her belly. She jerked her gaze away, stunned by her own wayward thoughts, unsure what had elicited such an uncharacteristic desire.

“What are you doing wandering the halls at this hour?” he asked, his tone quiet, intimate.

She swallowed, her throat dry.

“I…” She could not tell him about the wraith she had seen. The entrenched caution of a lifetime stayed her tongue.

He would think her mad. Of course he would.

Oh, the bitter irony. She could neither ask what madness had once confined him to St. Jude’s, nor reveal her own.

Years of her father’s warnings rang in her ears, yet another reason to keep her secrets.

“I could not sleep,” she said, wondering if he would challenge her lie.

He did not. He only studied her in the darkness, his fingers still wrapped around her wrist, the sound of her breathing too loud in her ears.

After a moment, she tugged against his grip. He set her free, his thumb grazing the inside of her wrist, lingering there for a breath too long, the touch so slight she might have imagined it.

“You could not sleep,” he said softly. “A situation in which I find myself quite often.” His lips twitched, though the movement never quite became a smile. “And so you sought…what, precisely? A midnight stroll?”

There was no censure in his tone, no mockery, only a quiet curiosity that felt more disconcerting than any accusation.

“I heard something,” she whispered.

He exhaled through his nose, a sound partway between amusement and resignation. “This house is filled with strange sounds, Miss Barrett. It groans, it whispers, it shudders and clanks. May I suggest that you not chase after every sound you hear?”