As my thoughts swirled and the smoke of my herbs thickened around me, the crumbling stone of the hallway grew more decrepit, covered in a kind of soot. Schneid scratched at the base of one. At first, I thought he was trying to ferret out a mouse, but then I noticed the markings etched along the foundation stones, and I bent for a closer look and froze.
They were marks from that cursed manuscript. The one in the library with the spell that had locked me into place and drawn the creature. I recognized them, but I did not know what they meant. Or why they were here, etched into the foundation of the château. I leaned forward to touch the marks, and a flash of white-hot pain seared through me. I jumped back with a yelp.
My finger was unmarked, but I felt scorched. Lifting the giant’slantern close, I tried to get a better look, committing them to memory so I could find them later. But as I studied them, a low rumble ran through the stones.
Schneid mewed at my feet and slid through my ankles into the hall. He looked back expectantly.
“Wait,” I whispered.
But he sat on his rump and began yowling so loud and incessantly, I was afraid he’d be heard through the whole forest. “Fine,” I hissed and stepped out after him.
Schneid walked ahead, tail swinging. We turned down a new hallway. No other sounds came from the house. No doors opened. I clutched the keys tight and thought about going back to my room. Just then, a door banged shut. I stopped and so did Schneid.
In the torchlight, it seemed as if the walls moved—until I looked directly at them, and then they were simply walls.
Slowly, as if in a dream, I unlocked the door and turned the knob. Schneid followed me inside. Instantly, his flame lit the entire room, dozens of small fires sparking in the night.
I was in the room of my nightmares. Mirrors were set all around me, and unlike my nightmares, they were poured of clear silver and unbroken. Everywhere I looked, there I was. My reflection—long hair unbound and my pale shift and fear-stricken face at all angles.
I spun to leave—but just as my footprints had been swept away in the snow the night I’d run from my grave, now there was no door, no exit, just more mirrors. No way out and no way in. Schneid darted around at my ankles, hissing and scratching at the many Schneids in the mirrors, his light making everything grotesque.
Using my hands rather than my eyes, I felt along the edges of the glass, hoping to find a seam or lock that would tell me where the door was.
Schneid continued to howl.
“Why don’t you be useful and help find the door?” I asked him, exasperated. I tried my best not to look at my many reflections. Then, outof the corner of my eyes, the mirrors winked. I screamed and jumped, landing on Schneid, who howled and singed my sleeve.
I stamped out the embers and looked at the wretched two of us—me and this hellcat. The mirrors had gone back to my reflection, but now I looked closer and could see—the ways the reflection bent at the edges, the way I shifted and trembled when I moved. The strange way I kept seeing the shadows of the forest or my room behind me.
These weren’t mirrors. They were eyes.
I was seeing myself reflected in the black of the watching house. I backed away and hugged myself tight. This was how the house knew what I needed, this is how it trapped me. It had tracked every step, every breath. I had never been free from its watching.
The mirrors blinked again, and it was so horrid, so terrifying that I grabbed Schneid, screwed my eyes shut, and screamed.
Somehow, the scream tore away the little room. When I opened my eyes I stood in the hall, breathing hard. I wasted no time in running for my room.
My herbs had only just died by the time I made it safely inside and closed the door. I threw the last bit onto the fire and leaned against the edge of the bed, heart pounding so hard I wasn’t sure it would ever stop.
The house had beaten me—I had followed the sound of Dacia’s screaming right into the knowledge that I’d been hiding from myself.
I had drawn this darkness down. I had built this curse on which my entire world seemed to sink. I couldn’t let anyone—not even Renaud—know what I had done. The only way to fix this was to find a way to undo it.
XXIX.
To Find Someone Again
In some ways, understanding that I was the key to all the tragedy and pain in my world was an unburdening. If I was the key, I could unlock the way forward. I woke the next morning with a sober clarity of mind, dressed, and went straightaway to Renaud’s chambers.
“Was the Baron amenable to your warning?” I asked as I laid out my texts and ink with practiced precision.
“I delivered it,” Renaud said shortly. He had the demeanor of thunderclouds about him.
I wanted to tell him the house had warned me about her danger. I wanted to ask how it had plucked something from my mind. I wanted to ask him about the curse marks I’d found on the stones, and why they were there and what they did. I wanted to know why magic in the château was made of thread that twisted and knotted and wove deep into me, but magic in the forest was a current, deep and separate. But he only retreated further into his silence, and I didn’t dare anger him in this state.
He stayed a week before departing again. The ripeness of summer had turned, and everywhere there were hints of coming fall—the gold tinge that crept over the green, the early morning fog that wrapped itself around the château’s spires, and the smell of spice and rot that rose on the warm wind during the day.
When I was certain he was gone and not returning, I turned fromthe window. In his office, I arranged my manuscripts and quills as if I’d been working all day and walked quickly through the house and out into the garden, slipping under the heavy bower of the woods.
