Page 33 of Whisper of Nightmares

Fear and anticipation war inside her.

What reason could they have for the groom missing his own wedding? Perhaps he’s hideous, scarred or maimed by the war? Or maybe his birth was unkind to him, the way Atia’s had been to her?

From the bottom of the stairs, Euphemia glances up. The glow from Kelda’s flame is gone.

As she ascends into pitch blackness, hands feeling the cold stone walls for balance, Euphemia realizes she doesn’t know a single person who’s ever mentioned knowing the baron.

No one who’s seen him, described any visual characteristics—glaring or otherwise.

Her husband becomes a monstruous, gargantuan creature in her mind’s eye, and part of her wants desperately to turn around. Accept the secrecy of him and vow to never uncover it.

The stronger part of her simply cannot resist.

As Euphemia climbs into the oblivion of the stairwell, dizziness takes hold.

Without a single spark of light, she is left disoriented. The stairs wind around her tightly. Discernment between up and down obscures, becoming moving concepts rather than fixed points of stability.

The ground tips.

The ceiling contorts.

The weight of her body slowly leans until she fears she is falling.

Euphemia digs her nails into the limestone for purchase.

She drags her way up the tower like a feral fox that’s ingested the farmer’s poison and refuses to die.

She passes only one tiny sliver of a window, a thread of moonlight filtering in and helping her reacclimate briefly. But then she is ascending into the madness again. Struggling to decipher if she is upright or sideways. Fighting every shadow for the next step. Gripping each gain by the throat and claiming it as her own bloody victory.

Up ahead, a glimmer of light emerges, a pinprick in the dark.

Euphemia clambers toward it as if she is underwater, about to lose her breath, and it is the water’s surface above.

Kelda hovers beside it, the flames flickering in one hand as she fumbles with something in the other.

As Euphemia reaches the top of the cramped landing, she can see it’s a ring of keys.

Her gaze drifts to the door before her.

Kelda barely lifts her gaze. “You are not meant to be here.”

Her harsh tone reverberates through the stones, and Euphemia looks around, as if watching it echo.

Despite the way her chest heaves, Euphemia feels victorious in her climb. She will not let this woman spook her away now. “I have every right to be here. It is my home now.”

Though she had expected Kelda to protest, the woman merely shrugs. With her full attention on the key ring, her search for the proper one intensifies.

“Where is it? Where is it?”

Euphemia looks from the keys to the heavy oak door with iron brackets, willing to see beyond it. The door does not yield. And the longer she stares, the sicklier it appears. The dim glow of candlelight illuminates strange markings scratched into the doorframe. Euphemia’s righteous heart clenches and she has to look away.

“Is he in there?” she asks, focusing her attention back on Kelda.

“Aye.” Kelda practically growls the word. Judging by how fiercely she flips through the keys, Euphemia has no doubt that the woman would be tearing the wrong ones from their ring and chucking them down the stairwell if she could.

For a moment, Euphemia almost offers to help. But what good would her untrained eyes do anyway? She does not know these keys yet. Has not felt the shape of them in her hands thousands of times the way Kelda has.

And then, with an exclamation of triumph, Kelda finds it.