Chapter 20
The day Malik left for his venture, Drystan did not make an appearance. Not at dinner. Nor after to request her songs.
She played anyway in the confines of her room. After two wistful melodies, she stepped out into the knee-high snow on the balcony, hoping Drystan might somehow appear. The night she’d played for him out there was forever burned into her memory, along with the feel of his lips on hers.
He had not tried to kiss her again, not with Malik’s disturbance. But with him gone, she had hoped things might change. Instead, he was curiously absent.
The lights in his tower flickered, but Ceridwen spied no movement beyond their reaches. As she raised the flute to her lips to begin a new song, a sound cut through her, one more chilling than the biting cold soaking into her stockings and slipping through the material of her gloves.
A moan-like howl pierced the night. Close. Possibly just outside the manor walls.
“Drystan.”
His name was a prayer, a plea.
Ceridwen stumbled through the snow back toward the glass balcony door. Her heart thundered louder in her chest with every slow step.
Another ghastly wail sounded, even closer than before. Her heart leaped into her throat. Her hands shook, and not just from the cold. Faster, Ceridwen.
The balcony door had never felt so far away. She tore toward it like a dead man racing for the Goddess’s loving embrace. When she finally grasped the handle and pushed it open, she practically fell into the room, savoring the warmth emanating from the crackling fire and assumed protection of the walls. In another heartbeat, she flung the door shut behind her, sending the glass rattling in its frame.
She clutched the flute like a shield in front of her, where she huddled in a puddle of damp skirts on the stone floor, breathing heavily. Outside the windows, she could see nothing past the blanket of snow barely illuminated in the cloudy night. When at last her shaking legs allowed her to stand, she pulled all the curtains shut—a final barrier against the monster. They wouldn’t save her. Not from that. But they gave comfort all the same.
When the eerie wails echoed only in her thoughts and no longer in the still night beyond, Ceridwen finally crawled under the layer of blankets upon the bed and willed herself to sleep.
Drystan never came.
But neither did the monster.
Before dinner the next day, Ceridwen came upon Jackoby, Kent, and Gwen arguing in hushed tones in a tight cluster at the base of the winding staircase leading up to Drystan’s tower. The one place that she had been forbidden from entering.
Their conversation halted as her booted steps echoed in the hallway, muffling whatever words had been spoken between them before she appeared.
“Good afternoon, Miss Ceridwen,” Jackoby announced with a short bow as if nothing were amiss and this day was as common as any other. Yet she had a suspicion of what they discussed and why they discussed it in this location. That same concern had driven her to this very spot, unable to sit still and not worry over the missing lord of the manor. Particularly given the monstrous sounds echoing through the night.
“Has he not come down today?” she asked.
Gwen fidgeted with her apron. Kent looked away. Only Jackoby got straight to the point. “No. He has not.”
An invisible hand clenched her heart. “Has anyone been up to check on him?”
Jackoby’s lips thinned. Kent and Gwen both refused to meet her steady gaze.
“Something might be wrong. What if he’s had another attack?” She’d seen that only once, but if it could happen one time, it could happen again.
“We’re not allowed in the tower,” Gwen admitted, finally releasing the apron she’d wrinkled with her hands. Jackoby slid her a side-eyed look, but she ignored him.
“None of you?” She’d thought his rule only applied to her. Why would he prevent his trusted household staff from entering his rooms as well?
“She spoke truly,” Jackoby added. “No one is allowed in the lord’s tower.”
Incredulous, she shook her head.
“No one,” Jackoby echoed.
Ceridwen pursed her lips and closed the distance between them until she stood amid their cluster of bodies. “Are you not worried?” She stared them each down in turn. Was she the only one who heard that monster in the night? Permitted or not, someone needed to check on him.
“It’s only been two days…” Kent began, but his words were unconvincing.
“Of course we are worried,” Gwen stepped in. “But going against his orders…” She shook her head. “The steps are warded. He will know if we go up them, even to simply peek into the rooms. Going against his wishes would break his trust and endanger our place here.”
“Or worse,” Kent mumbled.
A stern look from Jackoby caused Kent to flinch. Yet his words sparked more curiosity in Ceridwen than anything else.
Drystan did not seem the type to unjustly punish those around him, not over such a small trespass, especially if done with his best interest in mind. And if he had tried to keep the monster at bay last night and had been injured, he might need help—desperately.
While a silent conversation passed among her companions, Ceridwen eyed the stairs. Her family needed the money that Drystan provided. She needed it. And in a way, she needed him. He’d reignited her dream of sharing her music and freed her heart from its lonely isolation. To risk his ire and lose out on this miracle of an opportunity would be stupid. Yet she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong or the mental image of him lying bloody and injured on the floor.
