I shake the thought off—violently, like a dog shaking off water—and refocus.
Find my room. Find Alder. Don’t panic.
I square my shoulders, take a breath, and turn down the next hallway.
That’s when I feel it.
A breeze.
It’s faint but unmistakable—cool, unexpected, and tickling the inside of my forearm. I stop in my tracks. There’s no window here, no reason for wind in this part of the castle. But it’s there, whispering against my skin like it has secrets to share.
My heart beats a little faster. It’s irrational, but something about the crisp, shifting air feels…purposeful.
I follow it.
The breeze grows stronger, carrying a scent that’s different from the castle’s mustiness—cleaner, wetter, like rain on stone. It dead-ends at a massive painting. The canvas stretches nearly floor to ceiling, depicting a regal woman draped in blue. Her pale face serene but her unnervingly sharp eyes are not. They seem to follow me, tracking me like she knows something I don’t.
The frame is ringed in silver serpents, coiling and gleaming in the torchlight.
The draft tugs again, and my fingers follow it to the seam where the frame meets the wall. And there, just under a snake’s forked tongue, is a small, almost invisible button.
Because of course there’s a secret button in the creepysnake frame.
I press it before my brain can think better of it.
Click.
With a shudder, the floor shifts. My stomach lurches as a hidden panel beneath my feet pivots, and swings inward. I yelp, a tiny, panicked noise, when the castle spins around me, and I tumble into the darkness.
The painting slams shut behind me.
And I’m alone.
In the pitch black.
Awesome.
My hands find the wall, rough stone cool beneath my fingers. I press my palm flat against it, as if I can absorb some kind of guidance through sheer contact. Of course I can’t, but it gives me something to do while I wait for my eyes to adjust and my heart to slow down.
“This is how people die in fantasy worlds,” I mutter. “Secret tunnels. Paintings with weird buttons. I know this trope. I’ve read this book.”
Up ahead I see a faint golden glow seeping through the worn weave of another canvas.
I creep closer, my fingers skimming along the wall as I shuffle forward and try not to think about spiders or ghosts or the fact that I left behind both safety and my home.
My hands skim the back of the painting, and the rough fabric prickles my skin. I lean in, pressing one eye to the small gap in the weave. It’s a peephole, not much but enough. And through it, I have a perfect view of the bathing chamber beyond.
The room glows, lit only by flickering candlelight and the watery shimmer of the cloudy gray skypouring in through a pair of open French doors. Steam curls around everything, softening edges, but not hiding what’s about to unfold. A silver tub—ornate, massive, gleaming, carved with images of waves and writhing serpents—sits at the center.
A glittering, endless stream of water spills from the gaping mouth of a silver serpent mounted high on the wall. The tub overflows, water cascading over the edges and spilling down stone steps and across the floor in a rushing current. The stream flows across the room in a path that slips straight through the open doors and vanishes into the black abyss beyond the cliffs.
Four masked guards take their places on either side of a man already standing near the tub, their robes the color of a moonless sky. Their faces are hidden behind smooth silver masks, identical in every way, hollow-eyed and expressionless.
The man is tall, still, with a robe as pale as bleached bone and as luminescent as moonlight. His mask is similar to the guards’, but the top is adorned with two curved points that jut out like viper fangs above his eyes. He cradles a book in both hands, thick and old and bound in tarnished silver, its cover etched with waves and sigils that shimmer when the candlelight catches them.
When he opens it, the air shifts. Cold slithers in, licking at the edges of the room. The guards raise their hands, palms up, and the man begins to chant.
His voice is not…right.
