The record begins to skip.
Never be truly afraid. Never be truly afraid. Never be truly afraid.
I lunge for the stylus, yanking it up, but her voice continues. It twists to something dark and guttural. It’s not hers anymore.
Never be truly afraid.
I’ve had enough. I rip the record from the turntable and hurl it across the room. It shatters against the wall, pieces raining down, and the voice finally stops.
I gasp, trying to steady the breath I was holding the entire time. So much of my mother’s memory is tainted. I will not allow this song to become one of them.
Then.
A whisper, low and rotten, coils against my ear
“Be afraid.”
The door slams shut behind me. A lock clicks into place. The fire dies, plunging me into darkness.
An overwhelming presence enters the room, and the faint swish of fabric brushing against itself comes from the ceiling.
I press back up against the wall. My vision shifts, quickly to the absence of light.
Something’s moving.
From the ceiling, crawling unnaturally toward me, is the lord. His limbs hang broken from their sockets. His legs and arms arch like a spider’s. And still, he drags himself closer.
So, this is the curse in a human.
I slide along the wall, inching toward the door. In the first room he took me to, I had catalogued possible weapons and planned to use the curtain ropes to bind him. Here, I have no plan, just adrenaline. Luckily, the merchant’s hoarding tendencies left me options. I snag a sword jutting out from a basket and keep moving.
My footsteps land on a loose floorboard. It groans.
The lord freezes. Then his neck cracks audibly as he snaps his head in my direction. The sound makes me wince.
He moves extremely fast, all of him, focused on me.
I bolt to the door, but the lock is on the outside. I slam my foot against it again and again, the vibration jarring all the way to my spine.
The thudding above me grows louder and closer.
I scream as I drive my foot into the door a final time. Wood explodes outward. The door bursts open. It slams against the wall behind it, and I take off running down the hall, my vision tunneling for a second before snapping open.
I’m not in the lord’s estate anymore.
I’m in my coven.
I whirl around and see nothing but a blank wall. No door. No lord. I look down, and my palms are bare, my sword has vanished.
Panic hammers in my chest as I race down the corridor, trying to reorient myself. This is the academic building. Nora’s office should be upstairs. The tunnels and caverns will be right beneath our feet.
Then I hear it. Arcadia’s scream. A cry of pain that cleaves straight through my chest. The pain in it is unmistakable.
“Cadia!”
Terror floods me as I follow the sound bursting through the stairwell door. I vault downward, her cries echoing up, ricocheting off the stone walls.
I don’t stop running until I reach a chamber room I’ve never seen before, but I know the altar.
