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“My mother’s spell book. I stayed up all night reading as much as I could, memorizing new spells for if we need them.

These were spells I should’ve learned when I was younger, but my mother wanted me to have a different childhood than she did.

” Dulce shrugged. “It would’ve been useful to know beforehand, but I’m a quick learner. ”

“So what did one learn as a wealthy child then? Piano?”

“Yes, piano .” She laughed softly. “But also I was fed poisons.”

Reed sputtered, horrified, “Poisons?”

“It’s a tradition in our family to start slowly at a young age, not only because I was a witch but because of the wealth and what one could do to someone to steal it.”

“It sounds like a blessing from your mother then.”

“Yes. Very much.”

“I would say to teach me the way of poisons, but I don’t have anything worth stealing,” he drawled.

“I’m not so sure about that, Mr. Hawthorne. You’re quite extraordinary.” She smiled and opened her book to read.

Him ? Extraordinary? Was a swamp rat anything worthy of praise? And yet, her words warmed him, filled him with a newfound confidence.

Soon they reached the rolling hills above the town, and Reed looked down at the Glen in the distance, its swamps and ramshackle huts shrouded in mist as the sun rose in the slate-gray sky, its light nearly obliterated by cloud.

They stopped every two hours to allow the horse—whom Dulce named Golden Toffee—to feed and drink, to stretch their legs and to eat something of the dried fruit, bread, and nuts Vesta had packed for them.

Reed thought he was already becoming too accustomed to eating well.

He could almost hear his brother’s taunts at how he’d gone soft in a single day…

Reed studied the sky over the Thyone Pass farther ahead. “Looks like a storm.”

“They say once you enter the pass, you can’t stop,” Dulce said.

He shrugged. “They say a lot of things, mostly involving being eaten by creatures that probably don’t even exist.”

“There’s an inn just before it. The Black Fox,” Lucas told them, eating half a sandwich in one bite, clearly proud he knew something they didn’t.

“It’s the last place to rest before miles of wilderness.

Grandfather says we have to stay the night there, or else Toffee will get too tired through the Pass. ”

“I wonder if it’s true what they say about the creatures that live within Thyone Pass?” Dulce whispered, as if the creatures might hear her if she spoke too loudly, and Reed ate more bread to hide his smile.

“Probably not.” Lucas shrugged, speaking around another enormous bite of sourdough and ham. “Or we would have seen hunters’ trophies of them.”

“After reading through Mother’s book and seeing what La Bisou Morte’s spell has already done, I doubt nothing. Anything is possible,” Dulce muttered, her hands clutching the tome.

Rain poured from the sky by the time the Black Fox came into view through the carriage window.

Sitting at the base of the jagged mountains of the Pass, it was made entirely of tar-painted wood, three stories of ebony and glass, its design foreign in its elaborate carvings like wooden lace around pointed doorways and windowpanes.

Glistening white gossamer cloaked every single shrub, and he wondered how many spiders were crawling within their branches and leaves.

As they drew closer, Reed felt that the inn itself was watching him.

Beckoning him closer.

A hunched man with a bushy peppered beard appeared out of the misty rain and waved their carriage forward to halt beneath the Black Fox’s wide porch, its dark pillars carved with the faces of screaming children—or were they laughing?

Reed arched an eyebrow at them before alighting, helping Dulce from the carriage as he imagined a chivalrous husband might, and Lucas dutifully retrieved their luggage packed for the journey before departing to sleep in one of the stable rooms, the party determined to keep up all appearance of normalcy.

“We don’t get many guests these days,” the man said as he led them inside, his accent unfamiliar to Reed. “Weather isn’t fine, you see. I expect we’ll get more rain before the night is through.”

The inn’s lobby was as dark as its exterior. Dulce shuddered in the cold, and Reed draped an arm around her.

The innkeeper hurried to light a fire in a hearth made of black stone, its height taller than any man.

“I apologize for the absence of our regular staff,” he continued, opening a large registry and sliding it across the desk at Reed. “They found themselves unwell and didn’t dare to risk our guests’ health.”

“Most thoughtful of them.” Reed nodded, signing the registry Mr. and Mrs. Jones Taylor, the common name they chose to go by. “We will take your best room, if it’s not too much trouble.”

“No trouble at all.” The man retrieved a key from the wall behind the desk, each one tied to a black tassel, the one he handed Reed having the largest tassel of them all. “Dinner will be laid out at half past seven, though I’m afraid it’s only stew and bread tonight.”

Reed smiled, accepting the key. “Stew and bread will do splendidly, thank you.” It was certainly a much better meal than he was accustomed to in the Glen.

They followed the man—who insisted on carrying their luggage—up a staircase of more dark stone, the paintings lining the walls hidden in deep shadows, as if the artist only had shades of gray to work with. Dulce took his arm, murmuring, “You’re quite good at playing the aristocrat, my lord.”

Reed smirked. “Much obliged, I’m sure, Highness.”

She fought a laugh, and the effect on her features was alluring, even in the cold shadows of the place. Reed no longer noticed the cold with her delicate hand on his arm.

Their room consisted of two beds large enough for an entire family in the Glen, their carved wood draped in canopies of black velvet, an armoire of that same ebony stone, a mirror surrounded by carvings of wolf-like creatures with wings, and a bath.

“I’m going to keep the spell book close,” she said, resting her hand on her satchel. “I don’t trust leaving it anywhere I’m absent from it.”

He nodded, not trusting the inn in the least, and as she opened the luggage, sorting through a few vials, he asked, “So how did you get the name Dulce?”

