21. TWENTY ONE
TWENTY ONE
A LONELY PRISONER
O ver one week had passed since Seraphina and the brothers vanished into the vortex and left me alone. A lonely prisoner in a gilded cage, I wandered the manor and the grounds like a lost soul, talking to myself in a way that would have given others cause to question my sanity.
As I stepped inside, shaking the rain from my hair, I caught sight of movement at the far end of the corridor. A maid stood half-turned, a basket clutched against her skirts. The moment she noticed me, she scurried away, disappearing around the corner.
Curiosity tugged at me harder than caution. I followed.
When I turned the corner, the maid was gone but a door to the right stood slightly ajar.
Oh the curiosity tugged at me harder than caution, I couldn’t help myself. I crossed the corridor and pressed the handle down slowly, easing the door inward. Quickly checking that no one was there .
The door opened I peeked through. It was not a cupboard. It was a bedroom. A vast one.
The chamber looked perfect not a thing out of place.
To the left stood towering wardrobes of blackened oak, their carved edges so intricate they looked like thorned vines frozen in wood.
In the centre of the room sat a huge mahogany bed, its high frame carved with stars, crescents, and strange celestial markings that matched the design.
The bedding was immaculate. Heavy and dark.
Pulled so perfectly smooth, it looked untouched by someone who slept in here.
Nothing in the room was feminine or soft with flowing fabrics.
This felt like a man’s room. I stepped farther inside, my boots sounding far too loud against the polished floor.
The walls were nothing like the rest of the house.
There were no painting of women smiling down from gilded frames, no pastoral scenes meant to soothe the eye.
Here, the walls were crowded with maps of lands and charts of skies.
Constellations inked in silver and gold across black parchment and mounted in iron frames.
Globes rested on carved stands beside the bed, each one marked not with countries but with lines, symbols, and what could be star routes. They were beyond my understanding
Then I turned toward the far side of the chamber and stopped breathing.
Hanging on a mannequin beside the window was a black ceremonial gown, its fabric falling in straight, folds. Above it, mounted neatly as if it were sacred, was the mask.
The mask of the Ecliptuari
That hollow, unnerving face I had come to hate. Pale and expressionless, with empty eye sockets and a cruel stillness, as though it had been made not to hide a man’s face but to erase it entirely.
I should have left then .
I should have turned around and walked straight back out before whoever owned this room returned and found me standing there in the middle invading the space.
But I wasn’t running out of here, Instead, I moved closer.
Had I walked into one of the Ecliptuari’s private rooms? What did they look like without those damned masks? Were they human and ordinary looking or did they look monstrous and wear the masks to conceal? Or worse, did they look beautiful, as beautiful as the brothers?
A shiver passed through me, but I pushed it aside as I began to search.
If I was trapped in this cursed place, then maybe somewhere in here there was a key, a hidden object—anything that could help me get out. I crossed the room to the wardrobe and pulled one of the doors open.
Inside, every garment hung in absolute perfection.
Dark frock coats. Tailored black fabrics embroidered with silver thread. Not a single crease. Not one sleeve out of line. And stitched into each cuff, collar, and breast was the same symbol.
My stomach turned cold.
Only one brother wore that symbol.
Only one
A single star sewn in silver.
I stared at the clothes; suddenly certain I had made a terrible mistake.
This was Fionn’s room.
Of course it was, everything was so neat and tidy, with nothing misplaced. Even the air in here felt tense and it smelled faintly of him. Cold iron and worn leather. It was Masculine and Clean.
I shut the wardrobe quickly.
My pulse was starting to flutter out of control, but I still could not stop myself.
I moved to the bedside drawers and pulled them open one after another, rifling through letters and folded papers, old writings covered in a language I could not read.
The ink was elegant and severe, all strange loops and sharp strokes, as if even the words had been written by someone incapable of gentleness.
In another cupboard, It only got worse.
Two whips hung against the inner panel.
Dark leather and worn. Not decorative or new. They looked like they had been well used with the fading of the handles.
I reached toward one before I could stop myself, letting my fingers brush the braid of it. The leather was smooth in places, cracked in others. My stomach tightened when I noticed the oils and ointments lined underneath.
I did not want to know what they were for, nor who they had touched. But if this was Fionn’s room, then everything inside it felt like it was here for a reason and not for decoration. Being in here made me angry. I wanted to spit on all his order.
And, absurdly, it made me want to know more about him.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I turned and climbed onto his bed.
I gathered up my skirt and planted my old, scuffed boots right on his immaculate jacquard cover. Dirt from the soles marked the dark fabric at once, and a small thrill of satisfaction ran through me.
He was not here. There was nothing he could do.
I lay back for a moment, stiff and awkward that I was on his bed.
