Page 17 of Twisting Beauty

I crept out of bed and eased my door open, the music swelling, louder out here than it had been inside my room.

I froze with one hand still on the handle.

Lasair Manor was already filled with enemies in daylight. Sneaking through it at night barefoot and half-dressed felt like volunteering myself up to the jaws of the place.

But the pull of the music tightened low in my chest, strange and insistent. I had to know if it was real. I had to know who was playing it.

I stepped out from the relative safety of my room and into the gullet of the corridor.

The door softly clicked shut behind me, and the sound felt final enough to turn my spine cold. I had the sudden, childish urge to run back in and climb under the covers, but the violin kept pulling, and shame burned hotter than fear. I would not let some scrap of music make a coward of me.

The house was dark and still, too still, the only light a thin strip of gray from the window at the far end of the hall.

My bare feet curled into the worn runner as the violin led me like a thread pulled taut, deeper into the manor.

The wallpaper seemed to fade, corners peeling, and the dust lay thicker here on cornices and empty side tables. The air had a different quality to it, colder, thicker, like it had been trapped for a long time.

This side of the house felt less lived in and more preserved. Even the silence had weight. It pressed against my skin and made the little hairs at the back of my neck rise.

I turned the corner. Up ahead, at the end of the hallway was an entrance to a set of tower stairs. Narrow stone steps spiraling upward into the dark, worn smooth in the center from years of use.

I halted, memory striking hard and sudden, bright enough to make my stomach clench.

I had been here before. Not in this body, not as Liath, but on the night of the storm at Magdalene, when the world had gone sideways and Rua’s memories had bled into mine like ink into water.

I had seen these stairs before. I had felt their coldness through bare feet that were not quite mine, had climbed toward the top with dread and certainty twisted together so tightly they were almost the same thing. And the same violin had been waiting above, calling me upward like it already knew I would come.

The memory released me as abruptly as it had consumed me.

My pulse kicked hard. Despite that, my body leaned toward the stairs instead of away. Whatever waited at the top frightened me, but not enough to kill the hunger to know.

I was already reaching for the iron handrail, foot poised to take the first step, when a figure peeled itself from the shadows and took shape in front of me.

Mervyn, gray-faced and upright, was still dressed impeccably in his coattails, apparently entirely unsurprised to find me barefoot in the dark at whatever hour this was. He stepped into the gap between me and the entrance.

In the gloom, his usually placid face looked more menacing than it did in daylight, the bones of it harder, the flatness of his eyes now narrowed and cold.

“No, Miss Rua,” he said, his tone hard and final. “Not that way.”

I hesitated. Something in the way he said it suggested that Rua, that I, should already know the rule. This was a reminder, not an explanation.

He reached for my wrist before I could step around him. His fingers closed with a pressure that was far too firm to mistake for courtesy. Pain flashed sharp and hot through the delicate bones there, and the shock of it rooted me to the spot. He was stronger than he looked.

“That tower is closed,” he said, his voice even firmer now.

The violin faltered. The sound seemed to pull back from the edges, thin itself out.

Or maybe it didn’t. I genuinely couldn’t tell. I wasn’t sure if the music had actually changed or if my own uncertainty had contaminated it.

“But who’s—” I started, and stopped, the sentence dying in my mouth.

Because what was I going to say? Who’s playing? And what if nobody was? What if I mentioned it and he looked at me with grave concern?

I was already living masquerading in someone else’s life inside. I couldn’t afford to be the girl hearing things in the walls. I couldn’t give them any reason to send me back to Magdalene.

I searched Mervyn’s face for any sign that he heard it too, any flicker that might tell me I was not alone in this, but his expression stayed maddeningly composed.

He just stood there, blocking my way, watching me with pale stern eyes. If the violin reached him at all, he gave no sign of it.