Damn.
“Lovely,” I lie, flashing a smile. It melts right off my face the moment I turn for the wooden door pressed in the wall next to me and tug it open.
They may be good at sticking to me like a bad smell, but I have one very special advantage ...
I know this castle like Ishouldknow the back of my own hand.
They don’t.
I stalk down a hallway that has no windows—only sporadic sconces that cut the gloom into fiery segments. It’s a special hall, harboring all sorts of secrets. It’s the precise reason I chose to sit where I did while I ate my unsatisfying breakfast.
Take that little door to my left, and it’ll lead you in a roundabout way to Puddles. Take those stairs to the right, the ones that shoot skyward in an almost vertical manner, and you somehow end up in the kitchen a level below ground.
Take this inconspicuous hall that splits off into a shadowed elbow—the one I’m taking right now—and you’re being twisted up by The Tangle before you even register you forked off in the wrong direction.
A smile cuts across my face and I break into a sprint, worming my way through the wiggly hall at a ferocious speed, only stopping once I hit a sharp bend; back pressed flat to the wall as I listen.
Footsteps thunder after me, and my smile grows.
Suckers.
Sprinting again, I take shadowed side tunnels and stairwells, backtracking several times in case their senses are sharp enough to track my scent. Finally, convinced I’ve thoroughly lost them, I skip down a well-lit hallway with nothing chasing me but blessed silence.
I may never see Vanth and Kavan again, and right now, I can’t find a single lick of empathy in my heart to care.
I should be concerned by that slap of realization. The fact that I’mnotonly adds to the growing pile of evidence I’m trying to ignore ...
I’m losing myself.
* * *
Iwalk, lighting torches, casting my art in a golden sheen that lifts some elements off the wall while digging others deeper into the rock.
When I first stumbled upon this place, the compulsion to embellish it was too much to ignore. It was dark, tucked away, abandoned.
Private.
I began painting, one stone at a time; a mural of tens, then hundreds, thenthousandsof whispers all pieced together.
Sea-green eyes, a silver sword with a floral hilt, a half-eaten moon, storm clouds hanging over a wilted weed, a burning tree, pewter scales that ricochet light.
Pausing, I brush my hand over one of a white rose in half-bloom, revealing the hint of petals flecked with a familiar constellation of twinkly freckles.
The little boy always jumps out at me the most ... in one way or another.
I’ve painted him many times because he’s such a constant in my dreams. Visiting often, gifting me with that wealth of a smile and his reaching hands.
I let my fingers drift off the stone and keep walking—keep skipping my gaze along the individual rocks.
It took three years before I realized the tiny paintings were building something much bigger. That my whispers were the seeds of something I’d buried deep in the pit of my soul; germinating, reaching for the light of day.
Despite my efforts, it’s not the smaller paintings I see right now.
It’s the bigger picture they make up.
The crowd of people staring out from the stone—tall as me and just as lifelike, as if they have hearts in their chests that push real blood through their veins.
They aren’t whispers at all ...
