CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I sat curled up in the armchair near the hearth the following evening.
The flames in the grate had long since died, but I hadn't noticed until the cold crept into my bones. My grandmother’s book lay open across my lap, its pages brittle beneath my fingers.
The sigils inked in her precise, looping handwriting felt more like wounds than words.
Every line I read pulled me deeper into a darkness that I didn’t want to name.
Necromancy was supposed to be a gift. A sacred art that tethered life and death, that soothed the dead and guided the lost…
At least that’s what my grandmother had taught me.
But, now I was staring at the very real possibility that she had lied to me, that she had used that same art to condemn a man—trap Lucien in a fate worse than death.
I clenched my jaw, turning another page. There had to be a reason. She must’ve had one. Maybe she’d been manipulated by Serena or maybe she’d been trying to protect someone .
Maybe Lucien had done something… something terrible…
I closed my eyes and took a shaky breath. Deep down, I knew the truth. Lucien hadn't done anything. That was the problem. I had seen the goodness in him far too clearly.
Still…
Still, I needed to believe that maybe, just maybe, he had deserved to be cursed. Because if he didn’t, then the woman who had raised me, the woman who had instilled values and morals into me, had used her magic to hurt an innocent man.
And what did that make me?
A legacy of evil?
A puppet of a curse that I was never meant to undo?
I pressed my forehead into my hands, tears stinging behind my eyes. I hated this war inside of me. I hated how I wanted to believe in the man who had become something to me, but I also hated that I was even considering that my grandmother wasn’t who I thought she was.
That every single time she had held me while I cried for my parents and the tragedy that had occurred between them, she had secretly been using the same horrible magic that took their lives.
I wiped my eyes furiously, slamming the book closed.
I couldn’t bring myself to summon Lucien. I leaned back in my chair, letting out a slow sigh. He deserved an apology, but I wasn’t ready to give him one yet… Not until I knew the truth… But I needed to find his body.
The castle sighed around me, a slow exhale through its rotting bones as if mocking my feelings.
I stood, moving to my bag. My fingers curled around brittle remains.
The bones were smooth with age, a remnant of something long dead, yet still clinging to the echoes of magic.
I turned them over in my hand, speaking an old incantation under my breath before slipping them into my pocket.
The touch of them against my thigh was oddly comforting, even if I wasn’t entirely sure how much protection they could offer.
I couldn’t stay locked in my room all night. I had to search for clues.
With or without Lucien.
The thought tightened something in my chest, though I refused to dwell on it. His absence gnawed at me in a way I couldn’t quite explain. It left me restless. Unsettled. And perhaps, though I’d never admit it, just a little bit lonely.
But I couldn’t afford to dwell on it. There were answers in this castle—clues hidden in its decaying walls, and I was going to find them.
We were close. I could feel it .
I stepped into the corridor, the air thick with the spirits that hung around, but never revealed themselves.
They were always watching… possibly waiting for me to solve the curse.
The shadows stretched long across the stone, cascading with the uneven glow of my candle. I moved cautiously, listening.
Somewhere deep in the castle, a door creaked open.
I froze, heart hammering, before forcing myself to press forward. It was just the wind. Just the way old houses settled at night. Just—
A soft whisper, distant and echoing.
I swallowed hard, desperately trying to ease my nerves. I was so used to having Lucien with me tuning out the cursed castle that I’d almost forgotten the sounds that death and decay made.
Room by room, I searched. I didn’t even know what I was looking for, but I checked the faded tapestries, the paintings, the empty shelves gathering dust. Nothing useful. Every room felt abandoned, the air thick with disuse.
Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched.
I told myself it was just my imagination. That I was only on edge because Lucien wasn’t here, but something about the castle felt different tonight. It was almost as if it knew I was alone… vulnerable.
I turned a corner and came to an abrupt halt.
Lucien’s portrait loomed before me, his dark gaze seeming to follow my every movement.
A chill curled around my spine. I swallowed and stepped closer, raising my candle.
The light cast a soft, golden glow over the canvas, illuminating the details—the fine brushstrokes, the sharp angles of his face, the shadows that had always made him look more brooding than he truly was.
And then I saw it.
My breath caught.