“You all heard the monster last night?”
Reluctant nods from Gwen and Kent confirmed her worries. Jackoby stood stone-faced. For once, he refused to meet her gaze.
“He could be hurt! Worse!” She stomped at their complacency. If he’d fended off the monster and something had gone wrong, he could be in terrible pain. Her whole body vibrated with barely contained anxiety.
They might not be willing to risk their position for the health and safety of their lord, but sitting still was out of the question for her, even if it risked the money her family needed. Surely he would not send her away over this, not something done out of care and concern.
“I’m going up.” She trudged toward the staircase without waiting to see their response, yet a sharp intake of breath teased her ears.
A step away from the first stair, a hand wrapped around her wrist, pulling her to a stop. Her head snapped to Jackoby. His eyes shone with an emotion she couldn’t place. For the first time, his role of butler fell away to reveal the man underneath.
“Don’t.” A soft tug on her arm accompanied his words.
But she shrugged off his grip and stepped onto the wide first step. “I have to.”
Behind him, Kent wrapped his arms around Gwen, a show of comfort, much like a mourner at a funeral. Ceridwen swallowed her nerves and continued on.
As soon as she crossed fully onto the stairs, sound stopped, all but the echo of her boots on the polished stone. Over her shoulder, she could see Jackoby’s mouth moving and Kent saying something to a distraught Gwen, but the words were lost to silence.
Drystan had warded the staircase in more ways than one, but for what purpose, she could not say. Ceridwen followed the twisting steps as they took her up and up into the darkness of the unlit staircase until only a faint glow ahead of her and the residual light from below lit her way in the darkness.
Her pace slowed as the top of the landing came into view. She’d likely traveled at least two floors up into the darkness of the stairwell without passing so much as a door or window. An oil lamp flickered at the top of the stairs, one that burned low. She could barely make out a trace of oil in the well at the bottom. Another few hours would see it burn itself through if left untended.
“Drystan,” she called softly, hoping not to walk in on him unaware.
The door at the top of the stairs had been left wide open, yet no response greeted her.
She gasped, her feet rooting themselves to the stone at the threshold. Beyond the open door, the room lay in shambles.
Papers were strewn across the floor, along with an assortment of accessories she did not take the time to examine. Black ink pooled in a spilled puddle on the floor next to a shattered lamp, its oil swirling with the edge of the ink puddle. Sheets had been partially pulled from a bed on the right wall and lay heaped upon the floor. Little feathers floated near their edges and graced the bedcoverings. A table was upended, a chair’s navy-blue cloth ripped on one armrest. Petals covered the floor around the base of a pot near the window.
The monster came inside.
The thought stripped the heat from her body. Somehow, impossibly, it had crept into Drystan’s tower. Yet no blood marred the floors or any surface she could see. Nor did she find what she most feared—a body.
But the stairs continued upward. Another floor loomed above.
Ceridwen ran up the stairs, desperate to find Drystan.
Please be all right. Please be—
She stifled a scream as the steps ended, dumping her into a room even more destroyed than the one below. But it wasn’t the overturned bookshelf, the scattered dried herbs, broken plants, or even the arrangement of weapons knocked from their displays that caused her heart to clench in fear.
A stone altar stood in the center of the room, covered in bloody designs. A blade as long as her forearm and coated in blood lay poised in the center of the pattern. Unlike the workings Drystan performed in her room, this blood had not disappeared upon casting.
The working drew her like a beckoning call. Without thinking, she crossed the space and stared at the gruesome mess in a chilled daze. Incomplete or interrupted?
She reached her hand toward the altar.
Deep rumbling from behind froze her body to the core. A scream lodged in her throat as she whirled toward the noise.
A dark beast.
A monster.
Themonster.
It hovered in the shadows near the far wall, not far from where she’d entered. Its red eyes glimmered in the rays of sunset filtering in through the windows. A clawed hand scraped against the gray stone floor with a shrill screech, leaving behind white grooves.
“Goddess, no.” Her head spun. Her body shook.
Drystan had tried to keep the monster at bay…and lost.
The monster lounged on all fours like a wolf. Yet it was too large, its limbs oddly formed in a way she hadn’t noticed the first time she’d glimpsed it. Dark fur marred the skin of its back, face, and what little she could see of its chest. But the arms and legs were mostly hairless, dark flesh strung tight over bone.
Her hand slipped on the altar where she gripped it for support, coating her palm in sticky wetness as she held herself upright. The beast stretched and slunk toward the stair.
