“I told you no more,” roared the ghoul as it bore down on the pair, wreathed in inky shadows that warped and obscured its features.
Beatrice took a step back, releasing Lord Stagston’s arm the instant she met resistance. The man stood his ground, moving his hands to the pockets of his trousers as the apparition growled down at him. The wind shifted, blowing the creature’s scent her way. Her eyes went wide and her throat contracted. Dark, wet earth, polished steel and rose petals. A funereal scent, and a powerful one.
Another Silver?
“Your spirits make ill informants,” said Stagston, stepping up to the shadowed figure. Then, pressing closer still, he spoke softly to it. Gradually the darkness leeched away, draining into the stone and the air. When the figure spoke again, the haunting echo had gone from her voice. She turned to glare down at Beatrice, not a specter at all but a woman…and no less terrifying for it.
Beatrice shivered as the stranger’s icy regard crawled its way across her skin, snagging on her eyes.
“Darcy, this is Ms. Beatrice Baraclough, our new fiancé,” explained Lord Stagston. “Ms. Baraclough, this is Dame Darcy Stagston, co-Silver of this house and Hyena of the Knight’s League.”
Beatrice gaped up at the knighted mage, trying to make sense of her. The woman was ashy-pale and hard-featured as a marble statue, with narrowed amber eyes set into sockets purple with sleeplessness. Her hair—short, black, swept away from her face—could have easily been carved of jet. She dressed much as her packmate did, but while Charles’ attire was all of fine quality but plain, hers was aged yet ornate. Her waistcoat was faded damask, her trousers etched leather.
Is she horrible, or beautiful? Beatrice couldn’t decide.
“Three months.” Snarled the stony mage. “In sympathy for your situation, I will give you three months under our roof to make other arrangements.”
Lord Stagston bore his teeth. “Darcy. It is not for us alone to—”
“Three months,” repeated Dame Stagston, ignoring him. “By the end of which you’d better have found some other prospect for yourself. You are to keep your distance from all pack members, and remain in the suite of rooms I assign to you.”
Charles’ hackles raised. “She will no—”
“When you must take some air, the Suits will escort you. But only with my permission and knowledge.”
“Enough, Darcy. No more edicts until we’ve spoken with the rest.”
“You’re one to talk, Charles,” snarled the Hyena mage, rounding on him once more. What she said next was unintelligible, because at a flick of her hand two men in full plate emerged from the house. The clanking of their armor and the rush of winds and rain drowned out all else. Then Dame Stagston raised her voice to a shout, leaning to peer between their bulking forms as they hefted up Beatrice’s things.
“Follow the Suits,” she said. “Get inside. Quickly.” As the visored men hustled Beatrice into the house, the two Silvers’ raised voices could only just be heard over the din of storm and plate. What exactly they were saying, she couldn’t tell…though she could swear she heard the words “promised” and “we’d never replace” and “how dare.”
Spirits above, what have I walked into?
Beatrice hauled in a long breath of the inside air, her tremulous bubble of safety bursting as the argument raged on and unfamiliar household aromas assaulted her senses. They crossed through a foyer that was all dark woods and mountain stone, opening into a dimly lit corridor.
“Excuse me, m-may I know your names?” She called ahead to the armored men, looking for something—anything at all—to help anchor her in the turmoil of her new reality. They slowed and glanced at one another, but neither said a word. A cramped lift carried them to the top floor, the grimy glass of its outward face affording them a view of the evergreen forest dropping away into the mist-clouded ravine below.
As it turned out, the suite of rooms assigned to her was the entirety of the manor’s third and topmost floor. After depositing her luggage in the master bedroom, one of the so-called Suits took up a position before the lift, and the other before the stair. When she tested them, attempting to nudge past their bulk to proceed to a lower floor, they blocked her way. At the least, they were gentle in their rebuffs—but firm. Quite firm.
For a long time she lingered in the main corridor, huffing and pleading with her silent guardians at turns, until exhaustion won out over indignation. Retreating behind the gauzy curtains of a four-posted bed, she sought escape by way of unconsciousness, but something capricious and colorful chased her through her dreams. She woke with a strange memory, unsure if it was something she’d actually heard as she napped or a fragment of the day’s sleep-drunk visions. It had been a little girl’s voice, calling out for her mother.
The sun was still high in the sky when she startled awake for the third and final time, certain there’d be no more sleep for her after that. A shame—many shifted adults naturally took on a nocturnal schedule, and she was eager to align herself to the rhythms of her new home, temporary though it may be.
As she stirred, rising from bed to drag herself to the adjoining washroom, there was a shuffling of feet and a lot of clanking out in the hall. Then, a knock.
“Just a moment,” she called, dragging a dressing robe on over her nightgown as she hurried to the door. But it was just one of the Suits waiting at the other side, visor hiding his face as ever, standing at the back of a serving cart. Pushing this up to the side of the little table near the hearth, the armored sentinel turned and trundled from the room.
And just like that, she was alone again.
Solitude was something Beatrice had always sought when she was overwhelmed. A particular comfort. But she was realizing now that part of that comfort had been in knowing that her family was still close at hand. That she could go to them at any time and would, soon enough. That, of course, was no longer so.
A sense of frigid, heavy aloneness branched through her veins. Silver or no, it was clear that Charles’ word held little sway in this place. That, or he’d changed his mind about her. Or perhaps simply gone to sleep, too exhausted to deal with the ferocity of his co-Silver’s rejection.
Yes, that must be it, she assured herself. Everyone’s just resting, and then all will be resolved.
But now she’d slept as much as she could, and she was locked away and alone in a new land like a princess in a tower.
The breakfast cart was the first victim of her restlessness. Beatrice ate her way through lavender cream puffs and salmon mouse and fruit preserves with slices of toasted herb bread, her appetite asserting itself for the first time in days. She drank all the blueberry cream froth and all of the coffee, marveling at how good it was. Her sudden hunger satsified, she dressed herself in something practical and warm and flung open the doors to the balcony.
The sky outside was blanketed in clouds, and she actually smiled a bit, looking out over the peaked sea of firs and fog. It was different than where she’d come from, yes…but it was beautiful, and it wasn’t sunny.
Already the urge was blooming up within her. The irresistible drive to explore, to trek every bit of her surroundings by foot, that she might see and know it all up close. The Wander Call, her mother had named it. There was a certain type of child prone to it, she’d said, and if you didn’t mind them closely they’d disappear into the moors one day, lost forever. She’d eye Beatrice as she said this, following it with a hushed “it’s always the quiet ones.” Of course, mother Baraclough had spoken of it like it was something one grew out of, and Beatrice most certainly had not.
This place might not be home yet or ever. But if there was even the smallest chance that it could be, she must know it first.
The air outside was no warmer than it had been that morning, and there was a lushness to the balcony that was owed entirely to the twisting cascades of wisteria branches and red ivy that lined it. Examining this more closely, Beatrice found exactly what she had hoped she would. The clinging plant life was supported by a sturdy trelliswork that went all the way down to the base of the manor, linking one balcony to the next.
Hiking up the front of her skirts, she looped the bunched fabrics through her belt, exposing her voluminous undergarments to the chilled autumn air. It wasn’t ladylike, and at one time she might have been embarrassed with herself. But instead her lips curled into a smile. This wasn’t something that quiet, forgettable, I Can’t Recall Her Name would do.
Hefting herself over the balcony rail, Beatrice edged her way onto the overgrown trellis and began, slowly and carefully, to climb.