The faded patch I had noticed before had spread.
It wasn’t just a small, pale corner anymore. The discoloration had crept further along the bottom edge, reaching up toward the folds of Lucien’s painted coat like rot slowly consuming the image.
A heavy unease settled in my chest.
I leaned in, my pulse quickening. Was I imagining it? I blinked, staring hard. No—it was real. The paint was changing.
Call him forth with careful thought, his time shall never be bought.
The thought made my skin prickle as my grandmother’s words played over and over in my mind.
The candlelight wavered as if caught in a sudden breath of wind. I exhaled shakily and took a step back.
Something was happening to the painting .
And I had a terrible feeling that whatever it was… it wasn’t good. What would happen to the painting—to Lucien—when the painting was completely destroyed?
I moved further away from it, tilting my head. Maybe I was imagining it… I stared at Lucien, what was left of him at least, for a moment longer before forcing myself to turn away from the piercing gaze… and the churning guilt bubbling inside of me.
Further down the hall, I pushed open the door to a room I couldn’t remember ever seeing. Inside was… nothing. No furniture, no books, no dust even. Just mirrors. Dozens of them.
Tall and looming, they lined every wall, stretching from floor to ceiling.
Their ornate gold frames were tarnished, twisted—some warped into sharp edges, others curled like they’d been half-melted.
The room should have been filled with light from their reflections, but instead it seemed darker—like the mirrors swallowed the candlelight whole.
”How strange,” I murmured as I stepped inside the unusual room. I moved toward one of the full length mirrors, raising my candle to inspect it. My reflection stared back. It was definitely me, but something seemed… off.
I tilted my head to the left. So did she.
I raised my right arm. She raised her left.
My breath hitched.
Her mouth began to move. Slowly… too slowly. A grin stretched across her face—wide, unnatural, grotesque. It pulled too far, tearing at the edges of her lips. Teeth emerged, sharp and too many of them crowding her mouth like a predator’s.
I staggered backward, heart slamming against my ribs. My reflection’s head twitched once, then again. And, then it slammed violently into the glass from the other side. I spun around.
And that’s when I saw them. All the mirrors, every single one now filled with me… but not me.
One of them was grinning so wide that her cheeks split open like torn parchment, blood running down her chin. Another had no eyes, just hollow pits oozing thick, black ichor. One clawed at the inside of the glass with bloodied hands, her mouth open in a silent, endless scream.
They were all watching me. Moving when I didn’t. They tilted their heads in unison. Then again. Twitched. Smiled. Twitched again.
The sound started next—a chorus of soft, wet laughter that didn’t echo but slithered into the corners of the room. It came from nowhere and everywhere at the same time. A gurgle, a rasp, a choking giggle that built and built until I pressed my hands over my ears to block it out.
”Stop it,” I begged. “Stop it, stop it, stop it—“
The mirrors began to crack, not all at once, but slowly, a jagged split down the center of one, then another.
Spiderwebs of shattered glass spread like veins, distorting the horror behind them, but they didn’t disappear.
They pressed closer. The mirror in front of me buckled outward, the glass bending as if something was trying to crawl through.
I turned to run… but the door was gone.
Gone.
Only another mirror sat in its place now, and in it, my reflection stood still, her hands folded calmly in front of her… and blood dripping from her smile.
”Miiiiia,” she taunted and my heart stopped. I didn’t say that, but she did.
”Leave this place.”
I backed away right into another mirror and felt the cold glass pulse against my spine. Then I heard the scratching from within. Something inside of the mirror wanted out.
I turned and screamed just as a hand slammed against the glass. Pale, slender, with too-long fingers and blackened nails.
The candle extinguished. Darkness swallowed the room and in the silence, they all began whispering my name. I squeezed my eyes shut, crumbling to the floor as I covered my ears. Terror squeezed around my core and my whole body shook violently.
Suddenly, everything went still. Completely silent. The voices stopped. The laughter. Even the cracking of glass fell silent like someone had sucked all the sound from the room. I sucked in a sharp breath, shaking in my throat as I strained my ears for any noise.
I opened my eyes just enough to see that my candle was lit again, firm and steady. All of the mirrors were empty and whole again.
”Mia?”