Chapter 9 Lysa
nine
Lysa
Hunger gnawed at my stomach, and pulled me from a restless sleep before the sun had fully crested. I lay there for a moment, staring at the unfamiliar canopy of the bed, the heavy curtains pooling on the floor. The silence of the manor was absolute. I needed tea. Strong tea, and something to eat.
I dressed quickly, my fingers fumbling with the buttons of my blouse.
My hands still felt stiff from the quieting seizing yesterday, a residual ache in the joints that I ignored as I pulled on my boots.
I knew the way to the kitchen. Fenrik had pointed it out: Left at the landing, down the servants’ stairs, through the green baize door. Simple.
I slipped into the corridor and I turned left.
The shadows here were deep, clinging to the corners where the sconces had burned low.
I reached the end of the hall, turned the corner expecting the wide sweep of the grand staircase, and stopped dead.
A dark oak door stood in front of me. A door with a distinctive, jagged scratch near the handle. My door.
I blinked, looking behind me. The corridor stretched back the way I’d come. I turned around, retraced my steps to the intersection, and frowned. I must have turned right instead of left in my sleep-fogged state.
“Right,” I said. “Let’s pay attention, shall we?”
I took the opposite turn this time. The architecture here seemed sharper, the angles more aggressive.
The carpet ended abruptly, replaced by flagstones that leeched the warmth through my soles.
I walked for two minutes, counting my steps, waiting for the stairs.
Instead, the walls fell away into a gallery I hadn’t seen before.
Rows of faces stared down from their gilded frames.
Stormgarde ancestors, all of them possessing the same sharp cheekbones and grey eyes as Fenrik.
I walked faster. A woman in a stiff lace collar seemed to sneer at my trousers.
I passed a portrait of a man with a hawk on his wrist, and the hawk’s head snapped toward me.
I froze. The painted bird blinked. Its obsidian eye tracked me as I took a hesitant step backward.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I hissed, though the hair on my arms stood up. “It’s a spell. A cheap parlor trick.” But the malice in the painted eyes felt real. The house felt awake. And it felt like it was watching me like a cat watches a mouse before the pounce.
I spun on my heel and marched back the way I came.
I walked until I reached the spot where the archway to the bedroom corridor should be.
It wasn’t there. Solid stone greeted me.
Grey blocks, mortared together as if they had stood there for centuries.
I touched the wall, my heart hammering against my ribs.
This wasn’t possible. I had walked through here three minutes ago.
“Is this a game?” I asked the empty air. “Are you trying to scare me off?”
The house offered no answer, only the creak of a floorboard somewhere above, sounding suspiciously like a chuckle.
I was trapped in a maze of stone that recreated itself at will.
What if there was no kitchen? What if Fenrik had locked me in a wing designed to madden intruders?
The stories in town said the manor ate people. I had assumed it was a metaphor.
My stomach growled loud in the silence. I wasn’t going to die in a hallway.
I was going to get a cup of tea, and if I had to blast a hole in the wall with my own dangerous magic to do it, I would.
I stepped up to the dead end. I flattened my palm against the masonry, right where the archway should have been.
I closed my eyes, refusing to let the shifting shadows intimidate me.
“I don’t care about your games,” I told the wall. “I am hungry. I am tired. And I just want breakfast. Please.”
Silence. Then, a vibration hummed against my skin. The stone warmed beneath my palm. The blocks didn’t slide away, but vanished. The wall dissolved into a shimmer of air, and a heavy wooden door appeared in its place, standing slightly ajar.
Through the crack, the smells of baking bread, frying bacon, and brewing tea drifted out. I stared at the door. The house hadn’t trapped me. It had ... routed me? Or maybe it was laughing at me. I pushed the door open and found a narrow set of spiral stairs winding downward.
“Thank you,” I said, eyeing the stone suspiciously.
A draft rushed past me, ruffling my hair like a pat on the head, and the door clicked shut behind my back.
The promise of frying bacon pulled me down the last tight curve of the spiral staircase, but even the scent of food couldn’t chase the chill from my spine.
That moving wall had unsettled me more than I cared to admit.
