“Let go,” I gritted, but he didn’t move.
“Non oportuit te huc venire,” he murmured, his breath cool against my ear. “Venencula.”
I stiffened, my brows arching.Latin.I didn’t study it, but my mum had used it enough that I could recognise some of the words. I finally wrenched my arm out of his grasp.
“What did you say?”
He didn’t answer at first. Just watched me closely, like I was some threat about to go off.
“I know you heard me.” His voice was low, measured. For a moment, silence settled between us, then he vanished down the corridor.
I was left standing there, in the suffocating gloom of the hall, the echo of his words clawing at my skin.Poison.The wordlodged deep, blooming slow and venomous. Not quite an insult, but it burned just the same.
My chest tightened. For the first time in my life, I was homesick. Homesick for a place that hadn’t felt like home for a long time. The feeling washed me off my feet, yanking me under the surface. I missed the mould-streaked walls, our chess table, even the narrow green window that turned morning light sickly and strange. Even the rats, and their nestling noises in the walls.
I climbed the staircase slowly, trailing my palm along the cold banister. Thornhill stretched around me like a mouth mid-breath, with dozens of halls and even more doors.
It still felt like a fairytale. But maybe it wasn’t so different from the flat I had left behind. That place had rats in the walls. Here, they wore button-ups and whispered cruel words into your ear.
CHAPTER SIX
ELODIE
Ifound Lilian and the twins on the second floor. I was lucky enough to notice them from the top of the staircase, waiting for me beside a wooden door melted into the stone. Its surface was dark with age, and faintly etched with swirling patterns and moths. Dozens of them, their wings stretched open and clinging to the wood in forever stillness.
Lilian drew a chain from the pocket of her skirt suit, and my eyes caught on the keys hanging from it. They weren’t ordinary house keys, but ornate silver things shaped like fairy tales. Their handles bloomed with detail: leaves, eyes, birds, even a small skull etched so finely it looked like it might whisper if I leaned too close.
One had a moth carved into its handle, wings outstretched like it had been caught mid-flight and frozen in time. That was the one she slid into the keyhole. The lock gave way with a soft groan, like it hadn’t been used in years.
“This will be your room,” she said, gliding inside and leaving a faint flowery scent in her wake.
The twins followed her in, while I paused on the threshold, my breath caught in my throat. The room was enormous. Justthe bed alone looked like it belonged in a museum. Four posters draped in once-black curtains, now faded to a ghostly grey. Opposite the bed stood a wooden dresser, crowned with an arched mirror that reflected only the dim light and the past.
The air inside was hushed and slightly cold…heavy with age. My boots echoed softly across the stone floor as I entered. A chandelier loomed above, its iron frame tangled with crystals that caught what little light there was and fractured it like falling stars. The wallpaper, dark florals curling through shadows, was reminiscent of an oil painting left to wilt.
I tried to picture my mum here, with her rainbow kissed wardrobe and loud personality, but it would have been easier to spot a unicorn. She fit as much into Thornhill’s gloomy atmosphere as a birthday cake did at a funeral.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Myra’s voice stirred the stillness beside me.
“It is.” I nodded slowly, trying not to blink too much.
Lilian dragged the heavy curtains open, revealing tall, dust-filmed windows, and the afternoon grey staring at us. “Now.” She turned to me. “Let me show you around.” She gestured for me to follow and led me to a door tucked beside the nightstand. “Your bath chamber.”
The door clicked open, and I froze. The room was bigger than our whole flat was. And it was beautiful. Dark wooden walls, marble-tiled floors, and a clawfoot bathtub that looked like it belonged in an old folktale. I was waiting for my inner voice to break the spell and tell me I was trapped in a dream, but it never came. Instead, realisation fought its way to my brain. It was mine.
Cecily walked past me and paused by the tub. “I wish I had my own bathroom,” she sighed with longing, running her fingers over the porcelain.
The other twin muttered something beside me, but I was too wrapped up in the sight of the tub to comprehend her words. I hadn’t had a bath since I was a child. It had always been that narrow shower in the flat, with broken pressure and cracked tiles. But now, I could take baths every day for a whole year. Maybe even twice a day if I really wanted to. My toes curled in the safety of my boots.
“All right then.” Lilian glanced at her watch. “Dinner is being served at seven, which means you still have some time left to unpack. When you’re done, come find me in my study before the meal.” Her deep-set eyes focused on me, their weight heavy.
I nodded still too wrapped up in the idea of this being my new life to form an intelligent sentence. “Thank you,” I mumbled, the words feeling too little and too big at the same time.
She offered me a thin smile, then she was gone. Her keys jangled softly, like wind chimes in her wake, until the sound was swallowed by the house.
I set my backpack down as silence wrapped itself around me. My fingers hovered over the zip. I glanced at my sparse belongings—books, clothes—and then at the room. At the way the furniture sat like it remembered someone else. Like it had known too many names and grown tired of learning new ones. But it was mine, for now. Anhe Fei might have been right. Maybe this wasthenew perspective. This strange house with its eerie characteristics was my chance. My choice. At least for a year.
I pulled out the books I brought with me and stacked them on the nightstand. The twins whispered behind me. I’d nearly forgotten they were still here.