I stared up at the carved canopy above. The mattress was firmer than I expected, as if even sleep was not allowed to soften him.
I tried to picture Fionn here, did he lay rigid on his back like a corpse, did he sleep at all, was his face at rest any less cruel than when he was awake.
Again I caught his scent.
Leave. Came a voice.
The whisper was faint .
“No” I replied.
And, absurdly as it sounds, being in Fionn’s room uninvited made me want to know more about him.
And then, my thoughts drifted to him.
To his eyes, that impossible blue that could go light as ice or dark as a storm in a flash second. Eyes that had looked down at me with fury and warning not to cross the line with him. Those eyes that made my insides twist in ways I didn’t want them to.
Even though he was from another world, I couldn’t deny he was striking looking. He was strong and very controlled in everything he did. The way he had held me when I tried to run. Was firm and in that moment, I knew not to defy him.
I tried to ignore the way my heart fluttered lying here, imagining what he was like when he let someone get close, if he ever had. If those cold, piercing eyes ever softened for anyone. If they ever darkened for reasons other than anger.
My fingers drifted to the carved bedframe, tracing the grooves in the wood. Who else had touched these posts? Had anyone ever been allowed this close to him? Or was this room as untouched as he pretended to be.
I try to ignore my thoughts, but I couldn’t help imagine his large frame above me, those cold piercing blue eyes were they the same when filled with desire.
I sank deeper into the pillow, and a strange ache tightened in my chest.
What were the whips for, did he use them for pleasure, or was it ritualistic torture of the marked?
What had shaped him into this cold, distant man who seemed to hate me, even though he said I had to bind to one of them?
Unlike Cillian, there was no charm in him or remorse for taking me, in fact he didn’t seem to care about anything except his cause.
Out of the three brothers, I knew as quick as looking at me, he would put a dagger through my heart .
And yet here I was, lying in his bed, wondering who he was beneath all that ice.
I reminded myself that I hated him.
So why was I lying in his bed wondering how he slept?
Angry at myself, I sat up sharply.
Then I stood.
And before reason could stop me, I began stamping over his pillows in my muddy boots.
One. Two. Three. Jumping up and down and messing everything up.
I jumped on the mattress with all the graceless spite of a child. I didn’t care. The bed hardly moved beneath me, it was solid and stern like it was made perfectly for him.
I laughed under my breath. This was probably the most it had been used in a long time.
What would Fionn think of this?
I bounced again, harder and I’m sure the air shifted behind me.
Then came a sudden sound, a knock, then a scrape. I froze.
I turned just in time to see the Ecliptuari mask strike the floor, bounce and then skid across the polished wood.
It stopped right at the bottom of the bed. It’s empty eyes stared up at me. My blood went cold.
I had not touched it. I had been nowhere near it. Yet there it was, lying at an angle as though it had thrown itself from its stand to look at me.
For one sick second, the room no longer felt empty. It felt occupied with an unseen presence, watching.
The lights along the wall flickered on, shadows moved across the maps and constellations, making the stars engraved onto the bed post glimmer and writhe. I stared at the mask, unable to breathe, and noticed then what I had not seen from afar.
Its colour was different.
Not the same pale bone white as the others .
This one was darker, embellished with silver symbols.
And on its brow, engraved so faintly I almost missed it, was a symbol the others did not bear: a star crowned with a half-moon.
My mouth went dry. Did he wear these costumes like the Ecliptuari. Like the men in the chamber, when the girl was crouched on the floor pleading for her life.
Why did every inch of this room feel less like a bedroom and more like a shrine.
From outside the room, I heard footsteps in the corridor. They were real and near.
I jumped off the bed so fast my boots slipped on the polished floor. Panic tore through me as I cast one last look at the mask, still lying there with its dead eyes fixed on mine, I hurried to the door as fast as I could.and pulled it open.
At the far end of the corridor, a maid stood half-turned in my direction, a basket clutched against her skirts. Her eyes widened when she saw me emerging from the room, she nodded left to right.
I did not wait to see what she would do.
I turned and ran the opposite way, my pulse was no longer a flutter it was pounding, the image of that fallen mask chasing me down the corridor like it was alive.
And somehow, as I fled, I could not shake the feeling that Fionn would know if he ever returned that I invaded his space.
I didn’t stop running until I burst out of the manor and into the damp afternoon air. My breath came in sharp, panicked pulls, my boots slipping in the wet grass as I stumbled toward the edge of the grounds. I needed distance from the house.
Suddenly, I smelled the change in the air. The skies clouded over, and a light drizzle began to fall. An unpleasant energy coursed through my flesh. The light shifted before my eyes, causing the birds to erupt from the rustling trees around me.
The vortex shimmied in the air and opened before me.
I skidded to a stop.