Never taking her eyes off it, Ceridwen moved behind the altar on shaking legs, a last defense against the beast. The weapons she’d spotted stood too close to the monster itself. Reaching them would be a gamble, one she likely would not win. The bloody dagger on the stone slab was the only reasonable item within range. Yet as she stretched her fingers toward it, something halted her—an invisible tug on her sleeve, a whisper she could not quite hear—as if the Goddess herself warned her against that course of action.
She left the dagger where it lay.
“What did you do to Drystan?” she demanded of the monster subtly pacing near the stairs, fear giving force to her words. From this angle, she could see that no one else occupied the top floor, living or dead.
The beast’s head bobbed. A soft growl floated through the space between them—more a wail of the dead than any animalistic sound. The chill of it nearly stopped her heart. If it could speak in human tones, it chose not to. Instead, the monster slunk forward, gliding along the floor with catlike grace despite its awkward limbs.
Another scream threatened to tear its way from her throat. A window stood behind her, but if she could get there in time, the leap to the ground many floors below would certainly kill her.
Ceridwen had no illusions regarding how quickly this monster could kill. Likely it could leap upon a grown man and tear out his throat in two heartbeats. She’d seen the result. That horrific sight would never leave her mind—not for long.
The best chance lay in making it back down the twisting stairs to the main hall, where hopefully, the others would still be waiting. Together, they might have a chance.
Maybe.
The monster gave another wail that made her skin crawl and set her teeth on edge. She grabbed the sides of a heavy wooden chair nearby. With effort, she lifted it between herself and the monster, a last defense and distraction as it slunk around the edge of the room, rounding the final edge of the stone altar that had lain between them.
She flung the chair with all her might. It clattered to the stone and slid across the ground to tap into the monster’s foreleg and side. As soon as it raised its clawed limb to swat at the offensive object, she sprinted for the stairs.
Goddess, please.She prayed, lunging for the pathway down.
A firm tug jerked one leg backward and sent her body crashing forward. Ceridwen screamed, but the impact knocked the air from her lungs and sent her teeth rattling. Sharp pain echoed through her bones, accompanied by the piercing stab of claws that poked through the leather of her boots at one ankle.
“No, please! Let me go!” She twisted around to face the looming monster. She prayed to the Goddess as she thrashed her legs and held her arms in front of her. The movement increased the stab of its claws where it still dug into her boot.
Finally, the claws released. The curved tips dripped blood as the monster raised them to its fanged maw and sniffed. A long, almost black tongue flicked out to lick her blood from its talons.
Ceridwen attempted to push herself away from the monster in its moment of distraction but halted as a deep growl ripped from its throat.
“Goddess, spare my soul,” she prayed. “Don’t let it end this way. Not now.”
Death stared her in the face, its gaping maw exposing jagged teeth ready to shred her to ribbons. Tears blurred its form.
“Drystan.” Like a prayer all its own, his name slipped from her lips.
The red of the monster’s eerie eyes dimmed. Its head reared. Its mouth closed.
“Drystan,” she whispered again, praying that somehow the name that cracked from her throat all rough and heavy had caused the change.
After what might have been a deep sniff, the red receded from the creature’s eyes until she gazed into familiar pools of dark cerulean. Claws clinked upon the ground near her boots as it scooted back like a dog shamed by its owner. Garbled noises filled the space between them.
Cold swallowed her, freezing more completely than if she’d lain naked in the snow. At first, she didn’t recognize the sound the monster made, but on the third try, the certainty of it settled like a weight upon her bones.
“Ceridwen.”
It said her name. The monster knew her.
“Drystan?” she whispered.
Her lunch threatened to come up onto the stones.
He leaned away, traces of humanity coming back into the monstrous face that peered at her with human emotions—sorrow, grief, fear.
“You’re the…” But she could not say the word. Her whole body shook, barely able to form the truth that spilled between them. She scrambled across the ground, aiming for the stairs.
“Please.” His voice cracked in a pained rasp from chapped, almost human lips. His eyes begged and pleaded.
But he was the monster who haunted their city. A killer. A demon in the night.
He kept the monster at bay, he’d said. A humorless huff of laughter bubbled to her lips as tears blurred her eyes. The Lord Protector who had been assigned to protect this city terrorized it instead.
The man she cared for. Whom she kissed.
“Ceridwen.” A hand, more human now than monstrous, reached for her. “Please.”
The word pierced her heart, but with it came the sharp stab of reality that cleared away the fog of terror shrouding her mind.
She couldn’t stay here.
Not with him. Not now.
Ceridwen rose unsteadily to her feet, ignoring the pain in her ankle, and backed toward the stairs.
“Stay…” The end of the word trailed into an inhuman hiss as he wrestled with the monster within. A flash of red filled his eyes, sealing her decision.
With one final glance, she turned and hurtled down the stairs.
Each step sent the same thought echoing through her mind.
Drystan is the monster.