It was long past midnight when Avalon awoke to find the ghost hovering at the foot of her bed.
Her heart shot into her throat as she sat up, the furs piled atop the bed ensnaring her.
It was the spirit of a fine-boned wisp of a human girl, no more than ten years of age. Her eyes were solid white, and she wore a satin dress that rustled on a phantom wind. The satin was stained with blood and torn nearly to shreds.
“I know you,” Avalon whispered. Her words were so quiet, they were nearly drowned out by the clock ticking on the mantle.
The child said nothing. Her face remained expressionless.
“I’ve seen you before,” Avalon persisted. It was true that she had seen her, but only in her dreams—and never as a spirit.
In her dreams, the mortal girl was alive and well, and she always smiled as she ran barefoot through fields and forests, side-by-side with the strawberry-blonde Fey who haunted Avalon’s every thought. Usually, the dreams that centered around this pair ended happily; they would skip pebbles on lakes, swordfight with branches instead of blades, and pick fat blackberries from the shrubs near the Haunted Woods.
Yes—usually the dreams ended well. Unless she glimpsed the tragedy that had caused this little girl’s death—and torn that dress to shreds. The cause of her death was as much a mystery to Avalon as the girl’s name; her dreams showed her little of her last day spent alive, and for that, Avalon was grateful. She wasn’t certain she could stomach it.
Without a sound, the spirit melted through the wall and into the corridor.
Avalon threw her furs aside and grabbed her oil lamp, barely remembering to don her cloak and boots on the way out the door.
Blinking fiercely against fatigue and the threat of fainting, Avalon tiptoed after her. Snow swirled and pressed against the arched windows lining the corridor. She considered it a blessing that no guards were around to interfere; to question why she was wandering from her rooms.
It was no surprise that the ghost led her to the catacombs. Avalon hesitantly crept down the staircase, the cold air hitting her like a slap. The tunnels were vacant and dark.
The spirit led her to a crypt that was somehow darker than the hundreds of others, the shadows inside it thirstily drinking up the light from her lamp.
Above the crypt was a chalk drawing of a weaver’s loom, so small a person might easily miss it. The chalk seemed to catch the lamplight and shimmer faintly, like a spider’s web.
Avalon stood on her tiptoes, her heartbeat stumbling so violently that she felt sick as she realized…
It could be any loom,she told herself. Just because she’d glimpsed such an object in recent dreams, skillfully maneuvered by eight slender, pale hands in a cavern shaped like a crescent moon, didn’t mean anything.
Avalon threw a glance over her shoulder. Once she was certain no one except the spirit was watching—and that Hadrian wouldn’t come barreling through the tunnels, yelling at the top of his lungs about what a princess should and shouldn’t do—she wiggled her way into the crypt.
She tried not to think about what was touching her as she felt around for loose stones and clefts.Gods—it stunk in here! And what was crawling down the collar of her nightgown?
A wide, flat stone rattled beneath her elbow. She pried up the edge of the stone, several of her fingernails breaking under its weight. She muttered a curse, pulling harder—
A gust of wind blew through the crypt, nearly throwing her backward. A sound akin to a crack of thunder shuddered through the tunnels, causing the very walls to groan as the stone sprang free. Avalon cried out, closing her eyes against the grit now choking the cramped space.
When all was quiet again, she tossed the stone aside and peered into the darkness.
The shallow space was filled with dirt, but seemed to pulse with energy, as if a beating heart lay within. She began digging, paying no mind to the pill bugs and earthworms slipping over her skin, until her fingers struck something solid. As soon as she had the object in her hand, she wiggled back out of the crypt, inch by filthy inch.
Blinking against the darkness, she shook the dust from her hair. She would be lucky if her lamp stayed lit long enough to make it back to the staircase. The thought of being trapped down here in the dark made her uneasy. Kicking aside bones and rocks, she eased back onto the ground, ignoring the icy bite of the flagstones through her clothes, and held the object before her.
It was a silver mask, molded into the face of a woman. Despite how many years it had clearly slumbered down here, it shone as if crafted from the sky’s finest star. There were no eyeholes, nor a slit for a mouth. It looked as if someone had simply dipped her face in liquid silver. A very beautiful someone.
Avalon carefully turned it over to inspect the inside. The metal reflected her features: wide brown eyes, golden skin, and a mass of mousy brown curls in dire need of brushing.
Slowly, she raised the mask to her face. As the silver neared her skin, a humming began deep in her ears—like the droning of bees in a hive.
And then a female voice filled her head, echoing like water thrown over hot stones.
The light…,said the voice.It…it hurts my eyes.
Avalon pulled the mask away and launched herself to her feet. “Who said that?” She’d meant to shout, but she barely whimpered. No sound could be heard except her rapid breathing and the odd hiss of tarantulas from nearby crypts.
Stuffing the mask into her cloak pocket, Avalon took off through the tunnels. The lamplight bounced with every step, illuminating grinning skulls and reflecting in the eyes of creatures hiding deep inside crypts.