She smiled at him over her shoulder. “Do I look more like an Alexandra or a Josephine?”

Reed smirked. “Not at all. Dulce suits you rather perfectly.”

“Alexandra comes from my grandmother on my mother’s side, and Josephine, my grandmother on my father’s side.

But as a young child, my father said neither suited me, and I was too sweet for such stuffy names, so he called me Dulce.

” She grinned. “Although, after all that’s happened now, I’m not certain my father would feel the same way any longer. ”

“On the contrary.” Reed cleared his throat before he said something that sounded like a sappy poet. “Speaking of sweet things, I do believe there is a meal calling us downstairs.”

The pair returned to the inn’s lobby, finding the dining room by virtue of its being the only area with any light. Multiple candles cast a soft glow along the inky wallpaper of black poppies on gray, and the chairs, made of the same dark wood, were decorated in carvings like so many grasping hands.

Hands struggling to climb from graves , Reed thought. He glanced down at his stew and brought a spoonful to his lips.

“It’s quite beautiful,” Dulce said cheerfully, and Reed stopped eating to stare at her. “What?” She met his no doubt gaping expression.

“If you can call haunted beautiful,” Reed whispered. He jerked his chin at the painting of a young girl with bluish skin standing alone in a forest of gray, her eyes full of sorrow as they seemed to stare into his very soul. “Just look at that painting, for one thing.”

“Oh, it’s most certainly haunted,” Dulce agreed, continuing to eat. “But why should that make it any less beautiful?”

Reed shook his head in fascination.

She took a small velvet bag from her pocket and fished out a white berry, then slipped it between her pretty lips. “I’d offer you one, but you’d die.”

He smirked. “A tolerance to poisons. Quite the quality you have.”

“Indeed.” The edges of Dulce’s lips curved up into a smile.

Reed finished his stew in silence, unable to halt his thoughts about what one went through to become accustomed to poisons.

On returning to his room through the inn’s dark and empty corridors, Reed was surprised to find the water from the bath’s greenish copper faucets was hot. He filled the tub and let Dulce bathe first, then sank down into its blissful depths himself.

Tired from a full day jostled in a carriage along rocky lanes, Reed slipped into the room to find Dulce had fallen into a deep sleep on her bed. He studied her heart-shaped face a little too long before blowing out the candle on his bedside.

Reed hoped absently that Lucas was comfortable in the servant’s quarters, that Philip didn’t worry too much about what had become of him.

He tried not to think of Dulce, sleeping just two steps from him, her breathing soft, but as he closed his eyes, she was the only thing he could think about.

With the light casting an eerie silver glow through the window, her face was the perfection of a priceless marble statue, and he was reminded of the first time he saw her, lying within her grave.

“Reed,” Dulce whispered, waking him, the rain outside falling in loud torrents now, and he opened his eyes, seeing nothing but shadow. The creatures along the mirror seemed to move, and he blinked, his vision clearing.

“Hmm?” he managed, confused. Someone—Dulce—was most certainly climbing into his bed. A leg came up to rest over his, a smooth foot caressing his own. He was fully awake now, all too aware of her body against his back, soft and warm.

Dulce’s breath was hot along his neck as she whispered, “Reed, I’m frightened.” Her delicate arms wrapped around him then, and he froze. “Won’t you hold me?”

Surprise, desire, and confusion all warred within him. Desire quickly won over the others, and Reed began to turn around, all thought vanishing, powerless against his longing to obey, to take Dulce in his arms and kiss her, just as he’d wanted to when he first saw her.

But instead, sudden pain halted his movement.

Dulce’s hands were claws, her razor-sharp nails digging into his chest, blood welling in their wake. Her soft lips became teeth, ripping at his neck. Reed cried out in alarm, cursing into the darkness, as he threw himself from the bed, shoving Dulce from his side.

A ray of candlelight shone from the opening bathroom door, and Dulce stood frowning at him, fully dressed .

Reed blinked. “What—”

Movement in the mirror caught his eye, and the blood drained from his face. A woman as thin as a skeleton smiled at him from his bed, the depths of her hollow eyes appearing to laugh at his desire while rotting teeth elongated to form the sharp fangs of a beast.

Reed flinched away, whirling back to Dulce, only to find that the girl from the dining room’s painting stood behind her in the bathroom’s light, her clothing dripping wet, her skin that of a drowned and rotting corpse.

“I take it you see one of the ghosts standing behind me.” Dulce plucked up her cloak from the bed. “We should probably leave. It’s well past dawn.”

“Am I going mad?” Reed asked, opening his shirt to inspect the skin of his chest. Though he could still feel the cuts along it, his roving fingertips proved there was nothing there.

Cheeks pinkened, Dulce turned away, and Reed hurried to button his shirt again. “No, you aren’t going mad,” she told him. “I believe they want you to themselves by the way they’re staring daggers at me.”

“Well, they can continue wanting. Let’s get out of this cursed place.

” Reed hurried to slip on his boots, then threw on his cloak and hat without bothering to comb his hair.

He snatched up their luggage and strode toward the door.

With one last glance back before leaving the room, he found the woman still grinning at him from the bed, the girl still standing in the bathroom, her gaze full of sorrow.

“That was nothing a little blessed thistle and rue couldn’t have prevented,” Dulce said beside him on the stairs. “I can purchase some at the next apothecary we see so that ghosts can’t appear at all.”

He arched a brow. “I don’t care if you buy all the thistle and rue in the world, we aren’t staying anywhere with ghosts again. I’d rather sleep outside in the rain.”

She rolled her eyes, a hint of a smile curling her lips. “As you say then, Mr. Jones Taylor. ”