Page 4 of Ravished By the Revenant

I whistle, stepping closer. “These must be worth a fortune!”

Something crashes in the distance, and I yelp, my hand going to my chest. Did they find me? But no, they went the other way.

“Hello?” I call out tentatively.

There’s no reply, just silence. Maybe it was a weasel or something? Has to be it.

Swallowing hard and trying to get my heart back under control, I continue exploring the hall. A great hearth dominates one side of it, and it’s big enough to stand in. Not that I’d want to do that—the gargoyles decorating it freak me out too much.

Shuddering, I move on.

Behind the great hall are servant quarters—I can tell by the old iron buckets and mops, linen closets, and tiny rooms. There’s more dust here, even some cobwebs. Whoever’s been here last clearly hasn’t bothered to take care of this area.

I bet the largest of these rooms belonged to the head servant. There’s a ledger on the bed, and my fingers itch to open it. It could give me some clues.

“Please don’t fall apart,” I mumble, pulling it closer. Dust swirls when I open it, but the pages are surprisingly well-preserved. I can’t read the first pages; the ink has faded, and besides, it looks like it’s written in Latin. The next pages seem to be inventories. Livestock. Grain stores. Wine. A ridiculous number of chickens.

I flip ahead until a section catches my attention.

Lord Aldric of Blackthorn Keep.

Born 1298. Cursed 1329.

I blink. “Well, if that isn’t ominous.”

The hair at the back of my neck stands up, and I glance behind me. No one’s there. Of course there isn’t.

Moving on from the cursed Lord Aldric of Blackthorn Keep—and I suppose I have a name for this castle now—I find more people. This time it’s servants.

Hans, steward. Gertrud, cook. Johann, stablemaster. Elsa, laundress. Friedrich, groundskeeper. Dozens more follow. Every few pages, another generation appears, children replacing parents, new names taking old positions.

Over the centuries, the handwriting changes, but the servant records continue. The household gradually shrinks, the pages becoming less crowded. Fewer names, fewer positions. First, there’s no more armorer. Then falconer. Then stablemaster. It’s like the castle didn’t need them anymore.

By the nineteenth century, there are only a handful of entries on each page. Then just Greta Bauer, housekeeper, and Konrad Bauer, groundskeeper. The list ends there.

“So the castle had staff until recently,” I murmur to myself. “But who did they serve?”

I keep turning the pages, wondering if I missed something. Nope. I don’t see any noble lineage to explain the need for a staff.

“Curiouser and curiouser.”

Leaving the ledger behind, I peek into the other rooms. They’re all in worse shape, clearly having gone unoccupied for decades. There are no tapestries in this hallway, no noble family’s banners or portraits. There’s nothing else to pique my interest, so I move on.

I’m going to have to find some blankets that aren’t musty and moth-eaten, and my best chance is the master bedroom. If anyone’s still coming to this castle—and the lack of dust and cobwebs suggests they are—then that’s where they’d stay.

Determined, I head back to the great hall in search of stairs. As I round the corner, the beam of my flashlight catches on something blue. I do a double take, my heart in my throat.

“Hi?” I whisper shakily. “Is someone here?”

Nothing. Maybe it was a trick of the moonlight through stained glass windows? It has to be that. Far more likely than the wolf with blue eyes coming to life to haunt me.

I retrace my steps back to the entrance, but this time, instead of turning right, I walk straight. And there, behind a towering archway: a grand staircase leading to the upper floors. I flash my light at the huge frames hanging on the walls above the stairs. A lot of the paintings faded with age and deteriorated, but they seem to depict more bloody battles or nobles sitting around enormous tables.

I pause under the tallest frame. It’s a portrait of a man painted from behind and a bit to the side. He’s wearing a dark old-fashioned suit and tall boots, his raven-wing black hair is combed back and gleaming blue, and he seems to be glowering at something out of view. But there’s no denying the handsome lines of his profile, the strong brow, the razor-sharp jawline.

I whistle softly, wishing I could make the painted man turn. I’m dying to know the color of his eyes under that furrowed brow.

The more I look at the painting, though, the less some details make sense. Is his ear mutilated? And who poses for a portrait with their back turned to the artist?