Chapter 14
Phaedra tossed and turned in her bed, sleep held at bay by the unrelenting tension in her limbs and the unyielding tumult in her mind.
Dinner had not gone as expected, Nathaniel being summoned by an urgent message before even having a chance to sit down.
His displeasure of leaving her had been evident, and he had excused himself with the promise that he would return as soon as his business would allow it.
Yet even with this offered reprieve, Phaedra had found herself in a state of tense anticipation, the food, despite its richness in flavor and presentation, like ash on her tongue.
And when she had finished and he had still not returned, she had retreated to her room in haste, lest she would encounter him on her way.
She rolled onto her back and stared into the darkness above her bed, urging the interminable hum beneath her skin to cease. She knew it to be madness, this ridiculous state she found herself in, all from a single look a mere boy had given her.
Only Nathaniel Hawthorn was no mere boy. And she—
She grit her teeth.
She should have known better. And her frustration, fiercely at war with the tightness claiming hold of her body and the wild thoughts yearning to invade her mind, was nothing more than the product of her own disappointment. Because she should have expected this. She should have known.
It was all there, in the intimacy of their endeavor, the way they were secured together in a house where beauty and tragedy clashed into each other without a clear boundary.
The way the unexpected mystery made everything around them feel so uncertain.
It should have been no surprise that sooner or later they both would look for any sign of familiarity or comfort.
People have been known to come together for far less.
And he was undoubtedly a very handsome man, while she, despite the ten or so years she had on him, was still a beautiful woman.
What she needed to do now was to be more prepared. To ensure that this would never happen again. To keep him at arms length, where he belonged.
The conclusion seemed to calm the whirlwind of her thoughts, but the tension in her body lingered, telling her that it would not be sated by mere rationale.
She groaned, and sat up, glaring into a room cloaked in darkness, the pale light of the moon still hours away.
Her feet sank into soft slippers as she stood, the shadows around her shifting to fold onto her form, the only white sail in a sea of black.
She bent to light the candle on her bedside table, the scratch of the match deafening in the silence.
Then she pulled her dressing gown from the back of the chair, and stepped outside her room.
Shadows danced as the feeble light ran into the long hallway before her, the green of the wallpaper beguilingly deep in the night.
She started to walk, not yet knowing where she would go, the repeating pattern of vines and blooms pulsating around her with every intermittent gap of a frame on the wall.
It felt calming in a way Phaedra had not expected, her pulse slowing to its soothing rhythm, her senses dipping into a muffled state, her mind finally letting go.
She only realized how silent her movements had been when the plush carpet finally ended, and her steps rang out on hard wood. She looked down, surprised, at the floor that appeared almost black in the darkness. Then she peered around, trying to find her bearings.
A set of doors stood before her that somehow seemed too small for the splintered frame, the unblemished varnish at odds with the dark, flaking paint of everything else around it.
There was a haze of black on the walls around the frame, as if the doors were fighting to contain some dark entity desperate to bleed into the outside world, and at once Phaedra understood where she was.
Standing at the entrance to the west wing.
The realization tightened around her limbs, and she could almost taste the soot in the heavy air, as if the fire had only just transpired and not months ago.
Her mind told her to retreat, to immediately find her way back to the safety of her room, but before she could even take a step, a silver shaft sliced through the hallway as moonlight fell through a crack in the door.
Phaedra stopped short, a deep frown etching itself between her brows. This could not be right. The moon could not have risen yet. But then a thought brushed a chill down her spine, halting her breath.
How long had she been wandering the hallways for?
She stepped back, the urgency to leave radiating through her entire body, her skin prickling with icy unease. Then a shadow moved through the light, and she heard the creak of marred wood shifting inside the door. Against her better judgment, she moved forward, peering through the gap.
It took a moment to understand the sight before her.
The charred wing spread forward, tattered and dark, ending abruptly in a jagged fall.
Beams jutted at odd angles from what had once been the ceiling, debris coating what remained of the decaying floor.
And at the precipice of all this destruction, a figure stood in dark dress, the moonlight painting his golden locks silver.
He stared into the chasm at his feet, his words just loud enough that they would reach her. “It is not enough.”
His voice was deep and ragged, almost unrecognizable, and Phaedra froze in the grip of fear—and something else entirely.
Something that clenched around her body like a vise, igniting the blood in her veins.
Something that envisioned his hand, clasped around something she could not see, to tear instead into the tangle of her hair, while his voice, dark and threadbare, pushed into her ear on a heated breath.
And suddenly, there was no power on earth that could have stopped the gasp ripping from her throat.
The figure stiffened, and before Phaedra could fully register the wild flailing of his locks as he turned, the green eyes savage in his distorted face, she yanked the door shut and bolted for her room.