It was one thing for a house to be draughty or decrepit; it was another entirely for it to rearrange its own anatomy to confuse a guest. I stepped off the final stair onto a threadbare rug.
This wasn’t the kitchen proper, but a narrow service corridor lined with dark wood paneling that seemed to swallow the weak morning light filtering through the high, grime-streaked windows.
A few paces ahead, the corridor hooked sharply to the left, disappearing into a maw of shadows.
But before the turn, hung slightly crooked on the wall, was a mirror.
It was framed in tarnished silver carved to look like tangled briars.
I slowed, intending only to check my appearance, and to smooth the hair I’d hastily shoved back and wipe the sleep from my eyes before facing whomever happened to be in the kitchen.
I caught my own gaze in the glass, my eyes wide and encircled by fatigue, my lips pale.
My breath hitched, locking in my throat.
In the reflection, the corridor didn’t turn left into darkness.
It stretched straight ahead, the paneling gleaming with polish, the gloom replaced by a wash of sunlight.
The reflected hallway opened into a conservatory I hadn’t seen on Fenrik’s tour, a space of glass walls and lush, vibrant greenery.
Standing amidst the ferns in that sun-drenched reflection was a woman.
She stood with her back to the glass walls, the light turning the loose strands of her hair into a halo.
Her dress was a pale, sea-glass green, the silver embroidery catching the light like ripples on water.
It looked very much like Lady Kelda. She was watching me.
Her hands were clasped loosely in front of her, her expression one of serene patience.
Her eyes met mine in the glass, and a smile plucked at the corner of her mouth.
I spun around, my boots scuffing loud on the wooden floor.
“What are you—“
The words died on my tongue. The corridor behind me was empty. There was no conservatory. No sunlight and no Kelda. I whipped my head back to the mirror. The reflection showed only me now. Me, and the dark, empty turn of the corridor behind my shoulder. The sunlit room was gone. Kelda was gone.
“I saw you,” I said, my voice trembling.
The house offered no answer. No floorboard creaked; no draft sighed.
Was this how the madness started? Did the manor feed on sanity before it fed on life?
I took a step closer to the mirror, my reflection stepping with me, mirroring my fear.
The silver frame seemed to writhe in the corner of my vision, the briars tightening.
Fighting every instinct that screamed at me to run, I raised my hand.
I needed to know it was real. I needed to feel the cold, hard assurance of glass.
My index finger met the surface. There was no click of nail against crystal.
Instead, the surface yielded. It felt thick and cold, like pushing my finger into the surface of a freezing pond.
The reflection rippled from my touch, distorting my own face into a grotesque swirl of skin and eyes.
I gasped and jerked my hand back. The ripples settled, smoothing out until the glass looked solid again.
I backed away, clutching my hand to my chest, staring at the tarnished silver frame.
This house wasn’t just crumbling; it was sick.
It was playing with my reality, dangling hallucinations like bait.
This house seemed to use the dreaded veil magic.
But veil magic could not invent lies, it could only strengthen the ones people were already telling themselves.
I turned and sprinted for the door at the end of the hall that smelled of bacon, desperate to put a door between me and the watching glass.
I practically fell through the oak door, slamming it shut behind me.
The sudden normality nearly knocked me over.
The kitchen was a sanctuary of copper pans reflecting firelight, the heavy scent of frying bacon, and the bubbling of a kettle.
Mrs. Crane stood at a vast wooden worktable, a knife flashing rhythmically as she dismantled a bundle of chives. She didn’t so much as glance up at my frantic entrance.
“Morning, Miss. Or I suppose it’s ‘My Lady’ now, though the words still taste like unripe persimmons coming off the tongue.”
I leaned against the door, waiting for my heart to stop. “Please, just Lysa. Mrs. Crane, the hallway... the mirror... it moved. The wall moved.”
“Mm.” Mrs. Crane scraped the chives into a bowl of eggs. The look she gave me said that ‘just Lysa’ would never do. “The West Wing corridor tends to be temperamental before noon. It likes to route guests past the portrait gallery. A bit vain, this house.”
“Vain?” I pushed off the door, my legs still trembling, and moved toward the heat of the stove. “It felt predatory. Does Lord Stormgarde navigate a labyrinth every time he wants a cup of tea?”